awarness of change sociological and psychological - way to find the new self - to discover individuality frm media, newspapers- development of culture of character not only fulfilled with the idea of self, but an idea of becoming a ‘higher self’ way of developing your personality - is power since we live in an era of commodification and consumption imp on the survival of personality Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcel20 Celebrity Studies ISSN: 1939-2397 (Print) 1939-2400 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcel20 Historicising celebrity Simon Morgan To cite this article: Simon Morgan (2010) Historicising celebrity, Celebrity Studies, 1:3, 366-368, DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2010.511485 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2010.511485 Published online: 05 Nov 2010. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 887 Citing articles: 6 View citing articles https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcel20 https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcel20 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/19392397.2010.511485 https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2010.511485 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rcel20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rcel20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/19392397.2010.511485#tabModule https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/19392397.2010.511485#tabModule Celebrity Studies Vol. 1, No. 3, November 2010, 366–368 Historicising celebrity Simon Morgan School of Cultural Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University, Broadcasting Place A 214, Leeds LS2 9EN, UK Historians have been relatively slow to pick up on the recent explosion of academic interest in the concept of celebrity, wary of applying potentially anachronistic categories to pre-twentieth-century contexts and perhaps discouraged by negative responses in the popular media (Holmes and Redmond 2010). Nevertheless, despite Lucy Riall’s observa- tion in History Today that ‘the history of celebrity has yet to be written’ (2007a, p. 41), the language of celebrity has increasingly begun to creep into historical writing, particu- larly with regard to the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries1. This development has been most apparent in historical biography, where there has been a spate of books seek- ing to identify their subjects as ‘celebrities’ (for example, Foulkes 2004, Cowen 2007). While some of these give relatively little sense of the wider culture in which their subjects existed, a few of the more scholarly have made a genuine contribution to our understand- ing of that culture: particularly the extent to which their subject’s celebrity status was the result of a deliberate process of self-promotion and media manipulation, and how far they were simply objec.

1. awarness of change sociological and psychological - way to find
the new self - to discover individuality frm media, newspapers-
development of culture of character
not only fulfilled with the idea of self, but an idea of becoming
a ‘higher self’
way of developing your personality - is power since we live in
an era of commodification and consumption
imp on the survival of personality
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journal
Code=rcel20

2. Celebrity Studies
ISSN: 1939-2397 (Print) 1939-2400 (Online) Journal homepage:
https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcel20
Historicising celebrity
Simon Morgan
To cite this article: Simon Morgan (2010) Historicising
celebrity, Celebrity Studies, 1:3, 366-368,
DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2010.511485
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Celebrity Studies
Vol. 1, No. 3, November 2010, 366–368
Historicising celebrity
Simon Morgan
School of Cultural Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University,
Broadcasting Place A 214,
Leeds LS2 9EN, UK
Historians have been relatively slow to pick up on the recent
explosion of academic
interest in the concept of celebrity, wary of applying potentially
anachronistic categories
to pre-twentieth-century contexts and perhaps discouraged by
negative responses in the
popular media (Holmes and Redmond 2010). Nevertheless,
despite Lucy Riall’s observa-
tion in History Today that ‘the history of celebrity has yet to be
written’ (2007a, p. 41),
the language of celebrity has increasingly begun to creep into
historical writing, particu-
larly with regard to the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries1. This development has
been most apparent in historical biography, where there has
been a spate of books seek-
ing to identify their subjects as ‘celebrities’ (for example,
Foulkes 2004, Cowen 2007).
While some of these give relatively little sense of the wider
culture in which their subjects

4. existed, a few of the more scholarly have made a genuine
contribution to our understand-
ing of that culture: particularly the extent to which their
subject’s celebrity status was the
result of a deliberate process of self-promotion and media
manipulation, and how far they
were simply objectified by an emerging mass culture based on
print and mass-produced
commodities (see Cunningham 2007, Riall 2007b, McWilliam
2007). These insights have
been reinforced by historians working in more specialised
fields, such as theatre history or
history of art, who have identified a thriving culture of celebrity
in the later eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries linked to a burgeoning market for
printed images of the famous
(Luckhurst and Moody 2005, Postle 2005).
Historians therefore have much to learn from contemporary
celebrity theory. However,
a more rigorous approach to the past would also bring
reciprocal gains for celebrity stud-
ies itself. Many contemporary theorists, following early
commentators such as Boorstin
(1961, p. 45) and Shickel (1985, p. 25), assume that celebrity is
essentially a twentieth-
century phenomenon, and have paid little attention to historical
celebrity cultures. Even
those who have considered the historical context have largely
been concerned with tracing
the antecedents of celebrity’s contemporary manifestation,
which is too easily assumed to
be its definitive form. These accounts rely heavily upon Leo
Braudy’s magisterial history of
fame, The Frenzy of Renown (1986), with its influential thesis
that fame became ‘democra-

5. tised’ from the late seventeenth century due to the spread of
print literature, the growth of
civil society and the decline of the royal court as the primary
arbiter of renown.
However, Braudy’s narrative of democratisation has not yet
been subjected to a fully
historicised analysis that pays attention to the contemporary
social, economic and political
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mahika thakur
Celebrity Studies 367
structures which shaped the public sphere in which early
celebrities emerged and existed.
In particular, Braudy’s concentration on literary texts and
changing ideals of fame tends to
ignore the cultural practices through which audiences consumed
and constructed the public
personae of the famous. It also occludes the continued
importance of established elites as
cultural arbiters and the frequently oppressive role of the state
in monitoring and shaping
the sphere of civil society, whether through censorship or
persecution. In contrast, a fully
historicised account of celebrity would give cultural theorists a

6. more rigorous historical
underpinning for their analyses of contemporary society.
Moreover, it would challenge
the notion that contemporary celebrity is in itself unique, rather
than being the unique
configuration of a cultural and economic phenomenon that has
occurred in many forms in
other times and places.
Historicising celebrity may be desirable, but first it is necessary
to persuade historians
that celebrity is a concept worth bothering with. To that end, it
is important to engage
in more thorough debate about the historical uses of ‘celebrity’.
In a longer piece on
this topic, I suggest we start with three key claims (Morgan
2011): first, celebrity cul-
ture is not simply a twentieth- and twenty-first-century
phenomenon; by using the insights
of modern celebrity theory we can identify earlier and specific
historical moments when
a recognisable celebrity culture existed. For example, Stella
Tillyard (2005) and Lenard
Berlanstein (2004) have identified vibrant celebrity cultures
based around a growing pub-
lic appetite for images and knowledge of famous individuals in
eighteenth-century London
and nineteenth-century France, respectively. Secondly, in
accepting the first proposition,
it is necessary to rethink the assumed relationship between
celebrity and modernity. By
adopting a less teleological standpoint it is possible to move
away from understanding
celebrity as essentially a product of late modernity towards
seeing it as one of the key
drivers of the modernisation process itself. By stimulating the

7. production of consumer
goods, printed images and periodical literature, celebrity played
a crucial role in the growth
of the public sphere, the emergence of consumer society and the
global expansion of west-
ern culture. Finally, the insights of celebrity theory may also be
useful when applied to
pre-modern or non-western contexts: after all, Braudy himself
traces the urge to be unique,
arguably a prerequisite of celebrity, back to Alexander the
Great (Braudy 1986, chapter 2),
while charismatic personality cults have been a feature of many
societies around the world.
These claims are explored more fully in a forthcoming issue of
Cultural and Social
History which, as with this piece, aims to stimulate a more
sustained and productive dia-
logue between historians and celebrity theorists than has
hitherto been the case. The mutual
benefits will be seen in the opening-up of a new and exciting
field of historical enquiry, and
a greater appreciation of the insights that past celebrity cultures
can provide into that of the
present.
Note
1. For an exception see Fred Inglis’ A short history of celebrity
(2010). Inglis self-identifies as a
cultural theorist rather than a historian, so his book does not
necessarily invalidate my point that
the discipline has as a whole has been slow to appreciate the
value of celebrity studies.
References

8. Berlanstein, L.R., 2004. Historicizing and gendering celebrity
culture: famous women in nineteenth-
century France. Journal of Women’s History, 16 (4), 65–91.
Boorstin, D., 1961. The image: or what happened to the
American Dream. London: Weidenfeld &
Nicholson.
Braudy, L. 1986. The frenzy of renown: fame and its history.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
368 S. Morgan
Cowen, R., 2007. Relish: the extraordinary life of Alexis Soyer,
Victorian celebrity chef . London:
Phoenix.
Cunningham, H., 2007. Grace Darling: Victorian heroine.
London: Hambledon Continuum.
Foulkes, N., 2004. Scandalous society: passion and celebrity in
the nineteenth century. London:
Abacus.
Holmes, S. and Redmond, R., 2010. A journal in celebrity
studies. Celebrity Studies, 1 (1), 1–10.
Inglis, F., 2010. A short history of celebrity. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Luckhurst, M. and Moody, J., eds, 2005. Theatre and celebrity
in Britain, 1660–2000. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
McWilliam, R., 2007. The Tichborne claimant: a Victorian
sensation. London: Hambledon

9. Continuum.
Morgan, S., 2011. Celebrity: academic ‘pseudo-event’, or a
useful concept for historians? Cultural
and Social History, 8 (1), in press.
Postle, M., ed., 2005. Joshua Reynolds: the creation of
celebrity. London: Tate.
Riall, L., 2007a. Garibaldi: the first celebrity. History Today,
57, 8, 41–47.
Riall, L., 2007b. Garibaldi: invention of a hero. New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Shickel, R., 1985. Intimate strangers: the culture of celebrity in
America. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
Tillyard, S., 2005. Celebrity in 18th-century London. History
Today, 55 (6), 20–27.
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Cultivating celebrity through public relations
Paul Ziek
To cite this article: Paul Ziek (2016) Cultivating celebrity
through public relations, Celebrity
Studies, 7:1, 122-124, DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2016.1131015

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FORUM
Cultivating celebrity through public relations
Paul Ziek*
Department of Media, Communications and Visual Arts, Pace
University, Pleasantville, NY, USA
(Received 8 July 2015; accepted 9 October 2015)
Although there has been an increase in research on celebrity,
Turner (2010, p. 13) argues
that there is not a ‘great deal of depth or variety in academic
writing’. He believes that
there needs to be more analysis on celebrity, particularly how it
is understood as an
industry. One of the areas of the celebrity industry that
certainly deserves more attention
is the role of communication, and more particularly public
relations. This is not to say
that communication, or public relations, is ignored in previous
research, just under-
developed. Celebrities communicate with the public through
both their primary medium
(i.e. film, radio, reality television, etc.) and also an extra-
textual dimension that includes
interviews, award nights, social media and premieres, to name a
few (Marshall 2010).
This extra-textual dimension is really a form of public relations
meant to create and
sustain relationships. Accordingly, this article focuses on the
idea that celebrity public

12. relations has emerged as an inclusive field of communicative
practice and that there are
fruitful directions to be taken up when academic attention is
focused on understanding
the field.
When Boorstin (1975, p. 57) pointed out that a ‘celebrity is a
person who is known
for his well knownness’ he seemed to have provided a
straightforward definition. Yet as
the study of celebrity increased, and more information about
celebrities became avail-
able, the definition of celebrity grew to be truly ambiguous
(Marshall 1997). This is
because, as Milner (2010) explains, celebrity is qualitatively
different depending on the
approach taken to understand the phenomenon. Overall,
however, there is an underlying
thread among the ways theorists view celebrity: celebrities are
individuals selected by the
public (see Marshall 1997, Rojek 2001, Currid-Halkett 2010). In
other words, celebrity is
about choice – the choice the public makes on certain
individuals. What is undervalued
in celebrity studies is the role communication plays in
cultivating the context where
choice is made.
Communication is ‘directed not toward the extension of
messages in space but
toward the maintenance of society in time’ (Carey 1989, p. 18).
In other words, com-
munication creates social reality (Craig 1999) and thus the
opportunity for selection. To
this end, we can delve even deeper into the way that
communication cultivates celebrity

13. by focusing on a particular form: public relations. According to
Grunig and Hunt (1984),
public relations is the management of communication between
an entity and its publics.
Although the definition creates an understanding of the function
and purpose of public
relations, it does not allow for the discipline to extend beyond
the boundaries of the
technical level (Bowen 2003). To overcome this ideological
confusion, public relations
has moved toward a more focused and concentrated style, or
styles, of communication.
*Email: [email protected]
Celebrity Studies, 2016
Vol. 7, No. 1, 122–124,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2016.1131015
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandfonline.com
In its current form, public relations is a field of specialities
where practitioners and
scholars typically focus on particular areas such as investor
relations, media relations,
government relations and consumer relations, to name a few.
There is even an area
dedicated to entertainment, which is geared toward promotional
efforts relative to show
business, sports and travel (Wilcox and Cameron 2010). At the
crux, all of these
specialities focus on the goals, directions and ideals related to
using communication
to build mutually beneficial relationships between an entity and

14. particular publics
(Cutlip et al. 1994). In many ways, celebrity public relations is
no different because
it is meant to build goodwill with the public. However, it is not
geared toward
promoting particular films, television programmes or products
and services but instead
the image of an individual. Therefore, given the narrowcasting
that occurs in the field,
the communicative work done towards propelling an individual
to celebrity status
should be considered a speciality area of public relations.
The mention of celebrity public relations brings to mind Max
Clifford, a former press
agent who has a reputation of securing front-page coverage for
his celebrity clients.
However, Max Clifford does not call himself a public relations
practitioner but a
publicist – a distinction often lost on many (Fawkes 2004). To
his point, creating and
maintaining celebrity in today’s digital world is not just about
publicity and media
coverage but a well-rounded approach to communication.
Indeed the shift to a more
inclusive public relations model can be seen directly in how
celebrities, or would-be
celebrities, create moments and instance with the public using
new media and technology
(Marwick 2013). For example, as Piazza (2011) describes,
beyond television and movie
appearances Ashton Kutcher relies heavily on Twitter to present
a particular image to his
audiences. She also describes that, after splitting from
American Idol’s (Fox 2002–2015)
label, a desperate Taylor Hicks took to MySpace to craft a

15. narrative for his fans. These
examples show that celebrity is not simply about box-office
sales or newspaper and
magazine coverage, but a discursive phenomenon that emerges
from a multiplatform
approach to public relations.
To be sure, there are countless practitioners who focus on the
area of celebrity public
relations although they do not want to admit it. In fact, the
build-up used to promote an
individual lies outside the mainstream of public relations work,
to the point that many
practitioners are embarrassed by the exaggerations and tactics
employed (Wilcox et al.
2013). More to the point of this article is that celebrity public
relations is discussed in
many classrooms that attend to either public relations or
celebrity. Yet in both practice
and academia the idea of celebrity public relations as a
speciality is overlooked. The
benefits of accepting that there is indeed a form of public
relations focused on celebrity
could be vast, including adding to the understanding of the ways
in which celebrity is
created and maintained as well as the ways it is damaged and
lost.
Speaking from the academic side, the next step is to follow
Penfold-Mounce’s (2015,
p. 255) assertion that ‘it is essential for glossy research to
successfully pursue the
creation of measurable value by developing new bodies of
evidence’. There needs to
be more research on how public relations cultivates celebrity so
that we can build

16. normative models and theories of the speciality. For example,
practitioners create
many different instruments that enable celebrities to
communicate with the public.
Theoretically, these instruments are central to building the key
moments that spur publics
to choose individuals as celebrities. However, the instrumental
landscape is difficult to
navigate for practitioners because of the enormity of variety.
Typically practitioners
couple tried and true instruments such as press conferences,
speeches and media
Celebrity Studies 123
appearances with newer forms such as social media,
philanthropy and celebrity endorse-
ments (Zhou and Whitla 2013, Ziek and Stein 2015). Yet very
little is thus far known
about the impact these newer forms of instruments have on
celebrity or the way they
create contextual moments and instances. It is precisely these
types of investigations that
are essential to legitimising celebrity public relations, which
will only help academics
better understand, and practitioners better manage, how
celebrity is created and
maintained.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Paul Ziek is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media,

17. Communications and Visual Arts
at Pace University where he teaches strategic and organisational
communication in both the
undergraduate and graduate programmes. His research interest
is how the communication–infor-
mation–media matrix shapes communication.
References
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America. New York: Vintage.
Bowen, S.A., 2003. “I thought it would be more glamorous”:
Preconceptions and misconcep-
tions among students in the public relations principles course.
Public relations review, 29
(2), 199–214.
Carey, J.W., 1989. Communication as culture: Essays on media
and society. New York: Routledge.
Craig, R.T., 1999. Communication theory as a field.
Communication theory, 9 (2), 119–161.
Currid-Halkett, E., 2010. Starstruck: The business of celebrity.
New York: Faber and Faber.
Cutlip, S. M., Center A. H., and Broom, G. M. 1994. Effective
public relations. 7th ed. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Fawkes, J., 2004. What is public relations? In: A. Theaker, ed.
The public relations handbook.
New York: Routledge, 3–18.
Grunig, J.E. and Hunt, T., 1984. Managing public relations.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.

18. Marshall, P.D., 1997. Celebrity and power: Fame in
contemporary culture. Minnesota: University
of Minnesota Press.
Marshall, P.D., 2010. The promotion and presentation of the
self: Celebrity as marker of presenta-
tional media. Celebrity studies, 1 (1), 35–48.
Marwick, A.E., 2013. Status update: Celebrity, publicity, and
branding in the social media age.
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Milner Jr., M., 2010. Is celebrity a new kind of status system?
Society, 47, 379–387.
Penfold-Mounce, R., 2015. Conducting frivolous research in
neoliberal universities: What is the
value of glossy topics? Celebrity studies, 6 (2), 254–257.
Piazza, J., 2011. Celebrity, Inc.: How famous people make
money. New York: Open Road Media.
Rojek, C., 2001. Celebrity. London: Reaktion Books.
Turner, G., 2010. Approaching celebrity studies. Celebrity
studies, 1 (1), 11–20.
Wilcox, D. and Cameron, G., 2010. Public relations: Strategies
and tactics. 9th ed. Boston: Allyn
& Bacon.
Wilcox, D.H., et al., 2013. Think public relations. New Jersey:
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Zhou, L. and Whitla, P., 2013. How negative celebrity publicity
influences consumer attitudes: The
mediating role of moral reputation. Journal of business
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Ziek, P. and Stein, K., 2015. Celebrity philanthropy. Paper
presented at the 26th annual conference

19. of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association.
Philadelphia, PA.
124 P. Ziek
Disclosure statementNotes on contributorReferences