Contemporary Fan ‘Magazines’ & Digital Interactivity
Note: This post starts where the yesterday’s on Classic Fan Magazines and Analog Interactivity left off.
Part of what I liked about Orgeron’s article on interactivity was the very application of the term to behaviors so distant from what we consider ‘interactivity’ today. In other words, fan interactivity — and even agency — are now ascribed to those who log hours on Discussion Boards, who rally together to save beloved television shows, whose interest is (sometimes) authenticated through actual changes in television narrative, who write fan and slash fic and distribute it within international digital communities. Interactivity has also taken on a connotation of immediacy — you can voice your displeasure with a scene by logging on to the show’s website while you are watching; you can reply directly to a celebrity’s tweet within seconds using your own Twitter account. Digital engagement and interactivity is NOW.
Today’s analog fan magazines - the actual paper magazine that you pick up at the store or receive in your mailbox — contain a large amount of the same interactivity that characterized the classic fan mags. Letters to the editors, polls, second-person address, advertisements that hail the consumer and ask her to judge herself and others. They pale in comparison to that which I discussed in my previous posts, but such features exist nonetheless. With that said, such analog interactivity is so 1992. Today’s gossip industry (and version of fan “magazines,” also known as gossip blogs) has taken interactivity to new level.
For gossip blogs such as Perez Hilton, the form of the blog itself invites commentary. As I think about it, I’ve discussed this at length elsewhere as concerns Perez Hilton: fan comments provide a public platform for readers to voice their opinions quickly and often; while Perez does not engage commenters, the existence of the forum — mostly uncensored — has provided a site for dedicated readers to engage in prolonged discussion of both Perez and the minutae of the celebrities on whom he posts. Perez often concludes a gossip bit/story with the question “What do YOU think?”, explicitly encouraging feedback and implicitly validating their opinions. Below, for example, the typically opinionated Perez defends Jersey Shore ‘star’ Snooki, ending with ‘Thoughts?’
Over the last year, Perez has implemented social media tools — the ability to Facebook ‘Like’, Retweet via Twitter — increasingly present on all information sources (including this one). I don’t want to suggest that reposting a story is a means of interactivity, but when the story is reposted with commentary, the user is obviously interacting with the item…and inviting others to do so as well, either on Perez on via Facebook comments, Twitter replies and retweets, etc.
The analog publciations - People, US Weekly — have cultivated their websites into havens of interactivity, putting them in convergent conversation with their print forms.
The Fashion Police solicit response - and offer immediate feedback.
Reader-response to a picture of Angelina Jolie:
Readers ‘deputized’ as gossip-getters -
The interactivity at Lainey Gossip is a bit more subtle — and rarely referenced by Lainey herself. In fact, the largest form of response comes in the form of Lainey soliciting emails and comments from her readers — not to be posted on the actual blog, but so that she can gage reader sentiment. In fact, she refuses to open up comments sections on posts — it invites a space for hate, and if you’ve seen a Perez comments section, you’ll see that she’s right. She does periodically publish hate mail, and when I first posted on my own experience with Twi-hard hate, way back last fall, she linked to my post as a means of showing that Twi-hate is by no means exclusive to her. She opens every day with ‘Smutty Shout-Outs,’ where readers email their congrats, love, hopes, etc. for others (for example, someone can say that their friend is having a rough time and needs pictures of The Gos, Hot Harry on a Horse, etc.) She also periodically replies on Twitter and through email — or at least she has to me (has she to you?) I suspect that the gesture towards interactactivity, depicted below, is just that — a gesture. It’s certainly very rarely integrated into the gossip posts themselves; she talks about her freebie-five all the time, but certainly doesn’t end each discussion with “go post your own for all to see in the space to your right!!”
Ultimately, the biggest gestures towards interactivity are far more personal than the bigger, more conglomerate sites. See, for example, the recently published pictures from the Smut Soiree — where readers mingle with Lainey. (Speaking of which, attending the Smut Soiree is totally going to be my Ph.D. graduation present from my best friends. Just sayin’.)
People, US Weekly, and even Perez and Lainey are, in many ways, aping the success of TMZ, which encourages interactivity at every turn. The TMZ style is characterized by garishness (both in aesthetics and general rhetoric) and oddness (submit pictures of you grilling!). For myriad reasons, however, TMZ receives more traffic than all of the aforementioned gossip sites combined. Whether the opportunity to interact is part of that allure — well, you can tell me if you’ve submitted pictures of yourself grilling, or phoned in a tip, or voted in a ‘who’s hotter’ poll…..(in all seriousness, please tell me if you have).
Soliciting reader opinion on the Mel Gibson case — can he be forgiven?
(And offers you a chance to ‘live chat’ about it…)
Interactivity ‘puzzles’ — an old National Enquirer trick.
Bestowing readers with power over the site itself :
‘Who’d You Rather,’ a regular TMZ feature (with poll results below)
So how is this different than the analog interactivity described in my last post? I want to argue that what has fundamentally changed is the idea of us, as readers, having any sort of sway over Hollywood or celebrity culture. Part of this disconnect can be linked to general celebrity indifference — long gone are the days when a star would ‘write’ an article in direct response to fan sentiment. And even though celebrities cultivate an aura of authenticity around their official online interactions — on Twitter, on their websites, etc. — there’s still very little sense that our interaction on a gossip site will change the way that Hollywood, the gossip site, the gossip maven, or celebrities in general will behave, dress, etc. And while I think that Twitter has reintroduced a modicum of belief in the power to speak directly to and receive communication directly from the celebrity, it remains a relatively nascent phenomenon.
I also think that there’s a broader understanding of celebrity culture as a machine — an industry unto itself — and thus far more immune to the complaints and suggestions of fans, however univocal their protests may be. In other words, those who are interested in celebrity gossip are more cognizant of the celebrity as a product — of the machinations that go into image creation, of the fact that celebrity gossip itself is entertainment — and less likely to believe in celebrities as actual humans open to suggestions. [I'm not suggesting that everyone was inveigled by the star system during Classic Hollywood, but the illusion was much more easily tended, and thus all the more easier to believe]. When someone comments on one of Perez’s posts, it’s not because she’s under the illusion that the celebrities featured in the post will actually read it — rather, it’s a means of voicing her opinion about the celebrity (and what he/she stands for) and engaging in dialogue (sometimes ethical, other times certainly not) with others. Similarly, acting as ‘fashion police’ on the US Weekly site is less about you policing the actual star and more about policing women’s choice of fashion in general, and what you believe is and is not appropriate (or beautiful, or fashionable) to wear in public.
Does this ring true? Let me know your own experiences with interactivity — and how you think it’s different than the analog interactivity cultivated in the past.
3 Responses to “Contemporary Fan ‘Magazines’ & Digital Interactivity”
this is a great post, annie, i really like it. What I think is so great about it is that the issues you’re raising here are obviously linked to gossip surrounding Hollywood/film/tv/media celebrities but it speaks in a really interesting way to the continuities and discontinuities surrounding insider/outsider status in other arenas too. I’ve been thinking about some of this stuff in relation to sports and sports blogging/twittering, etc. In particular I’ve been starting to think the relationship between the teams/athletes, the writers who cover those teams and teh fans. There are a handful of athletes (I think more in other sports than in baseball) who are on twitter or otherwise use social media, but not very many. However, most of the journalists covering the teams on a day to day basis are on twitter and they of course interact with the athletes on a daily or semi-daily basis. Like with the stuff you’re talking about there’s a long and complex history of that relationship and particularly in baseball of writers seeking insider status or being perceived to have an insider status that makes them almost part of the team. In any case, then as fans we read blogs and interact with beat writers on twitter becoming if not friends than certainly friendly with them. So in some ways the writers themselves become minor celebrities both through contact with the real stars and on their own.
Yet there’s a further wrinkle in the fact that there are both official beat writers who tend to write very conventional performance-related stuff rarely engaging with the acutal personalities of these athletes (though they do have a sense of their actual personalities) and then there are bloggers some of whom do engage more with the extratextual or off the field type stuff. Unfortunately (and interestingly) there really is no TMZ-style investigative reporting on sports stars (that I know of).
I don’t have any grand conclusions on what this means though I think there’s something to be said about how sports are covered and the fact that in sports there’s a dual aspect of both attending the games live and then interacting with thr sport through media- tv, newspaper and now the internet as well- but I think the work you’re doing has an interesting if slightly tangential bearing on this stuff.
In any case, I suppose part of why I like this post so much is that it treats these sort of basic forms of interactivity and new media usage seriously as developments that have really transformed relationships though in somewhat subtle ways.
hopefully that made sense? anyway great stuff!
Smut Soiree indeed … interactivity will take on a whole new meaning when we’re fan-girl-ing over Lainey (and handing her a signed copy of your diss, of course)
“When someone comments on one of Perez’s posts, it’s not because she’s under the illusion that the celebrities featured in the post will actually read it — rather, it’s a means of voicing her opinion about the celebrity (and what he/she stands for) and engaging in dialogue (sometimes ethical, other times certainly not) with others.”
I think this quote hits on a major issue in the “new” interactivity…that audiences can talk to *each other* as well as talk to the star (or have the illusion that they talk to the star). I think there’s also a sense of talking to the blogger, especially on Perez and other sites like PITNB. I’ve never seen Perez respond to people’s direct (or indirect) comments to him, but they continue to abound. Trent from PITNB does sometimes reply, which I think only increases this sense of relationship between audience and blogger (as intermediary relationship b/w audience and celebrity?). Lainey’s lack of interactive comments but use of the Smutty Shout Outs is interesting. Maybe it allows this relationship to occur, but much more on her terms and helps her avoid the nastiness of Perez’s comments sections.
In general, I agree with you that interactivity is much more complex than just the existence of comments sections. It’s also about how the audience uses (or doesn’t use) them. And I think it’s telling that the online versions of print mags are so interactivity heavy since the blogs are biting their print circulations…a form of imitation that tries to regain that audience?
Anyway, lots to think about here! Great post!