blog-aboutthebook

[blog-aboutthebook]

Chapter 4

Reading chapter 4 it was difficult to find any new information similarly to chapter two. Author gives a good summary of influencers market, their promotion strategies, sources of income and management techniques. All these things are well summarized and categorized but doesn’t present new information for someone who has interest or at least have some information about influencers.

In the same way there is an example of each-other promotion in online platforms. This can be taken to further level exploring music industry as many artists promote each other there as well and not just online. One of key examples could be various tributes singers pay to their colleagues while performing each other’s pieces of music (see for example Bruno Mars tribute to Amy Winehouse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuwgY_TRTW0 ) or paying tributes to other types of work while singing (for example Lady Gaga’s tribute to movie ‘Sound of Music’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxcFcKvjZCk ). I would personally believe it is more acceptable promotion than the one presented by the author in the book about online alliances between celebrities liking and sharing each other’s posts and pushing the content to be seen by more users.

It is also not new the possibility to buy followers on particular platforms and that most people find it shameful when figured out a particular celebrity or ‘influencer’ do so.  The content of influencer’s media platforms – advertisements for particular brands (which is often dishonest), questionable ethics and using various platforms is also known.

However, there is one thing I would like to disagree with the author on. Author claims that livestreams are attracting more audiences at the particular time ‘to see it now’ with an idea that the particular video will later be gone. Or similarly with ‘stories’ that appear for 24 hours and are must-see things. I do not see these means as necessarily attracting the audience ‘at the time’. Of course, biggest fans of influencers and other celebrities will want to see the live stream at the exact time to just feel like knowing what their admired celebrity is doing ‘at that particular moment’. However, for others it is not that important to see that material at that exact time. Even in platforms that doesn’t allow to record the material (author claims it is another mean to attract larger audience at particular time creating conditions in which that material cannot be recorded and therefore seen later on), there are still ways to record it. The material on computer screen can always be filmed with the phone and many other ways allowing to see it later on.

To sum up, the chapter outlines the market of influencers well; however, it is a shame that the chapter doesn’t give a lot of unknown indies of the market for those who already follow some influencers (alike me) and already noticed these techniques a while ago.

[blog-aboutthebook]

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 was a bit more exciting to read as it presented a few new things to me. However, I would first like to go through the points I found already known before turning to new things.

I think it is well-known that new unexpected celebrities have little knowledge hoe to manage their fame so it comes to end quite soon. It is also well-known that combining multiple promotion platforms allows to keep the fame a bit longer. Combining these two aspects seems natural conclusion that keeping the fame sometimes requires hard work of a group of specialists – not the celebrity alone. The fact about changing memes story using the same meme image is probably known to everyone having either Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts. It is also common to see how celebrities use their fame to promote other people, not just meme personalities (like Beyoncé promoted a participant of X-Factor UK in 2008 Alexandra in the final and helped her to win the show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2-Bfpe2TK4 ). However, this point brings me to first new idea I read in the chapter.

I was not aware about the specific case of Ellen DeGeneres promotion of Sophia Grace & Rosie. I believe this is a sweet example of sharing the fame and giving the girls what they dreamed off. However, my only concern relates to the outcome of such fame and effect for girls’ lives. It relates to another new idea to me in this chapter – the unwilling memes. This idea could be applied to any type of celebrities (including my worry about Sophia Grace & Rosie). The effect of fame to personal life and future career is often unknown and the potential negative effect should be considered more often. It is easy to miss this idea (as I did) only following successful celebrities online or those who still benefited from being not as successful (like people who couldn’t seek careers in different field but still benefited from their fame – see following paragraph about Yuri Nikulin). This also relates to example given in the book of a Heidi Yeh who got bad advertisement in one project and couldn’t be successful model afterwards.

Another related example about unwilling fame could be Russian actor Yuri Nikulin who was famous for his roles in comedies and well-created comic characters. Later in his career he decided to film in a few movies which were not comedies but action ones and were supposed to have serious plots but audience couldn’t stop laughing the second they saw Nikulin on screen recognizing him as famous comedian and therefore took everything he played as a joke (a good brief overview was published in Britannica, 2018: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yury-Nikulin). However, it is important here to emphasize that even though Nikulin couldn’t make a career in not comedian movies, he still benefited a lot from his roles in comedies and became well-known and widely recognized actor.

I will definitely keep this idea about unwilling memes in my mind for further exploration. At this moment I can’t say I know more examples of it as I never payed attention to such cases but it is an interesting field for research.

[blog-aboutthebook]

Chapter 2.

The overview of chapter 2 of the book will be quite short. This is because of simple reason that I haven’t found anything new to be said in that chapter…

The four qualities of celebrities are well known to most people using internet these days (in addition to the work of Bourdieu, 1986). These qualities might not be known as four types and so clearly defined but they all are not something new to be observed among celebrities’ behaviors.

I would only like to add some examples of each type of celebrity.

1.       Exclusivity. The first example coming to my mind as ‘exclusive’ and glamorous lifestyle example would be Kardashians. Money, fame, influence and fans – that would probably summarize how this family is living. One of the latest example of exclusivity could be Kanye’s and Kim’s flight with private Boeing 747 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZykPIXVU7s .

2.       Exoticism. Although the author explains this feature in relation to cultural differences, I think they could be explained by appearance differences (‘exotic-looking’) as well. I would illustrate this feature presenting one famous model Winnie Harlow who became famous by her different look caused by vitiligo syndrome. Having skin pattern the model jumped to celebrity world very fast as well-memorable and more important – exotic-looking woman. Winnie’s success shows that her different look was helpful to become celebrity and therefore is good illustration of exoticism -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjkuBkU_DE0 .

3.       Exceptionalism. The feature refers to particular skill that the person is exceptionally good at. The good example for this (also relating to creativity as well, but it definitely has exceptionalism feature) would be Youtube channel The Piano Guys having more than 6 millions followers (https://www.youtube.com/user/ThePianoGuys). The channel is run by four music players who do the covers of well-known melodies. The covers are played exceptionally well and showing high technical skills.

4.       Everydayness. The example coming to my mind here would be LadBaby channel on youtube and the family running the page. It is a very usual family with a child. Having great sense of humor parent are filming various situations in everyday life and uploading these videos online resulting in becoming well-known family and in a way celebrities having 2.7 million likes on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/LadBabyOfficial/)  - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVBXTHC8cAKUHyK3LytUzHA

All these features are well-known to most people who use internet and know at least a few celebrities. To me this chapter of book did not present any new information. However, I do think it is useful to systemise all these features and put them in four categories in order to understand celebrities marketing techniques, reason of fame and actions better.

On my way to start chapter 3.

Reference:

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In Richardson, J.W. (Ed.) Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258) CT: Greenwood.

[blog-aboutthebook]

Chapter 1.

What’s new?

One of the first things I found new to learn about was a change from ‘representational’ to ‘presentational’ media (p.10) (Marshal, 2010). Indeed, I completely agree that this shift happened. I think that it is partly the result of new technologies allowing to pre-film and review the shot of the camera, adjust lightings, angles, etc. even for upcoming ‘live’ broadcasts.

The author of the book claims that now it is possible for media actors to ‘negotiate how they would like their identities and cultures to be perceived’ (Abidin, 2017, p. 10; Marshall, 2010). I am sure there are a lot of examples of this from presidential campaign interviews (arraigning questions, filming, etc.) to Hollywood celebrities preparing for their official engagements. One of the example could be a well-known singer Beyoncé and her desire to control everything for her performances like in 2006 for MTV Video Music Awards (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLRxAJk4QEA) or the fact that the only biographical movie was ever created about her was autobiography ‘Life is but a dream’ and she even directed the whole film and mostly used her own filmed videos for it (trailer available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhEnhNU3gVM).

It really seems that nowadays technologies allow to edit, re-film, re-stage videos much easier than it used to be in the past. I agree with Abidin with this point mentioned in the book.

Another new idea to me was the idea of microcelebrity and camgirls in early 2000s. The difference between traditional celebrities and microcelebrities is clear – the first keeps the distance and separation from audience while the later connects with viewers. However, as the author argues, making this distinction today would be much more difficult as digital technologies changed a lot of traditional celebrities to more ‘connected’ celebrities in terms of communication to audience more closely. One of the example I can think of is singer Mariah Carey and her Instagram account publishing videos from her everyday life, short messages to fans and even videos of her children. At the same time she also keeps aspects of traditional celebrities – gives official speeches, planned interviews, appears on the stage, award ceremonies and red carpet wearing haut-couture dresses, flawless makeup and just looking like typical celebrity.

The presence of different showing-up platforms – TV, radio, and very broad internet (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and many many more platforms) allows to connect with the audience easier and blurs lines between traditional celebrities and modern celebrities (the later I would say is result of microcelebrities) as vast majority of them use all possible platforms to keep their fame and circulate bigger money.

Finally, there were many more aspects mentioned in first chapter of the book. I only talked about two aspects because I only found these two to be new information to me. Six microcelebrities measures (p. 14-15) were just a common sense to me, difference between micro and internet celebrity (table 1.1 p. 16) was already known as well as personal traits that keeps celebrities popular (Marwick, 2013).

Looking forward to find something new in chapter 2!

References:

Marshal, P.D. (2010). The Promotion and Presentation of The Self: Celebrity As Marker Of Presentational Media. Celebrity studies 1(1): 45.

Marwick, A. (2013). Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Branding In The Social Media Age. New Haven: Yale University Press.

[blog-aboutthebook]

Before starting...

I’m writing this post right before starting the book ‘Internet Celebrity’ by Crystal Abidin (2018). I thought it would be useful to specify how I see the topic before starting reading the book.

My view to internet celebrities is quite simple – I do not see them as people who achieved much in their lives and their achievements as a reason of their fame. On the contrary, I see them as ‘famous for being famous’ personas who are not the greatest focus point for studies. Simply, because there isn’t what to study about.

I see my view critically and I accept the very possible case that my simplistic view could be caused by lack of knowledge of the field. Well, if that is the case, then the book ‘Internet Celebrity’ could be just what I need to change my mind by getting more information about this… let’s call it ‘a field’.

Looking forward to learn something I don’t know and maybe even change my opinion after reading this book.

11/24/2018