Click here to join the talk on YouTube Live

Cultural critics argue that we are obsessed with fame.  They say we are fixated on the famous, and a lot of us covet it.  In some form, isn’t just about everyone playing out a performance on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook?

In this discussion, we explore the topics of fame and celebrity through the prism of sociology, the study of human group behavior.  We discuss:

• what it means to be “famous”,
• how fame is created,
• how fame is used to influence and profit,
• how fame is sustained and fades, and
• how “cancellation” is supposed to work, and how it often works

This discussion presents part of Professor Joseph Cohen’s research on podcasting and content creation entrepreneurship.  Professor Cohen, Professor Ryan Sperry and other collaborators are currently conducting research on the podcasting medium, the evolving podcast industry, and the larger cultural field of podcasting.  This research is based on interviews of podcasting entrepreneurs and subfield experts, and through field experimentation through the Queens Podcast Lab.

On YouTube Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh6nF5cA9OI

Photo Credit.By Ben Sherman – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3731410