Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften Celebrity and Youth: Mediated Audiences, Fame Aspirations, and Identity Formation: 29 (Mediated Youth)

Celebrity and Youth: Mediated Audiences, Fame Aspirations, and Identity Formation makes an examination of contemporary celebrity culture with an emphasis on how young celebrities are manufactured, how fan communities are cultivated, and how young audiences consume and aspire to fame. This book foregrounds considerations of diversity within celebrity and fan cultures, and takes an international perspective on the production of stardom. Chapters include interviews with professional athletes in the United States about their experiences with stardom after coming out as gay, and interviews with young people in Europe about their consumption of celebrity and aspirations of achieving fame via social media. Other chapters include interviews with young Canadian women that illuminate the potential influence of famous feminists on audience political engagement, and critical analysis of media narratives about race, happiness, cultural appropriation, and popular feminisms. The current anthology brings together scholarship from Canada, the United States, Spain, and Portugal to demonstrate the pervasive reach of global celebrity, as well as the commonality of youth experiences with celebrity in diverse cultural settings. Review " Celebrity and Youth: Mediated Audiences, Fame Aspirations, and Identity Formation offers a much-needed interdisciplinary examination of the ways in which celebrity and its relationship to youth and identity are both understood and reconfigured in a digital age. This collection deftly illuminates how the construction and production of cultural identity is so influenced by celebrity. Duvall presents a wide range of essays which offer deeply insightful contemporary analyses of the perspectives of young people as they navigate an increasingly complex celebrity culture."-- Kirsty Fairclough, Associate Dean: Research and Innovation, School of Arts and Media, University of Salford "Offering both intersectional and international perspectives on young people and contemporary celebrity culture, Celebrity and Youth: Mediated Audiences, Fame Aspirations, and Identity Formation is a rich contribution to the fields of celebrity studies, youth studies, and media studies. The chapters collected here are sure to expand our critical understanding of not only young celebrities but also how young people engage with fame as they explore, fashion, and perform their own identities."-- Mary Celeste Kearney, Director of Gender Studies and Associate Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre, University of Notre Dame About the Author Spring-Serenity Duvall is Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Salem College. She is the co-author, with Leigh Moscowitz, of Snatched: News Coverage of Child Abductions in U.S. Media (2016). Her research appears in Celebrity Studies; Communication, Culture, and Critique; Feminist Media Studies; and Journal of Children & Media.