Celebrity and New Media

<p>This book looks back to the early days of new and social media to examine the potential threat that such technologies and platforms posed to the mainstream corporate media’s gatekeeping and its ability to exploit humiliate and even violate famous women.</p><p>Drawing on her own experiences working as part of this gatekeeping system Stephanie Patrick argues that in order to combat this threat the mainstream media doubled down on gendered narratives of meritocracy that legitimized certain (male) celebrities over others. Using a range of case studies spanning old media sites and new including Disney Playboy and reality television this book demonstrates that sexual exploitation and violation could be considered constitutive of female celebrity rather than a side effect. Patrick’s case studies include some of America’s most (in)famous celebrities including Miley Cyrus Lindsay Lohan Anna Nicole Smith Paris Hilton and Donald Trump urging readers to question their assumptions about these figures and their public trajectories.</p><p>This nuanced exploration of patriarchal capitalism and women’s ongoing sexual exploitation by the media will be an important reference for scholars and students of digital and new media journalism celebrity studies and gender studies.</p>