Celebrity or internet star ?

The impact that celebrities have these days is ever increasing among all age groups. Recently however what is defined as a celebrity is slowing changing as a result of the Internet and globalisation, but do these ‘internet stars’ fall under the celebrity category. A prime example of this is how, an individual can record a video of them singing a song put it on Youtube and over night become a celebrity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxDlC7YV5is&feature=player_embedded

The above link shows a 12 year old boy- Greyson Chance, who virtually over night became an internet star after he posted a video of his rendition of Lady Gaga’s ‘Paparazzi’. The video clip was seen by more than 20 million people and lead him to be invited onto Ellen Degeners talk show, where he performed and thus signed onto Degeners record label. But do you see Chance as purely a star of the internet or a celebrity?

Be you an internet star or a celebrity there is a downside.. or what most people think is a downside.. The Paparazzi, everywhere you go watching your every move waiting for you to crack. Singer/Song writer Britney spears was a celebrity that let the pressure of the industry get to her. In 2008 she hit rock bottom, blaming the paparazzi for pushing her into having a mental breakdown- the constant pursuit for photos of her to a rapid downward spiral, which to the loss of custody of her two children.

Despite this obvious negative of being a celebrity the desire is still great. ‘People want so badly to become celebrities that they’ll take as their model the talentless nobodies they worshipped in there youth’. [Di Giovanna 1996]

References: 

Di Giovanna 1996, High Noon on the Electronic Frontier: Conceptual Issues in Cyberspace, ‘Losing your voice on the internet’ – PG 449. edited by Peter Ludlow

Identity and internet persona's

In todays world you can change, manipulate, create an alternate or even 'better version of yourself', through online means. Via the internet you can create a whole new persona- be whoever you want to be and say [to an extent] what you wish to say. 

Is this healthy? The Internet is becoming an outlet for people’s thoughts, feelings and emotions- more now than ever before, and the age groups are increasingly getting younger. As recent figures show 19% of young American teenagers have created a blog. [Bell 2002] A blog is an outlet whereby you can express feelings in an online forum and have control over the feedback you receive.  But there are obvious downsides to becoming to involved or obsessed with an Internet persona. Some individuals from a young age live and breathe the world of the net but this however is extremely unhealthy for them in more ways than one.

An Individual identity is formed through real life experiences and relationships formed with other people.  It is alternatively based on ‘how people acquire and make meaning in social life’. This is something that the Internet and in turn social media cannot provide. Although you may have 1000 friends on Facebook, this doesn’t compare to actual interaction with them. There this draws the line of difference between an individual’s identity and there Internet persona.

References:

Albert, Ashforth, Dutton, 2000, 'Organization identity identification: Charting new waters and building new bridges', PG 14

Bell, B 2007, ‘Private writing in public spaces: girls’ blogs and shifting boundaries’, Growing up online: young people and digital technologies 2007, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, N.Y, pp. 98-100

Photo reference:

Group of people: http://www.umbc.edu/creativeservices/photos/students.html

Solo guy: http://singlemindedwomen.com/blog/sex-the-single-woman-is-an-online-dater-a-deal-breaker/

Al-Jazzera & his impact

Culture is a huge part of any country, how the culture has grown through globalisation and or other means helps to define a country. You can see how countries culture's differ through looking at film, food or media.

Middle eastern culture: hard to define consistently through all countries in the middle east. But these countries are drawn together through a 'belief in islam, use of the Arabic language, connections through Arab league and historical ties' [Berich, 2012]. El Naway describes to us that the Arabic populations main priority is to save up enough money to purchase a satellite disc so as to watch figure head Al-Jazzera, although the news and information they are recevinging via this disc is noted to be extremely unreliable- they are still obsessed with the idea of following his news. Some households even put purchasing a satellite disc above daily needs. They are obsessed with 78.2% of the population tuning in. [El-Naway, M. 2003]. Much different to that of a developed and westernised country such as Australia.

Australia culture is according to wikipedia 'essentially a western culture influenced by the unique geography of the Australia continent'. Australia's culture has been heavily influenced by globalisation, we have a wider access to information and news than ever more. Within the Australia culture there is an ever increasing amount of 'digital journalism' which countries in the middle east don't have access too. The idea of digital journalism and the idea that the newspapers are slowly dying out in a australia is reflected through looking how Australia's culture has changed over the years.

References: 

Berich 2012, 'We reach all corners of the Globe', LLC, http://www.berichllc.com/html/middle_eastern_culture.html, Pg 1,

El-Nawawy, M. 2003, ‘The battle for the Arab mind’, Al-Jazeera, the story of the network that is rattling governments and redefining modern journalism 2003, Westview Press, Boulder CO, pp. 45-69, 217-218


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Australia

Different cultures

Having recently travelled around Europe for four months I was subject to many different cultures, having in total visited seventeen different countries, and as you can imagine the vast array of different lifestyles and cultures I experienced as I travelled from the developing country Albania to Paris, the fashion capital of the Europe. Obviously there was an undeniable difference in the way people lived and culture these countries had.

But my biggest shock came to when I visited the Greek islands- where by I was confronted with a diaspora of ‘Aussie Bogans’ that ruled these islands, in just under two weeks I think I only came across a handful of Greek people. Chatting with one of the locals it became clear that the majority of Greek people evacuated their homeland for the summer and for want of a better phase…prepare for the invasion of Aussies bogans. They aren’t hard to miss to with the Southern Cross tattoos, Aussie flag singlets and loud use of Aussie slang. People like this unfortunately give Australian's a bad name and links are made with Australia culture with bogan connotations.

                                                       Stereotypical Aussie bogan ^ 

 [Source: http://www.news.com.au/news/bogan-breaks-into-oxford-dictionary/story-fncvfxcm-1226400724944]

Juxaposed the well known cultural concept of the ‘aussie bogan’ culture with the Indian culture- the rise of Bollywood cinema becomes a cultural/leisure activity.

Bollywood began in 1960s and India is now well recongised around the world for this type of creative and colorful for of cinema. ‘Contemporary Bollywood films can be seen as diasporic and global cultural texts that transcend national sensibilities’ [Dudrah 2002] Bollywood is finally gaining positive world wide exposure and in turn reflecting Indian culture accordingly, as the ‘Indian film industry continues to churn out higher quality and bigger budget films’. [Carty 2012]

Bollywood film 

Source: [http://chandrakantha.com/articles/indian_music/nritya/bollywood.html]

References:

Carty 2012, ‘Impact of bollywood’, http://movies.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Impact_of_Bollywood, Pg 1

Dudrah, RK 2002, ‘Vilayati Bollywood: popular Hindi cinema-going and diasporic South Asian identity in Birmingham (UK)’, Javnost - the public, vol. 9, no. 1, pg. 20.