Engagement numbers on accounts providing celeb news updates are huge – with posts attracting thousands or even millions of views, likes and comments.
While the majority of posts use information that is already out there, like interview clips, photoshoots and social media screenshots, some accounts are intruding on stars’ private lives too.
“Social media update accounts have taken what was once quite niche behaviour and made it very public, very mainstream and very intense at scale,” says Dr Georgia Carroll, an expert in fandom and fan engagement.
In years gone by she says “a small community of fans would go and hang outside individuals’ houses or places they frequented” but now, speculation about stars’ whereabouts “is blasted to everybody”.
In some cases, interest in the lives of famous people has bled into intrusion, according to Claire Powell, a celebrity publicist who has spent more than 30 years in the industry.
“It’s really hard for the [celebrity] because there’s no let up,” she says.
Some update accounts will post videos of celebrities walking down the street, browsing shops or sitting in restaurants, while others will share selfies with fans and information on that person’s location.
Powell says clients will often tell her: “I step out my front door and everyone’s following me”.
The publicist believes relationships between celebrities and traditional paparazzi photographers are more mutual and transactional, compared to some of the newer forms of fan surveillance.
“[The media] want the picture, they want the coverage,” she says, “but then also the celebrity needs that as well.”
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