ABSTRACT
Celebrity is of course not a phenomenon that is new to cultures and societies, or in fact to media cultures. All the same, there is research-based evidence to suggest that media audiences' appetite for consuming celebrity discourse has indeed increased in the contemporary era. Contemporary celebrity culture has been viewed by some critics through the lens of 'moral panic' about the media, anxieties about which are escalated such that they reach the level of official and public discourse. The rise to prominence of reality television as a normalised and abundantly produced form of media has, over time, revealed itself to have been a highly significant development in enabling particular formations of contemporary celebrity to flourish in the contemporary media environment. Contemporary celebrity culture has also seen some noteworthy developments in the area of celebrity coupledom, kinship, dynasties and intimacies. In contemporary Anglophone cultures of cross-media celebrity, particularly prominent examples include the Kardashians, to name only some.
