Social Media and Image Management: An Analysis of Facebook Usage in Celebrity Public Relations

BHAVNEET BHATTI
Punjab University, Chandigarah

Abstract
Creation and maintenance of a favourable image is an essential function of public relations and social media is emerging as an important weapon in this image management armoury. The social media environment provides an opportunity to reach out to a variety of public in a more intimate and interactive way especially in the case of celebrity image management. Social media accounts of celebrities serve as a medium to blur the boundaries between the public and private spheres of their lives and content posted on these accounts also serves as a credible source of information for mass media. Since the social media presence of celebrities plays a crucial role in their image creation. This paper is an attempt to explore the emerging trends in social media usage by celebrities. The objectives of the paper were to look at the Facebook usage of celebrities from different walks of life (including politics, sports, music, cinema and television) and analyse this usage in terms of dominant subject matter, presentation, language used, frequency and continuity. The method used was a content analysis of the Facebook accounts of celebrities for a period of one year for the theory purpose a total of 1469 Facebook posts for one year to provide an insight into social media usage in the practice of celebrity public relation and potential that lies untapped were analyzed.

Keywords: Social media, celebrity PR, Facebook, image management, public relations

References

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Bhavneet Bhatti is an assistant professor in the school of communication studies at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.