Social Media and Their Consequences

Social media have had negative consequences for entertainment industries such as music and motion pictures, but they have had positive implications too. This project is concerned with one aspect of these social media effects: changes in the process by which talented people achieve individual success. It investigates how people rise to celebrity when they cannot or chose not to rely on traditional media entertainment industry infrastructures. It explores how, and to what extent, a more populist fame-making process is enabled. It studies the balance between celebrity manufactured for us, and celebrity manufactured by us.