Celeb 2.0 by Kelli S. Burns: Where Pop Culture and Social Media Collide
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
Truckloads of books have been written about social media as a business tool and its consequences for the business world. Those of us interested in popular culture, however, have waited for someone to tackle social media from a broader perspective. With Celeb 2.0 by Kelli S. Burns, my friend and colleague at the University of South Florida, that long-needed gap has been filled.
Published by Praeger (an imprint of ABC-CLIO), Celeb 2.0 examines both sides of the celebrity coin — celebrities using social media to connect to fans and fans using similar channels to feel closer to their favorite icons, but also mimic the celebrity lifestyle. These tools, such as blogs; video-sharing sites; user-news sites; social networks; and message boards, fuel the nation’s fascination and consumption of popular culture — certainly the primary use of social media in today’s world, despite the desire to use social media as a business tool.
Burns’ research includes interviews with social media users and creators, focusing on how celebrities use blogs, Twitter, and other tools, how YouTube and other sites create celebrity, how Web 2.0 shortens the distance between fans and stars, and how the new social media influences news reporting and series television.
Personally, for all the hype social media receives as a business and/or communications tool, I have always felt that it had far greater consequences as a shaper of the broader culture. Scholars, general readers, and those interested professionally in social media will find Celeb 2.0 full of insight about prevalent celebrity is within social media and what it means for the future. Certainly, social media “gurus” will find much in the book that helps them understand the consumer mindset.
Burns outlines this notion, explaining, “The most significant consequence of social media, however, may be the influence on popular culture, as social media affect our consumption patterns and our creation of popular culture products, possibly changing the very meaning of popular culture.” As she correctly relates, the blurring of the lines between consumption and creation enabled through the use of social media has profound implications.
Interestingly, Celeb 2.0 also provides insight into the limitations of social networks as business tools. If users are primarily focused on celebrity and becoming some form of mini-celebrity, then the efforts by marketers to build “conversations” around traditional products is not really going to interest most people.
At the end of the day, Celeb 2.0 offers readers engaging analysis on a number of thoughtful topics, from how bloggers and YouTube video creators develop into celebrities to social media portrayals on film and television. Burns has also provided future generations of readers and scholars a powerful early history of social media. Certainly, popular culture enthusiasts will find much value in Celeb 2.0, as will those interested in understanding social media’s ubiquity in modern America.
