Research and Studies – 1

These proceedings collect 11 selected contributions presented during the IV Celebrity Studies Journal Conference, held in Rome, at Sapienza University in June 2018. The collection aims at presenting how celebrification and its desecration – the main focus of the conference and of the publication – are an ongoing process produced by a disorderly sequence of significant moments in the celebrity’s career and in the audience’s experience of it in which the media (traditional and digital ones) play a significant role. Understanding processes of desecration is a fundamental step into furthering the knowledge of contemporary society since celebrity culture is not only related to the showbusiness but to politics, market and, more in general, to everyday life. The field of application (and investigation) of celebrity studies is vast and the contributions we are presenting here are no exception. They use a variety of approaches, employ different investigative and research tools, cover different media, touch on a variety of themes and have been applied to the understanding of events of past and contemporary phenomena. The collection has been ‘ideally’ divided into three sections: Stars, Celebrities and Fame; Power, Politics and Prestige; and Celebrity Strategies for the Market and Beyond.