Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/50117

Title

'I never read anything I haven't written myself': celebrity blogging

Author(s)

Milne, Esther;  Kenyon, Andrew

Abstract

When celebrity model Elle McPherson uttered her now infamous bon mot during the 1980s, it was unlikely she would find much to read. Through emerging forms of the contemporary media stream, however, she can now be, simultaneously, a loquacious writer and an avid reader. In this paper we want to sketch a preliminary model for theorising the recent socio-technological formation of celebrity blogging. Although the celebrity and blogger, as distinct semiotic fields, have been comprehensively investigated (by authors including Lumby, Marshall, Rojek, Turner, Blood, Goggin and Miles) what remains under examined is the complex conflation of the two. In part, the complexity is a result of the related yet distinct interpretations of the term: the celebrity whose blogging enhances their cultural capital and the blogger who produces celebrity through blogging. Central to the manufacture and circulation of both these figures is their relation to the private sphere. As Marshall has argued, celebrity is forged through the dynamic interplay between, on the one hand, the 'real', material, private subject and, on the other hand, the subject's public representation through the media industries (1997). To understand the cultural avatar of the celebrity blogger, therefore, we examine its production and consumption in relation to social, technological and legal constructions of privacy.

Publication type

Conference paper

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology

Source

Paper presented at Culture Fix: the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia National Conference, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 25-27 November 2005

Publication year

2005

Keyword(s)

Blogging;  Celebrity;  Celebrity blogging;  Communication;  Identity;  New media technologies;  Privacy;  Public profile

Publisher

University of Technology Sydney

Publisher URL

http://www.hss.uts.edu.au/csaa/index.html