The Medial Portrayal of Celebrities via Tabloids and Social Media. The Portrayal of a True Celebrity Self

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2022 in the subject Communications - Journalism, Journalism Professions, grade: 1,7, University of Frankfurt (Main), language: English, abstract: This thesis examines why and in what way tabloid media and celebrities themselves via social media portray two different realities. Undeniably, celebrities are omnipresent. They are on posters, on book covers and in form of toys on store shelfs, but most importantly, they are omnipresent in various kinds of media. They are in movies and on TV - maybe as participants in a reality show or when taking a seat next to a talk show host, they are covered in news stories of the press and are part of the social network. In fact, even though celebrities can, for example, be experienced on stage or on a soccer field, they mainly are experienced in the media. And the media play a very evident and crucial role with regards to the creation of a celebrity stigma around a certain person, and also with regards to how stars and celebrities are perceived. When consuming any kind of media portrayal about a certain celebrity, the media consumer feels as if he gets to know the certain celebrity. But when comparing both, tabloid media's portrayal and celebrities' own portrayal via social media, it becomes evident that the portrayals of the one and the other often are very different from each other and it seems as if thoroughly there are two different realities mediated. Even though a true self or - with focus to specifically celebrities - true celebrity self cannot and does not even exist, in some way it implicitly is (claimed to be) portrayed and also in some way is expected to be portrayed. This might sound contradictory at first but as elaborated in this paper, it actually is not.