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Carlin Adelson

BEYOND THE BLOGOSPHERE: HOW CELEBRITY GOSSIP DISCOUNTED FAMOUS BIOGRAPHY

Blogging has become a more contemporary phenomenon since the late twentieth century and the Age of Information. Blogs initially served as of-shoots of websites, and were manually updated.  With advances in technology, the process provided by “journalers” evolved into websites specifically for this type of ongoing narrative, be it personal, political, or celebrity entertainment.  

For my thesis, I used sociologist Leo Lowenthal’s study The Triumph of Mass Idols as a template  to measure the changes in celebrity coverage in PeopleMagazine versus Perez Hilton’s website from January-December of 1984 and 2008, respectively.

I wanted to know: why do we turn to celebrity? Why do people care? Also, had there been a cultural shift that aided the increase in celebrity coverage in print and blogs? If so, what was it?