{"id":115,"date":"2008-12-10T21:59:51","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T21:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jarrodhart.wordpress.com\/?p=115"},"modified":"2008-12-10T21:59:51","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T21:59:51","slug":"celebrity-dynamics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theprovincialscientist.com\/?p=115","title":{"rendered":"Celebrity Dynamics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Celebrity Dynamics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The list of people we all ‘know’ isn’t that long, yes, it probably thousands – politicians, actors, singers, historical figures, sports stars – but in a country like the UK, it is still a remarkably small fraction of the populace.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are ‘spheres’ – people interested in politics know more politicians, sports fans have more sporting heroes – we here in Cornwall have our local ‘Cornish’ celebrities.<\/p>\n

However, if we remembered every celebrity, we would soon run out of space in the public ‘memory’, so we have to be selective.<\/p>\n

The media know this – they constantly face choices of which story to follow, and the decisions will often be arbitrary; two minor celebrities did two things today, and we only have 45 seconds of time to fill in our variety news programme – which shall we choose?<\/p>\n

This decision process is simple – the editor will pick the celebrity who has more recent ‘hits’ in the news.<\/p>\n

Why? Because they know that the audience is more likely to recognise the name – and they know that if the audience hear that name twice\u00a0it reinforces the memory.<\/p>\n

This simple logic creates a very interesting system in which the rise to fame becomes ‘autocatalytic’ – a self-perpetuating, accelerating process. All you need to do is pass some ‘critical point’ of news coverage and you may be in for a ride!<\/p>\n

However, we can only hold so many names in the list, so anyone who is out of the news for a time drops off the radar pretty fast, even if they did once enjoy high exposure.<\/p>\n

If you are like me, you’ll be thinking of exceptions – folks who just stay famous regardless – do they buck this logic? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n

Such people most likely still get exposure, even if its not them in the news – perhaps we see their CD on our shelf, or we talk about their ‘field’ (Thatcherism,\u00a0Darwinism,\u00a0Keynesian economics,), and this may be accentuated if their field gets in the news – as has recently been the case for Keynes.<\/p>\n

So what value does this theory have?<\/p>\n

I think it explains:<\/p>\n