Cate’s quest for fame relies on the shifting nature of the mass in mass communication. User-generated content like her videos has always existed (eg cave paintings, family legends passed down through generations) but now it’s the users who can decide what’s – and who’s – popular.
If an audience feels like they can’t interact / participate with Cate, their interest wanes. The masses are gate-keepers; they hold the power to decide (through content sharing eg. sharing on social media, trending topics etc) what is and isn’t a success. We can’t decide if Cate is interesting or not but we can try to create participation, which is the only way to create popularity. Ways to do this include:
- Interacting with commenters
- Participation in gratuitous hashtagging
- Asking questions of her audience to create a discussion
- Being open and inclusive in the videos so the audience feels like they know her
Participatory culture relies on a sense of incompletion, inviting the next user to offer their opinion, expertise or creativity. Rebecca Black’s Friday and a long, exhaustive comment have the same effect on participation; because there’s nowhere to go and the audience feels unengaged, interest fizzles and the meme or discussion dies. The danger with Cate is that there’s very little for the audience to build on.
Where can the audience go with Cate? How do celebrities find an audience & thrive online? Some are discovered by established celebrities / agents / companies, like Justin Bieber and that guy Fred who got a movie (it has a score of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes). Bloggers and vloggers can also achieve huge popularity, leading to book deals, being involved in promotions for relevant companies and launching their own lines of relevant goods.
Shifman L 2012, ‘An anatomy of a YouTube meme’, New Media & Society, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 187-203, viewed 2 May 2015, Sage Journals.
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