Celebrity Studies

Marshall outlines useful concepts that talk about online identity and 'self' in the media. This post discusses the definitions of Marshall's views on presentational media surrounding celebrities.

• Presentational media

…a form of presentation of the self and produces this new hybrid among the personal, interpersonal and the mediated – what I am calling ‘presentational media’ (Marshall, 2010, p. 1)

Through social media, the public self is presented through a new layer of interpersonal conversation that in its mode of address bears little relationship to its representational media past. (Marshall, 2010, p. 41)

• Intercommunicative self

…celebrities presented themselves in their cultural forms as performers, but they also were presented in interview structures and in celebrity gossip settings. All these forms are precursors for the interplay of media and communication that is part of constructing the on-line self. The layered structure of producing the celebrity self for a form of public display and consumption becomes a precursor for the production of the on-line self. (Marshall, 2010, p. 42)

• Parasocial self

The parasocial self is a pragmatic understanding that it is impossible to communicate individually with thousands and millions; and yet in this shifted on-line culture some effort has to be made. Thus celebrities are not fully fledged friends with all the people that may follow them but superficially, at least, they are. All social network users have to determine privacy settings, openness to follow others as much as they are followed, and a kind of moral code about presenting as themselves or allowing others to present on their behalf. (Marshall, 2010, p. 43)

• Public self

Celebrities are engaging in often very sophisticated uses of on-line and social media to produce a different presence. It is an investment in a public self that acknowledges that this engagement has widened to millions of users who generally predated the expanding army of celebrity social media users. The public self, whether through the activities of known personalities or by other social media users, is a recognition that these sites and the exchanges that develop on them are extensions in the production of the self and are vital to the maintenance of one’s identity. What is different about this engagement is its interpersonalization of the public world. (Marshall, 2010, p. 42)

• Public private self

It is in this version of the self that the celebrity engages, or at least appears to engage, in the world of social networking. It is a recognition of the new notion of a public that implies some sort of further exposure of the individual’s life. Twitter has become the vehicle of choice in maintaining a public private self for many celebrities. Its affordances limit the compulsion to respond and the possibility of short textual bursts that identify thought or location of a particular celebrity. (Marshall, 2010, p. 44-45)

• Transgressive intimate self

The transgressive intimate on-line version of the self is the one motivated by temporary emotion; but it is also the kind of information/ image that passes virally throughout the internet because of its visceral quality of being closer to the core of the being. (Marshall, 2010, p. 45)