Celebrity Obsession
The Media’s Role in
Teen Identity

Celebrity Culture

What characterizes teen-celebrity relationships?
Involvement
defined as the degree to which an individual
actively participates in decoding a media
message
Teens are active seekers
rather than passive receivers of information

one-sided relationships
• relationships are mediated by the media
• parasocial relationships (celebrities are
seen as friends)
• non-reciprocal (celebrities are not aware
of the individual fan)

How does the Celebrity Attitudes Scale divide
audience involvement?
Entertainment-Social Values
adolescents seek information about celebrities
to conform to social norms and to fantasy-
escape from reality

intense-personal feelings
fans start to view celebrities as friends, becoming intimately
involved with celebrities lives
admiration translates into aspirations to look, behave and think like
celebrities

Borderline-pathological tendencies
extreme expression of involvement with celebrities
willingness to do anything for a celebrity even if the
activities violate the law
death of a fave celebrity could lead fans to feel like
dying

American teens and the
Media

Is adolescents’ involvement with celebrities
positive or negative?

Does it matter who the
celebrity is?

“Best” Teen Influences

How is the Internet
changing teen-celebrity
relationships?

Reality TV
• Does the shrinking distance between TV
and ‘reality’, and between the famous
and the ‘ordinary’, mean that we need to
reconsider our understanding of what
kind of cultural apparatus the media has
become?