Blackwell Reference Online

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Perhaps the most rapidly expanding facet of today's media landscape is celebrity culture; entertainers’ work in the film, television, music, and fashion industries accompanies gossip about their personal lives in → magazines and → Newspapers, on → Television, and online (→ Internet). The major players in celebrity culture are known worldwide – today, there are few who do not know of American actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, English power couple Victoria and David Beckham, Australian singer Kylie Minogue, or Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen (→ Stars). The ability of celebrity culture to cross national and cultural boundaries as well as media outlets has made it an important issue in communication studies.The analysis of celebrity culture began in the 1940s with Lowenthal's (1944) content analysis of magazine biographies (→ Content Analysis, Qualitative), which traced a shift in focus from “idols of production” (politicians and businessmen) to “idols of consumption” (entertainers). Though the idols of consumption have remained the center of celebrity culture, communications researchers have broadened their studies to explore the types and purposes of celebrity, celebrity media, and audiences’ relationships with celebrity culture.Attempting to categorize and describe the various types of celebrity has been a part of studying celebrity culture since Lowenthal (1944) initially ... log in or subscribe to read full text