ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides something of a personal record of that transition to date; not only through the processes upon which they report, but also through the shifts they address in relation to media studies’ approaches and to its objects of attention. It examines a number of aspects of the production of celebrity news in order to delineate what is so distinctive about celebrity journalism: its attributes include the importance of the image and the corporatization of the paparazzi supply chain; and the unapologetic commitment to the production of entertainment rather than information. The book suggests that the widening of access to the means of production and distribution has played a part in generating a mode of celebrity that actually aims at a more narrow and restricted conception of a public.