Research Goals

GOALS

In brief, the research involves four goals:

  1. Identification of a corpus of media products starring old age celebrities. Observation of communicative and social dynamics within social media profiles.
  2. Comparative analysis of digital content, aimed at identifying key gender differences between celebrities, both in media products and in the management of social pages and profiles.
  3. Identification of a corpus of elderly "sports" celebrities.
  4. Study of the older celebrity-model’s (possible) influences on specific generational cohorts. Analysis of the evaluation of new elderly celebrity models made by audiences, and diversified by generational cohorts.

 

METHODOLOGY

In order to reach the project’s goals, we consider it appropriate to adopt a mixed-method approach that integrates different qualitative research methods with quantitative research methods. 

  • Media content analysis (Macnamara 2005; Krippendorff 2012; Schreier 2012; Tipaldo 2014): qualitative media content analysis can be useful to understand how the celebrity-aged relationship is represented in the media and what mainstream and grassroots narratives are being carried out, including by celebrities themselves. For this reason, it may be useful to proceed with the identification of a selected corpus with international comparisons between movies, TV series, magazine/news outlets, TV shows, and social media (in the latter case with a selection of celebrity categories).
  • Focus groups: focus groups (Acocella 2005; Sorice 2007), conducted with celebrity fans, make it possible to understand, from a selected group that respects certain parameters and characteristics, how the celebrity and aging phenomenon is perceived, starting with media narratives (media institutions, media companies, newspapers, etc.) and the narratives that the celebrities themselves carry out (social media, television broadcasts, etc.). The interaction between constituents that can be generated during focus groups is a non-negligible element, as it can see considerations emerging from peer-to-peer discussions that might not emerge in an interview.
  • Sentiment analysis: sentiment analysis (Ge et al. 2018), both textual and applied to images on social media (Wang et al. 2015; Ortis et al. 2019), can be useful because, starting from certain topics, it allows us to understand how the phenomenon is conceived on a large scale, on large corpora. In particular, it may be interesting not only to analyze polarity (positive, negative, or neutral sentiment), but to understand what terms or adjectives are associated with the celebrity and old age phenomenon, on the Web, where discussions are often carried on unfiltered.
  • Audio-Video diaries: we intend to apply an experimental method, which consists in creating short videos (with subsequent data collection and analysis) in a vertical format and following the grammars of some social media. Videos will be produced by research participants on their own. Through these videos participants will tell their perceptions and opinions regarding the senior celebrity in question. As in the case of diaries in written form, through video diaries participants will document and record their reflections on celebrities, narrating spontaneously and according with their own natural timing.