I dag är det vanligt förekommande att företag använder sig av kändisar i sin marknadsföring. De hjälper till att stärka igenkännandet och får konsumenter att välja just den varan de marknadsför framför konkurrenternas varor. Men är det verkligen så bra att använda sig av kändisar? Finns det andra karaktärer som skapar större igenkännande? Vårt syfte är att ta reda på vilken typ av karaktär som skapar starkast igenkännande till ett varumärke. De karaktärerna vi har undersökt är kändisar, egenskapade fysiska karaktärer och egenskapade animerade karaktärer. Studien har genomförts med en kvantitativ ansats. Vi utformade en elektronisk enkät och delade den via Facebook och lät 125 stycken respondenter svara på enkäten. I enkäten hade vi lagt upp femton stycken bilder, varav fem bilder var på olika kändisar, fem bilder på olika egenskapade fysiska karaktärer och fem bilder på olika egenskapade animerade karaktärer. Sedan fick respondenterna svara vilket varumärke de kopplade samman karaktären med. Efter att ha sammanställt resultatet så kom vi fram till att egenskapade fysiska karaktärer hade starkast igenkännande, näst starkast hade egenskapade animerade karaktärer och svagast igenkännande av de tre kategorierna hade kändisar. Den främsta anledningen till det här resultatet tror vi beror på att de egenskapade karaktärerna inte kan förknippas med något annat varumärke. Vi tror även att det beror på att de varumärkena som hade starkt igenkännande har byggt upp reklamen som en serie och kommer med nya episoder ofta. / Today, it is very common practice that businesses use celebrities in marketing. They help to strengthen mainstream recognition, and make consumers choose the product they market ahead of what competitors offer. But is it that entirely well to only use a famous physical person? Are there other characters that could generate an even greater recognition? Our purpose is to find out what kind of characters, from real celebrities, fictionist physical persons and even animated/cartooned characters- create the strongest response from people when being associated with a brand. The study was done in a quantitate way. We made an online survey and shared it through Facebook, letting 125 individual responders answer it. In the survey, we included fifteen pictures without any other context. Five were of real celebrity persons, five of made up fictional physical characters and lastly five pictures of entirely made up non-physical animated characters. The survey entrants then had to answer which brand they associated with the 15 characters. After finalizing the results, we found out that the order of most recognition was the following: most recognition had made up fictional physical characters, second was made up fictional non-physical animated characters and last was real non-fictional celebrities. We believe the primary reason for this result is because the made up characters cannot be associated with any other brand other than the one that created them originally. We also believe that a big factor is that the brands using these characters have a bigger storyline to them, and make certain commercials appear in a serial structured way, with new episodes being added frequently.

This project examines how Nadya Suleman and Kate Gosselin were represented in the media following the births of their higher order multiples by conducting a critical textual analysis of newspaper and entertainment magazine articles to answer the following questions: How were Suleman and Gosselin portrayed as mothers? And how were they portrayed as recipients of reproductive technology? The findings illustrate that race and class combined with gender to play an important role in determining who has a right to be a mother and what that mother should look like. Traditional stereotypes within media coverage about good mothers and bad mothers reinforced prejudices about who deserves access to reproductive technology and who does not.

This BA thesis examines how the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet writes about celebrities.Our questions were: How much does Aftonbladet write about celebrities? What kind ofcelebrities does Aftonbladet write about? In which context do celebrities appear inAftonbladet? We have also studied how these matters have changed since 1978.In our research we have used quantitative content analysis. We have analyzed a total of 956articles about celebrities from 1978, 1988, 1998 and 2008. We chose to analyze articles fromtwo synthetic weeks each year.We have used theories about celebrity culture, popularization and personalization and alsoabout public and private in our analyze.Our conclusions were that Aftonbladet has written a lot of articles about celebrities for a longtime, but the articles about celebrities in Aftonbladet have increased by 170 percent since1978.The number of articles that Aftonbladet has written dealing with the private life of celebritieshas not changed much at all since 1978. This was something that surprised us because weexpected that Aftonbladet would write more about the private life of celebrities in 2008 thanin 1978.

Why football fans follow football players on Twitter? This study base on Hyperpersonal( Walther , 1996 ) and Use and Gratifications theory to find out that why football fans want to follow football players on Twitter, how they follower football players on Twitter, include how often and which Twitter function they used. Also the research want to know that after following, how much gratifications do football fans get. In this paper, the survey has been completed online by 492 football fans. 275 of them have followed football players on Twitter. The research find out that football fans follow football player¡¦s Twitter may experience greater levels of intimacy, which higher than follow football players¡¦ new from news media. Besides, follow football players on Twitter could get more gratifications like instrumentalgratifications and entertaining gratifications those compare with follow football players¡¦ news from news media. And all of the gratifications have strong connection with information and topicalitymotive.

<p>Abstract</p><p>The use of celebrity endorsement strategy is nowadays more frequently used by marketers in order to increase their sales and thereby extend their market shares. Many celebrities are used in various marketing campaigns and in most cases; the use of celebrities as endorsers is seen from mainly positive aspects. This made the authors curious whether the negative aspects, that also exists when using celebrities as endorsers, affects consumers in their purchasing decisions when a celebrity gets associated with negative publicity. Another cause of interest is which factors of a certain celebrity are most important and crucial in consumers’ perceptions, in the case of negative publicity.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study which factors consumers find important for a company to consider when a celebrity gets negative publicity, to maintain successful brand recognition.</p><p>Literature review: The use of previous studies within the field of celebrity endorsement clarifies many important aspects when it comes to celebrity endorsement and this chapter is elaborated from 4 different perspectives; Company, Celebrity, Brand and Consumer. Based on previous studies, the authors identified 6 crucial attributes when using celebrities as endorsers and this can also be seen as a pre-study that the research process has been based upon. Furthermore, the 6 attributes are chosen from the three first mentioned perspectives in order to be able to fulfil the purpose. Hence, this thesis is conducted from a consumer’s point of view.</p><p>Method: A quantitative method is used in this thesis since the authors want to base the results on collected data that is expressed in numbers and also to generate a general apprehension in this phenomenon. Moreover, the combinations containing the 6 attributes are used in the conjoint experiment.</p><p>Conclusions: It was proven in this study that consumers do get affected by celebrities as endorser, when the attributes from the literature review are in a combination. But, the consumers’ perception of the attributes differs in different cases. However, the main finding was that there are two crucial attributes, trustworthiness and expertise that companies should take into account when using celebrities in their advertising campaign.</p>

Blind Items examines the multimedia production of celebrity through the eighteenth century, especially the way in which the same texts, images, anecdotes and poses were recycled and updated to evoke a series of public notables. In the multimedia explosion accompanying the Enlightenment, cultural productions typically read as static and self-contained – from mezzotint prints, shilling pamphlets and novels to popular songs, fashions, jokes and gestures – were instead constantly repurposed to suit successions of public figures, each passing luminary determined by the present cultural moment. Surveying three arenas in which eighteenth-century celebrity was manufactured – fashion, sex, and sport – my archive demonstrates that even canonical authors and artists of the period built their careers on the passing celebrity of others, and indeed maintained the relevance of their productions by perpetually remaking and updating their celebrity referents. Blind Items contests critical assumptions regarding the singularity of celebrity, instead focusing on interchangeability, commutability and disposability. In so doing, the project troubles ongoing assumptions regarding the rise of the individual, as it explains why modern-day celebrity still retains aspects of the Enlightenment mold that first gave it shape. / text

"Performing 21st-Century Girlhood: Girls, Postfeminist Discourse, and the Disney Star Machine," explores the economic and discursive functions of contemporary girlhood within Disney Channel's talent-driven transmedia franchises. Ideological, discursive, and narrative textual analyses of Disney Channel programs and paratexts are augmented by examination of the corporate motives and dominant discourses reproduced by Disney personnel in annual reports and in popular and trade publications referencing Disney's stars and girl-driven franchises. This exploration of girls' visibility as Disney performers, media producers, and public citizens brings several disciplines into conversation with one another, addressing issues in girls' cultural studies, media industries scholarship, celebrity studies, and theories of postfeminism. I take an intersectional feminist and critical cultural studies approach to media texts and meaning-making, with particular attention to power relations and cultural contexts. The political and economic aspects of this research demand that I also work to illuminate the significance of media industry logics within the production and distribution of media for girl audiences. I argue that the Walt Disney Company has a vested interest in reproducing certain postfeminist and subjectifying discourses of girlhood, which have become integral to its success in an ever-expanding web of media and consumer markets. While Disney Channel's girl-driven franchises constitute the case studies, my analysis reaches beyond the clear focus on gender and age to theorize girls' increasing visibility in the context of contemporary consumer culture and issues of postracism, citizenship, subjectification, and agency--issues that require continued interrogation as Disney distributes and expands its franchise properties globally. / text

Gossip is a little studied topic and even fewer studies have examined gossip from the perspective of social identity and self categorization theories. However, many of the functions of gossip have significant implications for group processes, including bonding, norm transmission and reinforcement, marginalization of deviants, and social influence. Particularly for those on the margins of the group, gossip may be used as a tool to gain acceptance in the group, as gossip is an effective way to express group loyalty and adherence to group norms. Study One investigated the extent to which being a prototypical member of one's group was predictive of likelihood to spread gossip. Using sororities as the group, members were presented with a hypothetical piece of gossip and asked the extent to which the member who gossiped is prototypical, how likely they would be to share the gossip with other group members, and how prototypical they perceive themselves to be of the sorority. It was predicted that peripheral group members would be more likely to spread gossip than central group members, particularly about other peripheral group members, and particularly when the information was not highly negative. Study Two was conducted in parallel, using the same methodology, but with a piece of gossip about a celebrity instead of a fellow sorority member. It was predicted that the results would mirror those of Study One and that peripheral members would be most likely to spread the gossip. While none of the stated hypotheses were supported, there were several unanticipated interactions. In both Study One and Study Two, there was a significant three-way interaction, in that a highly uncertain respondent, a prototypical target, and relatively mildly negative gossip was associated with anticipated transmission to the highest number of sorority members. While the results were unanticipated, they are not inexplicable and the implications for research in the areas of gossip, celebrity, and self categorization theory are discussed.

This thesis offers a feminist analysis of the gendered public discourses surrounding notions of talent, authenticity and containment. Using two of the most polarizing stars in North America – ‘Snooki’ and Kim Kardashian – the author offers an analysis of how both hard and soft news frame our everyday understanding of women’s public work. Textual analyses of news articles demonstrated that displays of sexual power were most undermined by the media while attempts to venture beyond the reality television texts were contained. On the other hand, the news media were more likely to use positive framing when women were seen to be fulfilling more traditional roles such as wife and mother. The empirical research approach provides an original framework which can be applied to other female public figures to examine how such ideological and gendered discourses shape our understanding of women’s work as well as, more generally, women’s roles in our society.

This work aims to explore how normalized gender representations in images are heightened through the use of digital manipulation technologies and how that influences a spectator’s relationship both to the image and to their own body. After constructing a theoretical understanding of the ways in which images influence and create a normative beauty ideology, a critical case study analysis of the ways celebrities are photographed and digitally altered provides for a grounding of theoretical material.