Understanding Celebrity Literacy

It is generally agreed that celebrity culture has been with us from the second half of the ۱۹th century. Then, it was during ۱۹۲۰s that some cinema actors found out people love them for themselves and not for the movies they star in and this destroyed the studio system and created a star system that is still with us. Since then, celebrities of all walks have been in the public life and we had to see them when we dealt with media. Yet, it was the introduction of web ۲.۰ technologies around the year ۲۰۰۵ that made celebrities almost unavoidable. They are now everywhere, they teach us all kinds of lessons, they encourage us to buy things they never consume themselves, they say they want to save the poor, and having tens of millions of followers give them self-confidence they have the support of citizens to initiate political actions. With the ever-increasing number of social media users and consequently increase in the number of eyeballs celebrities can lure, businesses are now eager more than ever to advertise with celebrities. Celebrities will then have more than enough money to employ the best media consulting teams. These “publicists” do everything to keep celebrities’ fan bases and convince other users to become new fans. My point in this article is that, since we the ordinary people have not such media teams to tell us how to avoid celebrities’ deceptions, we need to educate ourselves a kind of media literacy which can be called “celebrity literacy.” Celebrity literacy tells us that all a celebrity has and is depends on our attention. Celebrities attract people’s attention and then sell it to advertisers, and then they expect us to thank them for entertaining us. Celebrities claim they spend a considerable share of their income for charity purposes, but they rarely tell us exactly how much they pay in this way. Celebrities rarely -if ever- tell us their humanitarian work will provide them with better reputation, which is then translated into more money. Celebrity literacy teaches us to enjoy celebrities’ performances, and at the same avoid our attention being colonized by them.

کلیدواژه ها:

Media Literacy ، Celebrity Literacy ، Celebrity Culture ، Web ۲.۰ ، Online Celebrity