The Celebrity System: a National and International Phenomenon.

Celebrity worship has been studied for many years and yet it still is an elusive phenomenon, one that is hardly predictable and at times inexplicable. The three elements of communication - celebrities, product (movie, fiction and show) and public – are part of this specific type of communication too. The main psychological mechanism used by fans is projection, because, through fanatism, they can experience certain emotions “by proxy”. Methods – The aim of this research is to analyze the features that make a character become a celebrity. We identified four fields in society that can produce divism: show business, sport, jet set, politics. A specific questionnaire was created and submitted to 120 subjects (average: 23,8 years old). This questionnaire was about the evaluation of 47 well known national and international personalities, belonging to one of the four identified fields and whose presence in tabloid “Chi” was particularly rich in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Results and conclusions – Cinema creates an international type of celebrity worship and television a “widespread” one or, in other words, a celebrity worship that is short, local and less charismatic. Stars’ most peculiar aspect is fame and their most frequently acknowledge qualities are beauty, luckiness, stubbornness and richness. To conclude, international celebrities keep alive the classical meaning of celebrity worship but there’s also a local acceptation of the term that makes this less showy celebrity worship an element that’s almost part of our everyday lifes.