preview

The Mass Culture Critique And Perezhilton.Com Essay

Better Essays

The past two years has seen the media landscape undergo significant developments. New technology, such as the Internet, has fuelled the emergence of new media forms and schisms within the media industry. Mario Armando Lavandeira’s Hollywood celebrity gossip website, PerezHilton.com, exploits a new brand of journalism – blogging. There are innumerable media theories which could be used to analyse such a specific example of the media. This essay will explore Mass Culture Critique and its critical relation to PerezHilton.com by investigating mass communication concepts such as hegemony, aesthetic levels, economic motivation, and passive consumers.

Mass society theory emerged in the late nineteenth century when the invention of the …show more content…

Internet gossip column, PerezHilton.com, is not governed by these requirements. Lavandeira does not have a preset amount of space to fill or deadline to meet, nor does he worry about talent; most of the entries are his own and he does not censor posts from voluntary contributors of the public. Instead of relying on public votes to determine the website’s content, Lavendeira writes about every A-list celebrity, allowing the consumer to choose from a myriad of categories. PerezHilton.com is in constant update 17 to 18 hours a day; whenever a story breaks, Lavandeira is the first to report and endorse his self-proclaimed position as the “Queen of All Media”. Mass Media theorists fail to admit that mass media are at least honest about the lack of originality in content; endless inventiveness and variety are not possible in any field.

“The mass media do not use the best brains or freshest talents.” Elitists assumed that first-rate minds are imaginative and possess good judgement and communication skills by default. Infamous celebrity blogger, Lavandeira acquired popularity through his creative skills and non-standardised competences. “The mass media do not print or broadcast the best material that is submitted to them.” Here, the question arises on how to define the ambiguous term “best”. Every piece of information and material regarding a celebrity submitted to Lavandeira is posted

Get Access