Social media is an online social networking platform that enables people to communicate and share information. This technology has revolutionized how people connect with family, friends and colleagues around the world, becoming one of the dominant mediums for human communication worldwide.
Social media allows celebrities to connect more intimately than ever before with their fans. This new form of engagement allows them to build stronger bonds and foster emotional connections between the two.
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are the three most popular social media networks worldwide, used by more than 45% of global population. Celebrities use these networks to reach their fans in an effective and efficient manner.
Influential celebrities use their social media pages to connect with their fans in various ways, such as live videos and Instagram stories. Furthermore, they utilize hashtags to enhance their visibility and gain attention from followers.
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Celebrities can make their social media content more intimate and openly revealing by posting pictures or videos that showcase more about themselves and their lives. They may even engage with the camera directly, giving off an authentic personality which helps fans relate to them better.
They can also retweet tweets and comment on other people’s posts, giving fans the feeling of being part of their celebrity’s network and building a closer bond with them (Clark, 2015).
Marwick and Boyd (2011) argue that retweeting and commenting are two forms of conversation which foster human connections between parties involved. Retweeting a tweet allows celebrities to show their appreciation for their fans, while commenting on it gives followers the chance to voice their thoughts more directly.
Celebrities and their fans can then engage in conversation about a topic of mutual interest. This helps both parties form an emotional connection, creating a parasocial bond.
Social Media as a Tool for Community Building
As Katz (2014) has noted, celebrities are encouraged to build parasocial relationships with their fans due to financial rewards and potential fame among followers. This leads to an influx of followers, increased traffic on the celebrity’s site, as well as more people following along and retweeting updates about their activities.
Therefore, celebrities must strive to make their social media content more authentic and personal. Doing so can create a stronger connection with their fans and potentially encourage them to purchase products from them.
Social media allows celebrities to build a closer connection with their fans by allowing them to participate in their lives through comments and likes on their posts on various platforms.
Furthermore, celebrities’ self-disclosure of information on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram only serves to further cement these parasocial relationships with their fans. This paper examines these connections through a case study of Lady Gaga and her fans as well as other examples from Twitter and Instagram, in order to demonstrate how online engagement with fans helps celebrities appear more parasocial and creates an online community between them and their fans.
