Stars, Anti-Stars, Anti-Star-Stars: Transmedia Texts and Contexts of Popular Music and Media. Some Theoretical Assumptions

Christoph Jacke

doi:10.21153/psj2024vol10no1art1872

Authors

Christoph Jacke Paderborn University, Germany

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21153/psj2024vol10no1art1872

Keywords:

Stars, Celebrities, Popular Music, Personas, Transmedia Culture

Abstract

The phenomenon of stars and celebrities in media cultures – and especially in popular music cultures – seems to be omnipresent. At the same time, there is an astounding lack of analysis and research on these media personalities and personas, and international celebrity studies only recently a developing new field. Similarly, these kinds of observations are still very rare especially in German sociology as well as communication, media, culture and popular music studies. In this article, I therefore want to concentrate on the foundations of studying stars and celebrities within the attention economies by undertaking a theoretical transmedia-cultural framing of media personas and suggesting a typology. This ensuing typology of stars, anti-stars, and anti-star stars – especially within popular music cultures – demonstrates how stars and celebrities and their quantities and qualities of success and peer-group specific values coming form programs of (media and music) culture can serve as persona-seismographs of socio-cultural change between tradition and innovation.

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