Film stars and social media in India: Traversing the space of virtual fandom

Social media is one of the most important tools of mass communication nowadays. It has not only transformed the entire world with its vast reach but has also witnessed a lot of criticism for its misuse. In the contemporary scenario, social media has attained the status of ’social reality as it has touched almost all the areas of society. The social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have changed the way we communicate with our friends and family and share our ideas, photographs, videos etc., nowadays. Since they have an extensive reach, they also make for a better understanding of the various issues discussed on such platforms. To understand it better, the study tried to borrow certain ideas from the author Lev Manovich who has written on ‘the language of new media, which is quite handy for the paper. Specifically, my paper attempts to understand the language of social media in the contemporary context and does an in-depth analysis of the sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For the same, the study also tries to assess the impact of these sites on the cine-goers due to the uploading of the pictures, stills, videos, and updates about the shoots by the celebrities before the release of the film. This not only raises the curiosity quotient of the movie, but people eagerly await the film's release. Therefore, the paper attempts to analyze the ‘celebrity culture’ and their several posts on social networking sites in the contemporary context, especially in India.