Celebrating with the celebrities: television in public space during two royal weddings

Abstract

The recent emergence of an increasingly participatory media culture has opened up new ways for audiences to collectively negotiate the cultural meanings surrounding celebrities. Public screens are one such phenomenon, where people gather to witness the live broadcast of celebrity events. Taking our point of departure in two recent royal weddings in the UK and Sweden, we explore the performative displays that public viewing affords, as participants interact with the event on screen, with other participants, and with media representatives in the venue. This article provides a fresh analytical perspective on how audiences engage with royal celebrities in such mass-participatory consumption contexts, illuminating a little-studied area of celebrity culture.

Keywords:

• public screens
• performativity
• royal celebrities
• intersectional ethnography
• media events
• identity

Notes

1. Becker was accompanied by colleague and media scholar Alexa Robertson, whose observations were helpful, not least as a sounding board throughout the event.

2. All field notes, interviews, and photographs were shared between us, and then drawn upon for interpretation and analysis, a research triangulation process based on a body of shared experience and knowledge. Through this diverse material from the two primary locations and subsequent reflection upon our individual perspectives and experience of the field, we were able to trace intersections that are typically difficult to locate and examine simultaneously.

3. See, for example, Becker and Widholm (2014).

4. The article is available online: http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/radgivarna-som-ska-gora-daniel-westling-till-prins/ [Accessed 19 December 2014].

5. Blogpost available online: http://katepaccioretti.blogspot.se/2011_04_01_archive.html [Accessed 19 December 2014].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andreas Widholm

Andreas Widholm is Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Södertörn University, Sweden. His research centres on journalism, globalisation, and social and cultural consequences of new media technologies. He has also conducted postdoctoral research at Swedish Radio where he was researcher in residence 2011–2012.

Karin Becker

Karin Becker is Professor Emeritus, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research examines cultural histories and contemporary contexts of visual media practices, currently focusing on media in public space. She directs the Nordic Network of Digital Visuality and ‘Changing Places’, a research project sponsored by the Swedish Research Council, examining global and local events as mediated through public and private screens.