ABSTRACT The technological and cultural transformations within the social media content creator ecosystem call for an updated academic approach to this sector. At present, the digital visibility of content creators is increasingly shaped by technological processes of algorithmic intermediation. In parallel, this ecosystem is currently characterised by a state of hyper-saturation and ever-expansion, that is, extreme congestion and unceasing proliferation. These factors foster cultural transformations around celebrity in digital spaces such as Instagram or TikTok. Therefore, this article introduces the notion of algorithmic-driven exposure as a distinctive model of digital visibility. It posits that algorithmic-driven exposure implies a cultural disposition in which massive digital visibility does not necessarily relate to the attainment of celebrity for creators. Indeed, the visibility of content creators and their content does not directly translate into the acquisition of digital celebrity categories, such as micro-celebrity.

ABSTRACT Social media has become a prominent platform for political discourse, with celebrity endorsements playing a crucial role in political communication. Both significantly influence political campaigns and public opinion on political issues. A key factor in this impact is how a celebrity’s political message is perceived by their audience. This research explores whether a celebrity’s political speech affects how their audience perceives the use of their celebrity status and their place in political conversations. The study employs an experimental design, utilising the theoretical framework of source characteristics to examine individuals’ attitudes towards political information shared by celebrities. The findings reveal that when a celebrity’s political message conflicts with an individual’s views, the celebrity is perceived as having lower credibility, with audiences often believing that the celebrity should ‘stick to what they [celebrities] know’ best – entertainment and not politics. Conversely, when a celebrity’s political stance aligns with an individual’s views, they are more welcomed to discuss politics. Additionally, the study examines parasocial relationships, finding that stronger parasocial connections enhance the perceived credibility of the celebrity. This research underscores the complex dynamics between celebrity influence, audience perception, and political communication.

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the rise of Moo Deng, a pygmy hippo at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand, as an animal celebrity shaped by anthropomorphism, meme culture, and social media engagement. Moo Deng’s playful, human-like behaviours, amplified through viral memes and online narratives, have fostered emotional connections and parasocial relationships with audiences worldwide. These dynamics have elevated her status from a zoo resident to a global cultural icon, while driving commercial success through merchandise and fan-driven content. The study examines how digital platforms construct animal celebrity personas by blending anthropomorphism and viral imagery with commodification strategies, revealing how visual culture and platform dynamics converge in creating non-human influencers. By exploring Moo Deng, this research contributes to scholarship on digital animal celebrity and highlights how evolving media landscapes shape human-animal relationships in an increasingly interconnected world.

ABSTRACT This article offers a fresh theoretical intervention in celebrity studies by exploring digital resurrection and necro-celebrity through the holographic projections of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, often hailed as the founder of modern Turkey. A broad visual repertoire – ranging from municipal Republic Day shows and sports-club spectacles to AI-generated mash-ups – has fostered a ‘digital heritage economy’ that puts Atatürk’s iconic ‘Ebedî Şef’ (Eternal Chief) persona back into circulation in the twenty-first century. We weave together fame’s three classic strands – innate attribution, earned achievement, and media reproduction – within the twin frameworks of necro-branding and cultural necromancy, showing how a deceased figure can transcend both political capital and straightforward market value. Building on debates around simulacra and hyperreality, we treat celebrity holograms as local manifestations in speculative realism, with Atatürk’s case as our prism. Our contention is that the digital image does not supplant reality; instead of devouring the ‘real’, it surfaces latent possibilities under shifting representational regimes. By stressing that these projections are hyperstitional, not merely hyperreal, we uncover the feedback loop through which technological mediation lends tangible form to a long-standing myth lodged in collective memory.

ABSTRACT In this article, I position two Tamil films – Sivaji: The Boss and Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom – alongside each other to examine the entanglements between cinematic death, spectral histories and embodied memory of the actor-star Sivaji Ganesan, who animates these films as a phantom presence. I theorise ‘doubling’ as a spectral media aesthetic that marks the return of prior star bodies, gestures, or affects as residual presence. Doubling marks a failure of containment by producing temporal and visual instabilities that disturb cinematic time and spectatorial looking. The article investigates the indeterminate nature of absent presences rising from the historical vaults of Tamil cinema that haunt cinematic texts through moments of bodily crisis, thus placing protagonists in interstitial states. Through close reading, this article contends that the spectral presence of Sivaji produces an aesthetic image of history that disrupts linear narrative through disjunctive temporality by blurring distinctions between past, present and future. Sivaji allegorises cinema’s contradictory impulses of remembering and forgetting by producing an afterimage that oscillates between obsolescence and spectral endurance. Rather than elegising the crisis of death, the article focuses on the performing body as a palimpsestic site of embodied history that makes the dead father return to life through acts of relentless repetition.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the concept of celebrity in crisis through the figure of the celebrity CEO. Focusing on the example of two recent CEOs of the Walt Disney Company, Bob Chapek and Bob Iger, the paper extends analysis of their discursive construction to include the contributions of brand fans as a specific form of ‘cultural intermediary’. The paper argues that fan reactions to both Iger and Chapek highlight specific moments of crisis in the brand/fan relationship and that these often map onto fan perceptions of adherence to the appropriate Disney ‘brand story’. Reactions often contrast Chapek’s overt focus on profit and corporate synergy, lack of understanding and respect for the Parks’ history, and derision towards their guests, with Iger’s construction as more sympathetic to the parks’ legacy, respectful of fan viewpoints and as a reliable steward of the Disney company. Secondly, the paper examines the challenges to their legitimacy as celebrity CEOs, primarily via Disney’s political conflicts with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. It, thus, argues that celebrity CEOs’ positions can offer insight into moments of celebrity and crisis since they are contingent and mutable, and subject to the reactions of cultural intermediaries, including ‘anti-fans’.

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between celebrity, (post)feminism, and global politics using the example of American-born and raised freestyle Olympic skier Eileen Gu. Although Gu’s global fans see her as an empowered, high-achieving young woman to be emulated, her choice to compete for China in the 2022 Winter Olympics provoked controversy in both China and the US. Focusing on Gu’s media (self)representation across the two countries, we identify three persistent tropes and narratives: a ‘can-do’ girl form of empowerment based on ideas ofthe entrepreneurial self; fashion, femininity, and (de)racialised beauty; and nation, cultural identities, and the ‘bridge’ metaphor. While Gu’s self-representation as an empowered young woman appears indebted to feminism, in both China and the US, she opts for the ‘safer’ discourse of ‘female empowerment’, something which appeals to a wide audience and effectively depoliticises her feminist sentiments. In this way, neoliberal and postfeminist discourses – as tactics of transnational celebrity feminism – underpin Gu's celebrification. However, we argue that she cannily modifies such tactics to ensure her cultural legitimation in these distinct political contexts. Attending to Gu’s own strategic persona-building techniques, we add much-needed cultural specificity to the debates around celebrity feminism and increased celebrity intervention into fraught diplomatic relationships.

ABSTRACT By introducing two ethnographic cases within the Chinese fandom of K-pop girl band MAMAMOO, namely the consumerist nationalism protest and the creation of Girls’ Love fandom, this paper explores the complexities and modes of politicisation that transnational K-pop imposes on its Chinese fandom. It also proposes the conceptual framework of multi-element citizenship, further examining the compatibility of civic-responsibilities-based and civic-rights-based approaches to young Chinese people’s political participation through transnational fandom.