Under The Magnifying Glass: How To Study The Celebrities?

Twitter does not lack celebrities, but there is a limit to the number a person can examine in one study, particularly with a restriction on word-count. With that in mind, I feel it is still important to have a large enough group of celebrities that I can form some basic conclusions on how they are presented. I also think it is vital to study a disparate group, both in background and influence, rather than simply the celebrities with the largest number of followers (although I will of course include them), as that will not necessarily present the correct data for the uses celebrities have for Twitter. With this in mind, I chose celebrities based on number of followers, activity levels of tweeting and public presence, as well as who I recognised as an ‘useful’ tweeter i.e. who I felt exemplified a particular style of celebrity tweeting and who would provide what I considered the epitome of personal or professional presentation. To judge how they presented themselves, I looked at how they related to and addressed their followers and what this could be intended to achieve by way of their self-presentation.