Media, Information and Technoculture 2153A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Informa, Content Analysis, Serendipity
10 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
Starting in the 1900s, the concept of mass production began to be applied to movie stars. The entertainment business became the first industry to treat the creation of fame as if it were an industrial process. Resembles ford"s model t producing a standardized product. The argument here is that celebrities are more or less identical. There exists a set of roles or spaces that are occupied by specific types of celebrity. Ex: always an emergent young, blonde, teen star on her way to ultimate stardom. Celebrity is an industry like many others; they are manufactured as attention as knowingness itself is commodified within them. Lowenthol is interested in how these industrial processes came to be applied to the human personality. The rise of celebrity in the interwar period. Analyzed through changes and shifts in the popular biography. Presents a methodology with quantitative/qualitative content analysis. The interest in individuals has become a kind of mass gossip.
