From Clooney to Kardashian: reluctant celebrity and social media

In this paper, we examine social media forms in relation to similarly multimodal, contingent understandings of contemporary celebrity and the politics of what we term ‘celebrity reluctance’. This wavering response to celebrity – a double-facing mode of celebrity performance in which the celebrity is disinclined to perform, yet performs nevertheless – reveals the privilege that constitutes such positioning. After all, to occupy a position of …