Celebrities depend upon fans to sustain their popularity and livelihood, and fans are happy to oblige. With social media they can follow their favorite (or least favorite) celebrities’ every move, and get glimpses into their lives, homes, and behind-the-scenes work. Fans interact with celebrities now more than ever, and often feel that they have a claim on their time, attention, and accountability. In Fame and Fandom, the contributors examine this tumultuous dynamic and bring together celebrity studies and fan studies like never before. In case studies including Supernatural, Harry Styles, YouTube influencers, film location sites, Keanu Reeves, and celebrities as fans, readers find new approaches to fan/celebrity encounters and parasocial relationships. This is the go-to volume on the symbiotic relationship between fame and fandom.

In a world where more people know who Princess Di was than who their own senators are, where Graceland draws more visitors per year than the White House, and where Michael Jordan is an industry unto himself, fame and celebrity are central currencies. In this intriguing book, Tyler Cowen explores and elucidates the economics of fame. Fame motivates the talented and draws like-minded fans together. But it also may put profitability ahead of quality, visibility above subtlety, and privacy out of reach. The separation of fame and merit is one of the central dilemmas Cowen considers in his account of the modern market economy. He shows how fame is produced, outlines the principles that govern who becomes famous and why, and discusses whether fame-seeking behavior harmonizes individual and social interests or corrupts social discourse and degrades culture. Most pertinently, Cowen considers the implications of modern fame for creativity, privacy, and morality. Where critics from Plato to Allan Bloom have decried the quest for fame, Cowen takes a more pragmatic, optimistic view. He identifies the benefits of a fame-intensive society and makes a persuasive case that however bad fame may turn out to be for the famous, it is generally good for society and culture.

Explores the social, cultural, and psychological premises and consequences of fan consumption. This book describes the nature and development of whole fan cultures, and focuses on the experience and identity of the individual fan.

9.1 A Pragmatic Cultural Framework for Legal Analysis -- 9.2 Concluding Remarks -- Bibliography -- Index

Walter Scott and Fame is a study of correspondences between Scott and socially and culturally diverse readers of his work in the English-speaking world in the early nineteenth century. Examining authorship, reading, and fame, the book is based on extensive archival research, especially in the collection of letters to Scott in the National Library of Scotland. Robert Mayer demonstrates that in Scott's literary correspondence constructions of authorship, reading strategies, and versions of fame are posited, even theorized. Scott's reader-correspondents invest him with power but they also attempt to tap into or appropriate some of his authority. Scott's version of authorship sets him apart from important contemporaries like Wordsworth and Byron, who adhered, at least as Scott viewed the matter, to a rarefied conception of the writer as someone possessed of extraordinary power. The idea of the author put in place by Scott in dialogue with his readers establishes him as a powerful figure who is nevertheless subject to the will of his audience. Scott's literary correspondence also demonstrates that the reader can be a very powerful figure and that we should regard reading not just as the reception of texts but also as the apprehension of an author-function. Thus, Scott's correspondence makes it clear that the relationship between authors and readers is a dynamic, often fraught, connection, which needs to be understood in terms of the new culture of celebrity that emerged during Scott's working life. Along with Byron, the study shows, Scott was at the centre of this transformation.

This new edition of Popular Music and Society, fully revised and updated, continues to pioneer an approach to the study of popular music that is informed by wider debates in sociology and media and cultural studies. Astute and accessible, it continues to set the agenda for research and teaching in this area. The textbook begins by examining the ways in which popular music is produced, before moving on to explore its structure as text and the ways in which audiences understand and use music. Packed with examples and data on the contemporary production and consumption of popular music, the book also includes overviews and critiques of theoretical approaches to this exciting area of study and outlines the most important empirical studies which have shaped the discipline. Topics covered include: • The contemporary organisation of the music industry; • The effects of technological change on production; • The history and politics of popular music; • Gender, sexuality and ethnicity; • Subcultures; • Fans and music celebrities. For this new edition, two whole new chapters have been added: on performance and the body, and on the very latest ways of thinking about audiences and the spaces and places of music consumption. This second edition of Popular Music and Society will continue to be required reading for students of the sociology of culture, media and communication studies, and popular culture.

Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject Musicology - Popular music, grade: 2, University of Innsbruck, language: English, abstract: This paper argues that participating in a fandom helps artists to gain recognition and fans to grow as individuals. This will be done by giving a description of what being a fan is and what the fundamental needs of a community is. Furthermore, the K-Pop industry will be introduced by stating the admission process, the duty of the Korean Idols and a description of the impact of BTS on their fandom “ARMY” and contrariwise.

Italian cinema gave rise to a number of the best-known films of the postwar years, from Rome Open City to Bicycle Thieves. Although some neorealist film-makers would have preferred to abolish stars altogether, the public adored them and producers needed their help in relaunching the national film industry. This book explores the many conflicts that arose in Italy between 1945 and 1953 over stars and stardom, offering intimate studies of the careers of both well-known and less familiar figures, shedding new light on the close relationship forged between cinema and society during a time of political transition and shifting national identities.

Fans constitute a very special kind of audience. They have been marginalized, ridiculed and stigmatized, yet at the same time they seem to represent the vanguard of new relationships with and within the media. ’Participatory culture’ has become the new normative standard. Concepts derived from early fan studies, such as transmedial storytelling and co-creation, are now the standard fare of journalism and marketing text books alike. Indeed, usage of the word fan has become ubiquitous. The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures problematizes this exaltation of fans and offers a comprehensive examination of the current state of the field. Bringing together the latest international research, it explores the conceptualization of ’the fan’ and the significance of relationships between fans and producers, with particular attention to the intersection between online spaces and offline places. The twenty-two chapters of this volume elucidate the key themes of the fan studies vernacular. As the contributing authors draw from recent empirical work around the globe, the book provides fresh insights and innovative angles on the latest developments within fan cultures, both online and offline. Because the volume is specifically set up as companion for researchers, the chapters include recommendations for the further study of fan cultures. As such, it represents an essential reference volume for researchers and scholars in the fields of cultural and media studies, communication, cultural geography and the sociology of culture.

What drives people to crave fame and celebrity? How does fame affect people psychologically? These issues are frequently discussed by the media but up till now psychologists have shied away from an academic away from an academic investigation of the phenomenon of fame. In this lively, eclectic book David Giles examines fame and celebrity from a variety of perspectives. He argues that fame should be seen as a process rather than a state of being, and that 'celebrity' has largely emerged through the technological developments of the last 150 years. Part of our problem in dealing with celebrities, and the problem celebrities have dealing with the public, is that the social conditions produced by the explosion in mass communications have irrevocably altered the way we live. However we know little about many of the phenomena these conditions have produced - such as the 'parasocial interaction' between television viewers and media characters, and the quasi-religious activity of 'fans'. Perhaps the biggest single dilemma for celebrities is the fact that the vehicle that creates fame for them - the media - is also their tormentor. To address these questions, David Giles draws on research from psychology, sociology, media and communications studies, history and anthropology - as well as his own experiences as a music journalist in the 1980s. He argues that the history of fame is inextricably linked to the emergence of the individual self as a central theme of Western culture, and considers how the desire for authenticity, as well as individual privacy, have created anxieties for celebrities which are best understood in their historical and cultural context.