TY - JOUR

T1 - The celebritization of society and culture

T2 - Understanding the structural dynamics of celebrity culture

AU - Driessens, Olivier

PY - 2013/11

Y1 - 2013/11

N2 - In recent debates about the ever-growing prominence of celebrity in society and culture, a number of scholars have started to use the often intermingled terms 'celebrification' and 'celebritization'. This article contributes to these debates first by distinguishing and clearly defining both terms, and especially by presenting a multidimensional conceptual model of celebritization to remedy the current one-sided approaches that obscure its theoretical and empirical complexity. Here 'celebrification' captures the transformation of ordinary people and public figures into celebrities, whereas 'celebritization' is conceptualized as a meta-process that grasps the changing nature, as well as the societal and cultural embedding of celebrity, which can be observed through its democratization, diversification and migration. It is argued that these manifestations of celebritization are driven by three separate but interacting moulding forces: mediatization, personalization and commodification.

AB - In recent debates about the ever-growing prominence of celebrity in society and culture, a number of scholars have started to use the often intermingled terms 'celebrification' and 'celebritization'. This article contributes to these debates first by distinguishing and clearly defining both terms, and especially by presenting a multidimensional conceptual model of celebritization to remedy the current one-sided approaches that obscure its theoretical and empirical complexity. Here 'celebrification' captures the transformation of ordinary people and public figures into celebrities, whereas 'celebritization' is conceptualized as a meta-process that grasps the changing nature, as well as the societal and cultural embedding of celebrity, which can be observed through its democratization, diversification and migration. It is argued that these manifestations of celebritization are driven by three separate but interacting moulding forces: mediatization, personalization and commodification.

KW - celebrification

KW - celebritization

KW - celebrity

KW - commodification

KW - democratization

KW - diversification

KW - mediatization

KW - migration

KW - neoliberalism

KW - personalization

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84885342565&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/1367877912459140

DO - 10.1177/1367877912459140

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:84885342565

VL - 16

SP - 641

EP - 657

JO - International Journal of Cultural Studies

JF - International Journal of Cultural Studies

SN - 1367-8779

IS - 6

ER -