The celebritization of society and culture: Understanding the structural dynamics of celebrity culture
Open accessAbstract
In recent debates about the ever-growing prominence of celebrity in society and culture, a number of scholars have started to use the often intermingled terms ‘celebrification’ and ‘celebritization’. This article contributes to these debates first by distinguishing and clearly defining both terms, and especially by presenting a multidimensional conceptual model of celebritization to remedy the current one-sided approaches that obscure its theoretical and empirical complexity. Here ‘celebrification’ captures the transformation of ordinary people and public figures into celebrities, whereas ‘celebritization’ is conceptualized as a meta-process that grasps the changing nature, as well as the societal and cultural embedding of celebrity, which can be observed through its democratization, diversification and migration. It is argued that these manifestations of celebritization are driven by three separate but interacting moulding forces: mediatization, personalization and commodification.
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Sorted by citations
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- Authors
- Driessens, O.
- Affiliations
- Ghent University (BE)
- Corresponding author
- Driessens, Olivier
- ORCID
- Driessens, Olivier
- Venue
- International Journal of Cultural Studies
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2012-09-18
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 641-657
- ISSN
- 1367-8779 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-356X
- OpenAlex
- W2170843552
- Cited by
- 332
- References
- 74
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 39 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 32 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 34 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 20 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 3
- FWCI
- 32.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- biblio.ugent.be
- Locations
- International Journal of Cultural Studies (publishedVersion)
- Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- London School of Economics and Political Science Theses Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (submittedVersion)
- Research at the University of Copenhagen (University of Copenhagen) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Santen
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Cultural, Social, and Media Studies
- Social Sciences › Communication › Media Studies and Communication
- Social Sciences › Communication › Media and Communication Studies
- Keywords
- celebrification, celebrity culture, celebrity, mediatization, personalization, commodification, conceptual model
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