I'm a celebrity...and I matter because...

These days, no matter where you look: be it television, social media or print media; we are consumed with the world of celebrity. The days of the gossip mags are slowly becoming obsolete because we want to know, for example, "What is happening with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West? Did he really throw out all her clothes and make her take out her hair extensions?" We want to know it now and everything about it.

Celebrities might not like the exposure but it definitely doesn't always harm them... unless your Kristen Stewert getting slammed about an exposed affair with a married director of one of her films. Rojek,Chris (2012) speaks about the art of Public relations and how it affects the nature of the way we view and are exposed to celebrities, so intensely today. That fame is a game. And it is well played by those who know it.

The Kardashians have that game covered. When it comes to global media there is no other family as over exposed. Nearly every family member, aside from Olympic great, father and husband; Bruce Jenner, have accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and own personal blog pages. This family leaves the house and goes for a little lunch? You'll know about it about 30 seconds.

Pick up a tabloid and surely at least a few of the infamous clan will make the cover or at least be featured.

Due to their highly sucessful television show Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which included several spinoffs,  demand for the show has become so popular that they have been renewed for another 2 seasons. Bauder,D (2012, Huffington Post) reported that on the series was picked up for another 3 seasons (pre-season 7) and the family was signed for a whopping $40 million dollar deal. Apparently making it the highest paid reality tv deal ever.

Every thing about this family is on show. We've seen relationships forming and ending, Marriages (lasting 72 days) and divorces; and We've even seen the eldest daughter Kourtney give birth live on camera, twice.

Love them or hate them, the Kardashian brand or rather BILLION DOLLAR EMPIRE is beyond finishing, for now at least. Clothing brands, weight loss supliments, makeup, fragrance,books, etc. Halonen-Knight, E, Hurmerinta, C(2010) speaks about celebrity endoresment and how its not a one way deal. Your just not another face on a product. You are the face of a product. Essentially the people, who are in charge of PR and publicity for the product and even branding, want the celebrity they chose to endorse it to reflect the product. You see the celebrity and you think of the product. You think of the product, you think of the celebrity. As you can see it works both ways. But look at celebrities that behave badly, such behaviour can make or break a products reputation by association. A reputation is never really a good thing

 But as far as the famous Armenian family is concerned  with all these forms of media covered, it's not so hard to keep up with the Kardashians.

But im not talking about celebrity exposure. Im talking about the way they can use that exposure to benefit others. 85 per cent of the world has heard of Lady Gaga. Gaga is a global celebrity. An avid promoter of  gay rights and most importantly, founder of the youth empowerment foundation, the Born This Way Foundation. Gaga uses her music, her videos, you-tube posts, and tweets to convey a message. Whether or not you like her, her message is clear and she makes a strong point of it.

The following youtube video is the entire launch event for the foundation. Hosted by Oprah Winfrey, Gaga and her mother Cynthia explain the importance of the foundation and there mission statement. (This is a rather long video but its worth the watch when you have some time) but basically that is a movement of self acceptance and happiness, rather than what you would assume to be bullying. 

You  would assume bullying after the strong stance Gaga has against bullying. Bullied herself as a child, Gaga understands what people who arent of the 'norm' go through. Part of who she  is bringing to life such issues especially when they hit at home to her. Jamey Rodemyer, a 14 year old american fan, commited suicide in September last year due to extreme bullying because of his sexuality(Daily Mail reporter, 2011). 

Hours before his suicide, he tweeted Lady Gaga. It read:

@LADYGAGA: BYE MOTHER MONSTER, THANK YOU FOR ALL THAT YOU'VE DONE, PAWS UP FOREVER.

Days later, Gaga sang in tribute to Jaime, during her iHeartRadio performance. Here is the full video of the performance.

This is what Gaga is using the BTW foundation to fight against. Unfortunate acts that come to pass that could be avoided. Education is key to pushing forward the message. Thats exactly what the foundation is about.

I know I'm heavily endorsing the foundation but this is celebrity global media using its resources to help people. The BTW foundation is using social media to promote its message, to gain volunteers and to save a life. 

For more information on the Born This Way Foundation visit, bornthiswayfoundation.org

Celebrities do good. The world is changing, they can help us fast track it. Now you might say we've looked at it from both sides. You can see how global media can make a celebrity, an international star or promote a message in way of charity. These days you can be a celebrity for anything, I mean give me a break, I spent the entire entry without talking about the tape that made one of the main subjects of my article a star around the world. But, it is how we use global media and our influence as celebrities to help others.

This could be why such telethons have been so successful over past natural disasters. Live Aid, etc. pull in mega celebrities and performers to attract viewers that are gonna spend the money for the charity or aid because they like that celebrity, they are endorcing and for it, so they should be for it too. It helps people affected by the disasters get the aid they need like food, water, clothing, accomedation etc. If getting a celebrity to do a performance or to make an appearence helps the viewer throw money towards the cause, fantastic. 

I mean havent such tactics been going well year after year for the Good Friday Appeal?

With all the information combined the message im trying to portray for the post is this:

You can get all the exposure you want. You can endorse yourself on many forms of media, whether it be traditional, new, social etc. This can make you wildly famous and rich. But at the end of the day, without sounding like a free love hippy, what is the point of having such fame and exposure on such a grand global scale, if you can't do a little good with it.

References:

Pictures: 

http://assets.poponthepop.com/photos/full/kanye-west-and-kim-kardashian-us-weekly-cover.jpg

http://bossip.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/gallery_main-kim-kardashian-khloe-vegas-birthday-8.jpg

http://api.ning.com/files/1mCGcddTIu3eQGyAivMc9ZLkH90Qv8ciExgAYoE67BPBtGFK8oA82I2a1mUJ*i7cJs6y4OVZ5v9K03XTD6LjOw__/KardashiansFamilyChristmascard.jpg

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/428949_389373941116056_1793692748_n.jpg

Academic Articles:

Rojek, Chris (2012). Fame Attack . London: Bloomsbury Academic . 22.

Halonen-Knight, E, Hurmerinta, C. (2010). Who endorses whom? Meanings transfer in celebrity endorsement. Branding and Society : The Social, Cultural and Financial Impacts of Brands in the 21st Century . 19 (6), 69.

News Articles:

Bauder, D. (2012). 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians' Renewed For 3 More Seasons . Available: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/keeping-up-with-the-kardashians-renewed_n_1450041.html. Last accessed 5th Oct 2012.

Daily Mail Reporter. (2011). Lady Gaga sings moving tribute to bullied gay 14-year-old who committed suicide as 500 gather for funeral .Available: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2041622/Jamey-Rodemeyer-Lady-Gaga-sings-moving-tribute-gay-teen-committed-suicide.html. Last accessed 5th Oct 2012.

Videos:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPsuK6hsBC0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpHSWMQwovA

Narrowcasting, not narrow minded

Narrowcasting is something for a niche market. It knows it's audience and aims towards them. Although its market is not wide, it aims to please that of its inhabitants. I guess you could say its a bit like public relations. Its not exactly aiming to please or even reach the general public but the certain subculture or demographic.

Alternatively on the other scale,  Becker, R (2006) speaks about before the times of Will & Grace, gay characters were not included on screen or more or less, in the late 1980's early 90's, funny sidekicks. He saw it as exclusionary. But these days, many shows are niched for a gay audience, look at the Real Housewives franchise. Haha.



Basically we all have our own niche of interest, its not something that we think others will like just because we do. That could be the same for any culture, subculture or demographic in the world.


References

Picture: http://movingimages.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/cartoon-why-are-we-blogging.gif?w=780

Becker, R (2006). Gay TV and Straight America. ..: Rutgers University Press. 80.

Watching the Watchdog.

Wanna see something ridiculous? Look up various world news sights and watch a variety of news networks and see what there top stories are. Most certainly they will be all different. In saying that, aren't news services all supposed to be fair and balanced. So it is a good thing for us to have access to these news services but we soon enough see a pattern. We soon discover that news services begin to serve an agenda. Take Fox News for example. Their slogan is "fair and balanced." Is that a joke? I could list off plenty of examples that their right wing agenda

Why is it that these days because there is so much information out there we have to question everything we hear.There are two sides to every story that we rarely hear. We cant just listen to the news and accept it. Westacott (2012) writes about fox news and the etiquette of the news. Its interesting there case on the watchdog and the responsibility of the news.

References: Westacott, Emrys (2012). The Virtues of Our Vices. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 143.

Picture: http://www.maynardije.org/files/u585/obama_cartoon.gif

Making and Breaking Cultures

                The internet age has transformed many cultures. Cultures have gotten more exposure in the last ten plus years that we might not have heard about for one reason or another. All this sounds good, countries that have become tourist attractions that were once unheard of but this is not completely the case.
           
                Look at the exposure of Muslim culture in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We were never exposed to such ideas before. Were we sheltered? Was it just the elephant in the room that people just didn't talk about? Because of the media exposure we hear the negative things about this culture and nothing of the positive. How often do you hear about a delicious Muslim dish as opposed to a public stoning? This is pure media globalisation. hearing about something that we wouldn't normally as media grows. But in saying that the internet has opened the floor for freedom of speech and opinion uncensored by media agenda. Unfortunately, due to China's government they are watched and filtered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK2bNZufMWE

This Video talk about China getting Google to filter its information and Google's struggle with this issue. Mackinnon, R (2012) also gives further light on this issue. They speak of the internet police and the censored journalism epidemic. As the world changes we will see what comes between the way a culture is represented and how a culture interacts with the rest of the world.

References: MacKinnon, Rebecca (2012). Consent of the Networked. New York: Basic Books. 133.

The Olympics as a globalising force and global event (positive/negative)

I am gonna be quite candid and cliché if I may. To me, one could see the Olympics as quite negative, promoting country non-discrimination and what not. But to me i feel that the Olympics is something quite positive. It makes the world seem quite unified in the sense that we all come together to compete in good sport at this event. It breaks down the boundaries of the rich dominant countries to the less fortunate ones. I say this for the soul example that you cannot buy talent, it is something you are born with and something we all possess in a billion different areas. Those athletes were not bought to be that good, they were trained and born that way. Any country can train just as hard as another, it is not the case of the money spent into the training, it is the time. Ogden D.C and Rosen J N (2008) describe globalization in sport as something that is creating more of an awareness of things such as racism and discrimination in sport. With the connection of all these entities we are becoming more and more aware of what is going on in the world. With all this in mind, the Olympics hold no prejudice, no matter what is going on in the world everyone forgets it for the time period and focuses on good sportsmanship and competition.
Another good point to add is that it is also a major boost for the global economy, with businesses all over the world getting involved, even it is so people can avoid the games by seeing a movie or going out for the night whilst its aired.

References

Ogden, David C. Rosen, Joel Nathan Lule, Jack (2008). Reconstructing Fame : Sport, Race, and Evolving Reputations . Jackson: University Press of Mississippi . 128.

My Media Empire - what would your global media empire look like, how would it function?

Steven P (2003) spoke of a mass media where your film, television, news, technology, social media are all connected. This is true and something of what exactly is the mass media today. But the thing is one must be careful when enjoying/using this media is who owns them. Unfortunately is someone owned all sources of media we would really only hear one voice. It sounds a little silly but if i were to own a media empire I would cover as many bases as I could but without controlling the bulk of it. Although one might not be able to control all forms of media, as much as Rupert Murdoch might try.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWjCDLkGDX4

The following YouTube video explores how media giants who own a large percentage of a mass media are able to push personal agendas and such. It sounds extreme but it would then lead the paraphernalia, personal political agendas, etc.With all these voices ultimately being the same voice, are you able to limit freedom of thought? Simply yes. Would someone like to control the entire mass media, of course, but it would just be unethical. To me, simply covering an area from each forms of media would be enough, my voice is being heard, and I'm not corrupting the voices of another.



Sources:

Steven, P 2003, The no-nonsense guide to the global media, New Internationalist, Oxford, pp. 37–59.

Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWjCDLkGDX4

image: http://www.independentaustralia.net/Wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/media-corruption.jpg

What is missing from current definitions of Globalisation?

You see, its come under my attention that there are are so many definitions of this topic that everyone could have an opinion of something that was missing. We get so caught up in the idea of this interconnectedness of everything that embodies globalisation and that everything is wrapped in a neat little bow but there is something I feel is missing. Ranatanen (2005:8) saw Globalisation as a mediation or common understanding, a fair agreement between ideas of trade, technology, finance etc. This argument was spoken about in my last blog. Alternatively, Albrow (1990:45) saw globalisation as a single world society. That is an excellent opening for this blog entry because realistically, its one of the most common definitions, what's often left out is something that goes along with this definition and that is something that some people may find to be somewhat out there but I feel its not really a capitalization of life (to which you could argue) but really creating a mainstream of this globalisation. Look at what technology has done for our daily lives in regards to globalisation. I can communicate, bank, order food, order a taxi, turn off a light in my house all from my palm on my phone. I say main-streaming because this is essentially becoming the norm, to which other countries yet to experience globalisation would miss out on.