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popular personalities like Bono, Elton John, Bob Geldof, or Greta Thunberg.
Another is the elected politician, whose publicity and popularity are based
on political identity and receive similar attention to other well-known people
(e.g. Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Nigel Farage, etc.). This way, we can
differentiate two types of political celebrities. Nevertheless, not all celebrities
will show interest in political matters, and not all politicians will become
celebrities, of course.
Image has always been part of modern-day politics. Nowadays, the image
of a competent politician is not attractive enough in itself for the voters. There
is a need for more by which people can feel the given politician is closer to
them. Being a celebrity helps achieve this. A celebrity politician is neither
good, nor bad per se in today’s political culture, but a phenomenon that is all
over the place (West and Orman, 2003). At the same time, public expectations
towards the politicians are close to that of a celebrity entertainer (Inthorn
and Street 2011, 486-487).
In essence, the theory of network logic implies that politics grasps the
regularities of social media. Scholars separated three processes where the
mass media logic and the network media logic can be detected. These are
production, content distribution, and media usage (Klinger and Svensson
2015, 1247-1251). In the logic of mass media, production is costly, as it must
meet traditional ethical and moral standards. Professional journalists work on
news sorting and content production. Their primary task is content-making.
When journalists sort out specific content details, they decide what is to be
brought to the public’s attention and what remains outside the media. The
determining powers are the audience's interests, profit expectations, and the
owner's intentions in this process.
In network logic, production is not costly. In fact, it is close to zero, as
news sorting and content production is performed by the users who are not
professionals. Their central aim is to distribute the content to as many users as
possible in order to become well known and popular. Content distribution is
done by professionals in the logic of mass media that implies content sorting
as well. The organising principle is based on evolving standards, such as
determining the news value.
At the end of the distribution chain, we find the audience that subscribes
to services (buy the magazine, subscribe to the cable TV package, pay for TV
subscription, or devote time to commercial blocks). In the network logic, the
role of users is similar to intermediates regarding content distribution. They
try to share contents that are thought to be popular and build networks that
are kept in fluid unity by similar fields of interest and common principles, or
the image of opinion leaders. This unity is fluid because the elements of the
networks can continuously change according to actual trends.