It's not often that Kylie Minogue's images adorn the cover of an academic study, but an important new book by University of Queensland researchers does just that.
Twin Kylies - real and waxwork -are the cover shot for what is believed to be the first study of its kind in the world examining the production of celebrity.
Fame Games (Cambridge University Press) examines how the publicity, public relations and promotions industry has developed, and how celebrity is produced, promoted and traded within the Australian media.
The study attempts to explain the appeal of celebrities to the market, and the process of how stories about celebrities reach the media.
A core argument is that the decline of hard news has been accompanied by the rise of gossip and celebrity as part of a complex new role for the media, the construction of identity.
True to the content, the researchers selected one of Australia's best known international celebrities to demonstrate how images of celebrities are used to sell and promote product, albeit their own in this case.
"The promotions industry has been considered to be on the periphery of the media, yet forms a fundamental component of the media industries," authors Professor Graeme Turner, Dr Frances Bonner and Dr P. David Marshall said.
"There's an assumption that accepts the role of publicity is an aberration, but in fact it's the way the media operates.
"You can't have an aberration providing regular news. Some sections of newspapers are dependent on groups such as television network publicists for cross-promotional use of celebrities. Previous studies of the influence of public relations on news indicate that the percentage of publicity-sourced news varies from 50 percent to up to 95 percent, depending on the media."
The researchers said the interlocking nature of the industry saw celebrities as useful tools for promoting other media products. The justification for this rationale was the public fascination with celebrities, resulting in a kind of networked hybrid image of identity.
The book is based on a three-year $120,000 Australian Research Council-funded project. It incorporates interviews conducted with publicists, promoters, agents, managers and magazine editors about the processes through which celebrity in Australia is produced. Magazines included some of Australia's largest, from teenage magazines to Who Weekly and New Idea.
Professor Turner, Dr Bonner and Dr Marshall said their research indicated a pervasive shift in media emphasis, and that the modern media was increasingly assuming an important role in constructing identity.
Combined with strong media competition, the use of celebrities was one way media groups, such as television programs or magazines, could differentiate their product. The choice of particular celebrities and comperes individualized and personalized these products.
o Professor Graeme Turner is Director of UQ's Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies and has published many influential books in media and cultural studies, including British Cultural Studies: An Introduction (1996) and (with Stuart Cunningham) The Media in Australia: Industries, Texts, Audiences (1997), the standard media studies text in Australia.
o Dr Frances Bonner, UQ Department of English, is a co-editor of Imagining Women: Cultural Representations and Gender (1992).
o Dr P. David Marshall, Department of English, is the author of Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (1997) and Modes for Cultural Analysis: Media in Cultural Studies (in press).
Media contacts: Professor Graeme Turner telephone 07 3365 7183, email graeme.turner@mailbox.uq.edu.au; Dr Frances Bonner, telephone 07 3365 1438 email: f.bonner@mailbox.uq.edu.au, or Dr P. David Marshall, telephone 07 3365 2615 email: d.marshall@mailbox.uq.edu.au
