Interaction between fans and celebrities

and its effect on self-esteem

Joint project with Kelly, Emily, and Jake
-I contributed one-third of the Literature Review and the Methodology and revised
it all.

Originally for Research Methodology (COM150)
Spring Semester 2014
-Project was assigned in order to practice our learned skills on constructing a
scholarly literature review and demonstrating how to find the appropriate
methodology for the thesis.















Literature Review on Social Media
The sensation of needing to go check whats new on Twitter, Facebook, the
news, and other social media networks, consumes our everyday lives. Social media
including the television, newspapers, radio, and most importantly the Internet
surrounds us everyday most of the day. A problem that comes with social media is
that people tend to depend on it for a sense of a positive self-image and most of that
feeling is associated with a relationship with celebrities (Faina, 2012). This study
examines how the nature of interaction between fans and celebrities on social media
impact the level of self-esteem for both parties. It is known by the uses and
gratifications theory that media audiences are active in choosing what exact media
they are exposed to and why (Treadwell, 2014). Previous studies on the subject of
the nature of interaction between fans and celebrities have asked questions about
negative influences that celebrities have on social media, whether or not
relationships between fans and celebrities has a positive influence on self-esteem,
and what effect does celebrity exposure have on adolescents using social media.
Previous studies have found that celebrities have a negative influence on
social media itself and the way they control social media by advertising certain
brands and events by the amount of publicity they receive. It has been found that
the Internet is regularly used to promote celebrity roles and fandom by choosing

what celebrity news the fans will be exposed to (Faina, 2012). With the Internet
having so much control it really effects what people will take and reflect on to
conform to some kind of self-image that they think they need to be. Some research
has found that people become connected with social media because of their strong
longing for the celebrity status (Thwaites, Lowe, Monkhouse, Barnes, 2012). This
longing could cause some negative publicity by starting to project rumors that are
started of top celebrities that social media users follow. That could reflect on the
social media users that are following celebrities and start a huge controversy of
whats true and false. The companies who use celebrities as their primary focus to
their advertising could be effected by this negative advertising by having it turn
people away from their brand because of the negative publicity.
Through social media people try to build a relationship with their favorite
celebrities (Spitzberg, Cupach, 2007). There were a few different studies about this
particular connection, one being what draws the line between people being a fan
and a stalker of a celebrity. Spitzberg and Cupachs examines how fans interact with
celebrities via parasocial interaction (meaning the connection people get from
celebrities and other famous people) and how personally they take the connection
that they have built. Spitzberg and Cupach (2007) explored how fans who have high
entertainment needs are likely to be obsessed with celebrities which could turn into
harassment or stalking. The idea that fans parasocial interaction can turn into
obsessive behavior leads us to believe that it could be quite a negative influence to
try and build a fan-to-celebrity relationship.

Social media definitely does have an impact on people as Spitzberg states,
entertainment shows gather over 100 million viewers a week and celebrity-
oriented magazines over a billion dollars a year in sales (Spitzberg, Cupach, 2007).
Entertainment shows and magazines are social media because they have a huge rate
of followers who are interested in what they have to show and what they have to
say. They are a different kind of social media due to the fact that followers can not
immediately communicate but followers can respond to each show or magazine that
is presented.
The relationship to celebrities has been examined but it focuses in more on if
fans believe that there is trust with that celebrity particularly over social media sites
like Twitter (James, 2011). This study could have an effect on our research if it has a
negative influence on social media users due to celebrities using those sites for
publicity rather than a relationship. Studies that enhance our research, found that
both fans and celebrities feed off of each other for a mutual relationship. The way
that they feed off of each other is that celebrities use their fans to spread their word
and fans have a relationship with celebrities to have something to talk about. This
study suggests that relationships over social networks are not necessarily negative
and that a symbiotic relationship between a fan and celebrity could actually be
positive (Stever, 2009).
There is some kind of effect that the amount of social media to what
adolescents are exposed has and the amount of that exposure that consists of
celebrities has a whole different effect on adolescents. Chia and Ling (2009)
researched children from 11-18 years of age and their involvement with celebrities.

The research then went into how the childrens involvement with celebrities affects
their entertainment-social values, intense personal feelings, and borderline-
pathological tendencies (Chia, Ling, 2009). This study showed how intense-personal
(example being that a person claims to have a hypothetical intimate relationship
with a celebrity) feelings can be developed through use of social media and that
adolescent can seek to become intimate with a celebrity that they have been
interested in through social media (Chia, Ling, 2009). Marwick (2011) researched
how not all people use social networking to gain an audience or connect with
friends but rather, for self-conscious commodification (to create their own
personal brand). This study particularly looks into how people fulfill their self-
conscious commodification through the use of Twitter especially. The findings
proved that Twitter had near 6 million users and was projected to grow to 18.1
million users by 2010 (Marwick, 2011). The research then continued to mention
how it would be essential to build your brand so people could showcase yourself
to a huge and growing audience (Marwick, 2011).
A completely different view of exposure to social media would be the view of
why some people tend to avoid it all together. A study by some researchers in
Turkey looked into how some university students actually stray away from using
social networking websites. These scholars mention how social networking sties
have brought a whole new level of communication by having people use Facebook
for the use of posting photos, to see entertainment, plan events, communicate with
friends, read wall posts, get to know other people, and to get contact information
(Turan, Tinmaz, Goktas, 2012). Many students in this study had their different

opinions on the social networking sites of Facebook and Twitter but a lot of students
had their reasons for not participating in the aspect of social media. Most students
found that social networking sites were too time consuming, pointless, or thought
that virtual friendships are just dangerous, fake, and meaningless (Turan, Tinmaz,
Goktas, 2012). This study could be helpful to us because it would help us see a
different point of view to social media and help us open our minds to new ideas
about the problem.
The researchers that examined close subjects to ours got their information
from weak sample sizes, which is a weakness to their studies. Examples of these
weak sample sizes are too small of a group of university students, some were not
random samples, and they were all usually small sample sizes all together. This can
help us realize that we should try and broaden our sample size.
The research that has been done on social media are really narrow and have
some aspects that researchers have yet to expand out to. An aspect that future
research could look into is how the nature of interaction between fans and
celebrities on social media impact the level of self-esteem for both parties.

References
Chia, S. C., & Yip Ling, P. (2009). MEDIA, CELEBRITIES, AND FANS: AN
EXAMINATION OF ADOLESCENTS' MEDIA USAGE AND INVOLVEMENT WITH
ENTERTAINMENT CELEBRITIES. Journalism & Mass Communication
Quarterly, 86(1), 23-44.
Faina, J. (2012). TWITTER AND THE NEW PUBLICITY. ETC: A Review Of General

Semantics, 69(1), 55-71.
James, C. A. (2011). Communication in online fan communities: The ethics of
intimate strangers. Empedocles: European Journal For The Philosophy Of
Communication, 2(2), 279-289. doi:10.1386/ejpc.2.2.279_1
Marwick, A. E., & Boyd, D. (2011). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter
users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society,
13(1), 114-133. doi:10.1177/1461444810365313
Spitzberg, B., & Cupach, W. (2007). Fanning the Flames of Fandom: Celebrity
Worship, Parasocial Interaction, and Stalking. Conference Papers
International Communication Association, 1-35.
Stever, G. (2009). Fan/Celebrity Symbiotic Social Relationships: A Participant-
Observer Etthnography of Fan Clubs. Conference Papers -- International
Communication Association, 1-36.
Thwaites, D., Lowe, B., Monkhouse, L. L., & Barnes, B. R. (2012). The Impact of
Negative Publicity on Celebrity Ad Endorsements. Psychology & Marketing,
29(9), 663-673. doi:10.1002/mar.20552

Treadwell, Donald (2014). Introducing communication research. Los Angeles: SAGE
Publications.
Turan, Z., Tinmaz, H., & Goktas, Y. (2013). The Reasons for Non-Use of Social
Networking Websites by University Students. Comunicar, 21(41), 137-145.
doi:10.3916/C41-2013-13





Methodology

How does the nature of interaction between fans and celebrities on social
media impact the level of self-esteem for both parties? The methodology employed
is a questionnaire that will be emailed out to the fans and the celebrities who have
been chosen as part of the sample size. The questionnaires that are sent to the fans
will be slightly different than those for the celebrities so that they are altered to
relate to each party more accurately. These questionnaires will be cross-sectional
meaning it will only look at what is going on during the point of time that the
research is done. Each of the questionnaires will include questions that pertain to
the research question, including semantic differential scale and Likert-scale items.
While looking for suitable subjects, there are a few characteristics that each
subject must have to be eligible. The 100 fans who will be college students chosen
from Carroll University must actively be following (such as following them on
Twitter, friending them on Facebook, or following them on Instagram) celebrities on
the social media and must be involved with at least one kind of social media
network. The 100 celebrities who will be chosen must be well-known with at least
100,000 followers and must interact with their fans who follow them. The

celebrities can be from a variety of media, such as film actors/actresses, musicians,
TV hosts, and any other well-known people who have an abundance of fans. The
sampling procedure that will be used is simple random sampling. To do this we will
form a list of all of the subjects that we send an email of the questionnaire to and
assign them each a consecutive number. To determine who will initially receive an
email, an email will be sent to all Carroll University students to find out what
students would be an eligible subject for the study. All students who are a suitable
subject will receive an email to participate in the study. The questionnaire will be
sent to more than the 100 subjects from each category to ensure an adequate
sample size. The process of getting 100 subjects from each category to agree to
participating in the study will continue until the study has reached its sample size.
Once 100 random numbers are assigned to 100 fans and 100 celebrities and all
responses are collected, the process to find suitable subjects will continue.
The measurement instruments that will be used in this research include the
semantic differential and Likert scale (Appendix A). The semantic differential scale
(Al-Hindawe, 1996) will be used on the questionnaire to measure the subjects self-
esteem from the interaction between fans and celebrities. This particular scale will
help to determine the level of self-esteem by presenting a topic and using a scale
that has words at each end with opposite meanings. The Likert scale will help
determine whether or not the interaction between fans and celebrities benefit
either party. The Likert scale will give the subjects a scale of agree to disagree to try
and view how the subjects feel about the nature of interactions to each other. Using
these scales of measurement will increase the validity of the study and make the

outcome of how the subjects answering the questionnaire more accurate because
there is an exact number that they can measure their level of feelings to. The
subjects will also receive an informed consent form if they are below the age of 18
(Appendix B).
Questionnaires will be distributed via email so the time of the study will go
faster and it will be easier for the subjects to answer the questionnaire and return it
quickly. Having the questionnaires distributed over e-mail will increase the
response rate because it will be easier for the subjects complete and return it rather
than setting up a meeting to answer it face to face. Questionnaires in which subjects
indicate no use of or interaction with fans or celebrities on any social media will be
discarded. While scoring the semantic differential scale, the results can be compared
between the celebrities and fans by comparing the responses from each party. This
will show a possible view on how each party feels about the interaction from the
opposite party. The result of the sales will also bring the result to whether or not
self-esteem is affected by the interaction between fans and celebrities. Analyzing the
Likert scale will give a view on which party agreed more about the benefits of the
interaction and whether or not either of them thought it to not be beneficial.


Questionnaire for Celebrities
1. What social media networks do you regularly use? (Circle all that apply)
A. Twitter B. Facebook C. Instagram D. 0ther ___________________

2. Do you interact with fans on social media? Yes or No


If yes to the question above, in what ways do you communicate or interact with your
fans on social media?


3. How do you feel when fans reach out to you on social media?
Happy :____:____:____:____:____:____: ____:____:____: Sad
Exciting :____:____:____:____:____:____: ____:____:____: Boring
Good :____:____:____:____:____:____: ____:____:____: Bad
Important :____:____:____:____:____:____: ____:____:____: Not Important
Useful :____:____:____:____:____:____: ____:____:____: Useless

4. Does the interaction with fans on social media benefit you in your career?
(Mark one of the below lines)

Strongly agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree
________ ________ __________ ___________ ______________


Questionnaire for Fans
1. What social media networks do you regularly use? (Circle all that apply)
B. Twitter B. Facebook C. Instagram D. 0ther ___________________

2. Do you interact with celebrities on social media? Yes or No

If yes to the question above, in what ways do you communicate or interact with
celebrities on social media?


3. How do you feel when celebrities reach out to you on social media?
Happy :____:____:____:____:____:____: ____:____:____: Sad
Exciting :____:____:____:____:____:____: ____:____:____: Boring
Good :____:____:____:____:____:____: ____:____:____: Bad
Important :____:____:____:____:____:____: ____:____:____: Not Important
Useful :____:____:____:____:____:____: ____:____:____: Useless

4. The interaction with celebrities on social media benefits you in your life.
(Mark one of the below lines)

Strongly agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree
________ ________ __________ ___________ ______________


References

Al-Hindawe, Jayne. (1996). Considerations when constructing a semantic
differential scale. Bundoora, Victoria: Linguistics Program, La Trobe
University, 9.