Dishing Dirt in the Digital Age ― Celebrity Gossip Blogs and Participatory Media Culture

Beginning in the mid-2000s, celebrity gossip blogs exploded into the media market, challenging the traditional dominance of print tabloids as the primary space of celebrity dish and reconfiguring the audience’s role in celebrity culture. This book is a critical and historical examination of the impact of the technological and textual shifts engendered by new media on the use of celebrity gossip as a form of everyday cultural production. Examining six popular American gossip blogs – Perez Hilton and Jezebel among them – at a peak moment of influence in the mid-2000s, this book explores how the technological affordances of new media enable the merging of the social practice of gossip with the practice of reading, creating an evolving participatory and community-based media culture that continues to transform celebrity culture in the digital age.

Erin A. Meyers is Assistant Professor in the Communication & Journalism Department at Oakland University. She holds an M.A. in women’s studies with a focus on gender representation in popular media from The Ohio State University and a PhD in communication from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has published articles on celebrity, popular culture, and new media in The Journal of Popular Culture, In Media Res, Celebrity Studies, and New Media and Society. She has also contributed to The Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media (2011) and Communicate! (2010).