ABSTRACT
Worldwide, people use mediated communication to follow and engage with global celebrities' lives almost in real time, while local communities create their own celebrities, of great local fame and adored by local fans, but unknown internationally. As an analysis of fan reactions to Flemish schlager singer, Jo Vally's, staged divorce reveals, the situated nature of a local celebrity allows for exchanges with the fan text that move beyond the parasocial into the social and from the virtual and mediated into the real, creating additional meanings for fans. Common denominators among definitions of fandom include the role of emotions, as in Sandvoss's definition of fandom as "the regular, emotionally involved consumption of a given popular narrative or text", and its intense character, exemplified in J. Fiske's definition: "an intensely pleasurable, intensely signifying popular culture". The text mainly refers to local fandom in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, that comprises just over half of the country's 11 million population.
