When a celebrity dies …Social identity, uses of social media, and the mourning process among fans: the case of Michael Jackson

Death and Communal Mass-Mourning: Vin Diesel and the Remembrance of Paul Walker

“…The Internet and social media (e.g. Facebook) might intensify the experience of parasocial intimacy (Courbet & Courbet, 2014;Stever, 2011), for instance through the proliferation of visual material depicting the star which is available online (Stever, 2011), or exactly because of the experienced degree of intimacy between star and fan online. Kassing and Sanderson in their study of fans engagement with athlete Floyd Landis on his website conclude that the nature of communication online changes the parasocial relationship from being a one-sided relationship to being more like a actual mutual social relationship, with fans also being able to give the star (in this case, Landis) direct encouragement and advice which he, as noted above, might actually read.…”

“…From a psychological perspective, this indicates that the perceived intimate (para)social relationship with the celebrity might even be strengthened and enforced post-death. Social media allow fans to leave behind their own trace, memory or history involving the deceased celebrity, in this way also actively contributing to the continued memorialising of their object of fandom (Courbet & Courbet, 2014).…”

“…The emerging body of research into celebrity mourning published indicate that it is exactly these shared spaces which are attractive for fans mourning a celebrity. Thus, the communal sites of mourning on social media sites provide fans of a celebrity with a safe space within which to enact a grief which might be disenfranchised and frowned upon in other social contexts (Andsager, 2005;Courbet & Courbet, 2014;Gil-Egui et al, 2016;Harju, 2015). Here they can come together in a context of legitimate and "affective expression and solidarity" (Harju, 2015, p. 143) with other fans; and collectively cope with their emotions, similar to how people in general cope with the death of a loved one on social media (DeGroot & Leith, 2015;Sanderson & Cheong, 2010).…”

“…Bulck & Larsson, 2017;Courbet & Courbet, 2014;Gil-Egui, Kern-stone, & Forman, 2016;Harju, 2015;Radford & Bloch, 2012;Sanderson & Cheong, 2010;Walter, 2011), attention has so far been focused on memorial pages created by fans or the mourning of a celebrity on for instance Twitter, and the phenomena of mourning with a celebrity on his Facebook page has not yet been explored. Therefore, The Vin Diesel case may provide useful new insights into the interplay between fandom, affect, and the emerging practice of parasocial mourning on social media (see Klastrup, 2011Klastrup, , 2015DeGroot & Leith, 2015;Gil-Egui et al, 2016).…”

Audiences for stardom and celebrity

“…Such convergences between fan studies and celebrity studies became all the more prevalent after the Internet 'mainstreamed' fandom and made such responses more visible and accessible (for example, Pullen 2004, Franco 2006, with studies ranging across contemporaneous, historical and posthumous stardom/celebrity (Wang 2007, Garde-Hansen 2010, Courbet and Fourquet-Courbet 2014. At the same time, within celebrity studies in particular, there has arguably been a move away from seeing celebrities only or primarily in terms of 'fandom', with the field now recognising a much larger range of cultural, political and affective encounters with celebrity.…”