Page 41 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

CELEBRITY

The radio broadcasting industry, which preceded TV as the home-
based entertainment and information medium, nowdisplays interest-
ing differences from television. Radio has niched, with significant
activities that are not common in television, for instance, local
programming (including rural and remote), youth and music
programming (where different stations have very specialised playlists),
and broadcasting for minority or community groups. At the
international level, radio broadcasting is still supported by national
governments for development and propaganda purposes. The latter is
dominated by the ‘big five’ organisations: the BBC, Voice of America,
Deutsche Welle, Radio France International, and Radio Netherlands,
although most countries add their voice to the global conversation,
often via shortwave.

See also: Convergence, Datacasting, Digital/analogue distribution,
Post-broadcast media

CELEBRITY

Celebrity is the semiotics of identity. It is found only in societies in
which identity is a major socio-cultural and political issue. It has
become more important as contemporary Western societies have
evolved towards the status of ‘entertainment cultures’, where identity
is seen as more significant than decision-making, action or faith, and
the celebrity supersedes the leader, hero or holy-person.
Celebrities are individuals who are noted for their identity in the
media. Generally speaking they can come from any walk of life –
musicians, sports stars, models, criminals, film, television and radio
personalities as well as participants in reality TV. As a descriptive
category, celebrity would not usually include, for example, politicians
currently in power or members of royal families. This is because
celebrity is concerned more with the representation of individualism
in all of its forms than with the coverage of people associated with
particular institutions.
The concept of celebrity differs from that of the star, in that the
latter is understood as being a product of a particular medium, the
Hollywood film industry. Celebrity, in comparison, is understood to
have arisen under the conditions of postmodernity whereby the
hyper-production of images leads to some faces and bodies being more
recognisable than others. Tracing what he calls a ‘history of fame’,
Braudy (1986: 4) notes that as ‘each newmedium of fame appears, the

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