Over the first two decades of the 21st century, celebrity has undergone significant changes as mass media have shifted from a restricted broadcast model to a digital free-for-all. Existing celebrities have been forced to adapt their style of presentation to suit a more interactive environment where fans expect continuous access, while the emergent social media have generated new forms of celebrity that reflect the unique affordances of YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. In this book, David Giles argues that these developments are best understood by rethinking traditional concepts of media and audience in order to explain how a platform like YouTube has evolved its own media culture that affords a different type of celebrity to those associated with cinema, radio and television. Above all else, the 21st century celebrity is valued more for their (apparent) authenticity than for their glamour or talents, and Giles examines how that authenticity is a carefully crafted performance. Drawing extensively on the burgeoning celebrity studies literature, he explores the impact of digital culture on earlier concepts like parasocial relationships and celetoids as well as critiquing more recent ideas such as microcelebrity.

Intro -- Fame In Digital Culture -- Contents -- Part I: Celebrity in Theory and Research -- 1: Celebrity Studies and the Changing Media Landscape -- Defining celebrity -- Celebrity as Talk, Text or Sign -- Celebrity as Lived Experience -- Celebrity as Comparative Term -- Towards a Material/Discursive Approach to Celebrity -- Celebrity versus 'stardom' -- Celebrity as Vulgar Modernity -- Stars and Star Studies -- Industrial Aspects of Celebrity -- The modern day: What do we mean by the digital era? -- 2: Towards a Theory of Media and Affordance -- McLuhan: Putting the medium back into social media -- McLuhanism vs Functionalism -- What is a Medium? -- Gibson: Rescuing affordance theory from the object-centred perspective -- Implications for the study of celebrity -- 3: Celebrities and Their Audience(s) -- Parasocial Interaction: Irrational Behaviour or Routine Audience Activity? -- The Fan Studies Perspective -- The 'Celebrity Worship' Perspective -- Parasocial Relationships in the Digital Era -- A Discursive Psychological Account of Parasocial Relationships -- Part II: The Twenty-First Century and the Digital Imperative -- 4: The 2000s: Reality TV and 'micro-celebrity'- webcam girls and bloggers -- A Brief History of Audience Participation Media -- Reality TV -- Big Brother (UK): The Emergence of Celebrity Through Reality TV -- Fourth Generation Reality TV? -- Celebrities in Reality TV -- Webcam Girls: The Origins of Microcelebrity -- Micro-Celebrity: The Evolution of a New Concept -- Micro-celebrity in Silicon Valley and Elsewhere -- The Future of Micro-Celebrity -- 5: Twitter as 'Fundamental': The Obligatory Use of Social Media by Celebrities -- Giles (2013b): Morrissey Falls Out with His (Online) Fanbase -- Thomas (2014): John Cusack Goes Incognito, then Cognito Again -- A Brief History of Celebrities on Twitter

Risky Business: When Tweeting to Millions Simply isn't Worth it -- Preserving the Star/Fan Hierarchy: Twitter as 'Nothing New' -- Celebrity-Audience Interaction on Twitter -- Twitter Use as 'Normal Social Interaction' -- 'Social Media Natives' and Twitter -- Digital Pop Stars: Lorde, Stormzy, and the Next Generation -- Crime Authors and Their Followers -- Part III: New forms of Celebrity -- 6: YouTubers -- The Emergence of YouTube as a Presentational Medium -- The Second Generation of YouTube Celebrities -- Genres in YouTube Celebrity -- YouTubers as (Micro?)-celebrities -- How can Someone with 62 Million Followers be a Microcelebrity? -- The YouTube Audience and its Relationship with Vloggers -- YouTube Celebrity as 'Democratic' or Otherwise -- 7: The Popularity and Appeal of YouTubers: 'Authenticity' and 'Ordinariness' -- What is Authenticity? -- How YouTubers Construct the Authentic Self -- Authenticity as a Product of "Liveness" -- Threats to Authenticity: 1) Commercial Interest -- Threats to Authenticity: 2) Acting and Censorship -- Case studies of YouTube Celebrities and the Construction of 'Authenticity' -- Constructing the 'Expert Consumer': Bubzbeauty Product Reviews -- The Making of the Authentic Self: PewDiePie -- Conclusion -- 8: Instagram and the Rise of the Social Media 'Influencer' (with Lucy Edwards) -- What Kinds of Influence? -- Celebrities, Micro-celebrities or Meso-celebrities? -- The Unique Affordances of Instagram -- Instagram and Authenticity -- Instagram: Conservative or Empowering? -- Case Study: Interview with an Instagram Fashion Influencer -- 9: "What Else Does He Do?" Meme Celebrities -- Nailing down the concept of the meme -- Some examples of meme celebrities -- Fenton: A Celebrity Dog -- Gary Brolsma: 'The Numa Numa Guy' -- Ghyslain Raza -- Laina Morris ('Overly Attached Girlfriend') -- The celetoid comes of age

What makes memes so appealing? -- Part IV: The Future of Celebrity -- 10: Snapchat, Persona Studies, and Twenty-First Century Political Celebrity -- The peculiar phenomenon of Snapchat celebrity -- Persona Studies: are we all celebrities now? -- Political celebrities or celebrity politics? -- Populism, Social Media, and the Figure of the (Political) Outsider -- Is Politics Changing? -- POSTSCRIPT: Conclusions and reflections -- References -- Index