Twitter as a way for celebrities to communicate with fans: Implications for the study of parasocial interaction.

In the last two to three years, social media have proliferated on the Internet. Web sites like MySpace, Facebook, and LiveJournal made it possible for people who had minimal Internet skills to set up personal pages wherein they could share a daily posting of thoughts, philosophies and ideals, photographs, web links and other items of interest with an audience. Celebrities also have availed themselves of social media, but in each of the above cases, in order to give access to audience members or fans, the application often gave away an undesirable level of access to personal information. MySpace is a good example of this. On one's MySpace page are a list of friends and their pages, personal photographs, and other potentially sensitive information. Some celebrities got around this problem by setting up MySpace fan pages where only public information was included, but such sites were mostly run by assistants and a personal touch was often missing. In late 2008, a new social media website became prominent on the Internet as a good alternative for celebrities who wanted to chat with their fans on a personal level without having to give access to personal information. Twitter is that web site, and Tweeting has become popular, not only with celebrities, but with the public at large. While Twitter use is far from universal, a recent Pew Internet study showed that one in five Internet users is now using either Twitter or a similar status updating program (Forrestal, 2011; Fox et al. 2009). Forrestal suggested that Twitter is a good starting place for a conversation with the opportunity to carry the conversation to other levels outside of the service. Clearly Twitter has great potential for all kinds of communication. Hargittai & Litt (2011) found that interest in celebrities and entertainment news in general was a significant predictor of Twitter use for the population of young adults that they sampled in their study. What is unique about Twitter from the celebrity point of view? Most importantly, fans can send the celebrity personal messages without the celebrity needing to grant access to a personal page or site. The celebrity can reply in kind, again without having to join the fan's page or without forming any kind of formal connection with the fan. If a fan is inappropriate, the celebrity can "block" that fan. A celebrity can read or not read "Tweets" from fans as he or she chooses, and fans don't know if their messages are being read unless the celebrity replies. So, as Hargittai & Litt (2011, p. 825) observed, "Users can follow one another's content without reciprocal obligation," a point that is especially important when one of the users is a celebrity. In an era where problems with both stalkers and potentially inappropriate fans are always possible (Dietz et al, 1991; Ferris, 2001; Maltby et al., 2006), Twitter offers a safe forum for interaction with fans. On Twitter home pages are users' basic information, a list and number of who they are following, and another list and number of who is following them. The main part of the page is the "Tweets," the messages that the user has posted. This is true for all users, whether or not they are celebrities. For a private message, the user is the only one who can read it, and private messages can only be sent to someone who is following you. Previous research has shown that Twitter accounts with the largest number of users are celebrity accounts. Actors like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey, or politicians like Al Gore are the most likely candidates for large Twitter followings (Kwak et al, 2010; Marwick, 2010). Academic (i.e. Ebsco Host) searches on "Twitter" yield books about how to market or conduct business using Twitter, e.g. "How Twitter will Change the Way We Live" (Johnson, 2009) or articles about how to help students enhance their social presence online (Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2009). Research about how Twitter is being used is limited thus far, and much of that is contained in recent conference presentations (boyd et al. …