ABSTRACT
News about celebrities constitutes an endless stream in contemporary society. Stories float across mainstream news media, social media, entertainment sites, etc. Celebrity constitutes a much broader phenomenon. While the glamorous and notorious aspects traditionally pertaining to celebrity still hold true, an up-to-date definition should include celebrities emerging on the internet, the representations of the mundane and ordinary that these celebrities have made prevalent, and an increasing focus on global-national distinctions in celebrity culture. Celebrification manifests itself most clearly by people obtaining celebrity through social media; they construct a visible self, offer access to their private lives, collect followers and likes and monetize this through sponsorships, advertisements and endorsements. Social media have profoundly changed the genres, content, and distribution of celebrity news as well as users’ ways of engaging with this news. Social media have in many ways eliminated the traditional gatekeeper function of journalism.
