The worlds of journalism and Celebrity Uncovered culture intersect in many ways, blurring the line between news reporting and entertainment. This special issue of Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism seeks to explore the intricacies of this fascinating intersection by providing a venue for theoretical, critical and empirical engagement with the phenomenon of celebrity culture, including celebrity journalism itself. From red carpet events and exclusive interviews to celebrity fashion shows and regal coverage, this area of journalism encompasses a broad spectrum of topics and events that are both engaging and interesting to audiences worldwide.
The research focuses on analyzing the relationships between celebrities, media agendas and audiences’ responses in celebrity-related news stories, and it is conducted through a combination of content analysis, social network analysis, and QAP regression analyses. The data come from a total of 2223 tweets posted by @People about 1380 events involving 75 celebrities in 2016. The results show that celebrity news practices have developed new modes of production that differentiate them from traditional versions of news and newsgathering, but they still follow some conventional principles: cultural proximity (domestic celebrities are favored), gender bias (female celebrities attract more attention), vivid storytelling strategies (layperson speaking and personalization increase media exposure) and the importance of events to audiences (personalized and normalized news articles are more popular than demonized ones).
From Red Carpets to Real Lives: Exploring Celebrity News and Insights
However, these new modes of celebrity-related news production do not seem to influence the functions of celebrity news in any way. Rather, ‘how to report’ seems to be more important than ‘what to report’ in shaping media agendas, and audiences appear to have no particular preferences when it comes to the style of celebrity-related news presentations.