Happy Birthday Michael Jackson: Dead Celebrity and Online Interaction

• In Event: 1241 - Popular Culture and the Cultural Entrepreneur

Abstract

Celebrities are a special category of persons. They are widely known to others via mass and social media; they possess an appealing combination of talent, beauty, success, or other captivating qualities; and they typically have fans and followers who feel connected to them, expressing that connection in a variety of ways. And because celebrities are special, their connections with their fans and followers are special, too. They may mimic face-to-face relationships (and may have periodic face-to-face aspects), and some may even transcend death. This paper examines some of the ways that fans and followers continue to interact with celebrity personae even after their death, focusing in particular on the use of social media to maintain those bonds and, in the process, engage in the interactional construction of selves. In particular, I take up the case of Michael Jackson: dead for over a decade, he is still both the subject and object of fan interaction on Twitter.

Author

• Kerry O. Ferris, Northern Illinois University