Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: According to Neil Altman, human beings are “hardwired to be fascinated with celebrity, …our brains receive pleasurable stimuli when we see familiar faces” (2005). The media encourages this fascination, reinforcing the status and prestige of celebrity in our culture even as it objectifies and trivializes celebrities themselves, and creating the false impression that fans can “know” celebrities and thus can form personal relationships with them. These imaginary, or parasocial, relationships can form as part of normal identity development in adolescence but for some individuals, particularly those whose social needs are unmet in other ways, the worship of celebrities continues into adulthood and can become a dangerous fixation. Combining with the effects of an intense media gaze upon public figures and our human predisposition towards the familiar, our society is increasingly structured in ways that disrupt genuine social connections – these shattered social ties may encourage the development of celebrity obsession. Drawing upon the findings of McCutcheon, Lange and Houran, this paper will discuss the impact of the media and the growing social disconnection in Western society on the crime of celebrity stalking.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study aims to examine how the media use of adolescents is related to their worship of entertainment celebrities, and how celebrity worship affects their values and self esteem. . We conducted a survey of 621 adolescents aged from 11 to 18 years old in Singapore. We confirmed that adolescents’ celebrity worship in Singapore includes three aspects: Entertainment-Social values, Intense-Personal feelings, and Borderline-Pathological tendencies. All the three aspects of adolescents’ celebrity worship were associated with adolescents’ media consumption, and with the level of adolescents’ comparison to the celebrities. Also, we found that adolescents’ celebrity worship is associated with, materialistic values, self-esteem as well as life satisfaction. As adolescents worldwide all like to worship entertainment celebrities, findings of this study could be extrapolated to other societies in the world.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper attempts to answer the question of whether ethnicity of the celebrity and match-up level between celebrity and product in a magazine ad by the advertiser has any effect on attitudes to the ad, attitudes to the brand, and purchase intention. An experiment was conducted where subjects were given four versions of ads - ads featuring Tiger Woods for sports drink, ads featuring K. J. Choi for sports drink, ads featuring Tiger Woods for ball-point pen, and ads featuring K. J. Choi for ball-point pen. The results of the study suggest that an ad with high relevance between celebrity and product can induce more positive Aad than an ad with low relevance. Results also show that Korean subjects were more likely to have more positive Aad, Ab and Pi for the advertisement featuring an American celebrity endorser.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Media scholars like Newcomb, Silverstone and Fiske & Hartely have employed culturally-based theoretical perspectives to assess television’s function in society at large. Borrowing from anthropological, historical, and literary sources, this critical research has explored television’s contemporary narrative traditions as "ways of knowing" and “forms of public thought” that systematically distort and magnify aspects of the commonsense world. In proposing a critical vocabulary more attuned to the nature of mass mediated texts, Cawelti (1976) calls for a canon more sensitive to persistent themes, serial narration, celebrity performance and enduring influence in “the best” popular products. Presumably, informed by such a canon, critics can 1) identify features of "popular" texts that gain purchase in the marketplace 2) assess the influence these texts have on other popular texts and 3) describe how these texts are assimilated into ongoing cultural practices. This critical analysis examines the introductory monologues of NBC's long-running The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (270 monologues have been logged) to assess the use of comic commentary and social-typing (Celebrity-Signifiers) in scanning and interpreting the shifting norms and values in contemporary American experience. The reach and function of this unique collective discourse is arguably one of the more significant phenomena in American popular culture and will be evaluated from an historical and theoretical perspective.