Celebrity and fandom have been studied extensively in real life. However, with more and more celebrities using social media, the dynamics of interaction between celebrities and fans has changed. Using data from a set of 57,000 fans for the top followed celebrities on Twitter, we define a wide range of features based on their Twitter activity. Using factor analysis we find the most important factors that underlie fan behavior. Using these factors, we conduct analysis on (i) understanding fan behavior by gender & age, and (ii) para-social breakup behavior. We find that (i) fandom is a social phenomenon, (ii) female fans are often more devoted and younger fans are more active & social, and (iii) the most devoted fans are more likely to be involved in a para-social breakup. Our findings confirm existing research on para-social interactions. Given the scale of our study and dependence on non-reactive data, our paper opens new avenues for research in para-social interactions.
: Though most analysis of celebrities on social media to date have focused on how the celebrities place themselves, there are a few studies on the role fans' in interacting with celebs. @cite_6 study fans of NBA teams on Facebook and find four key motives for fans to engage with their favorite teams: passion, hope, esteem and camaraderie'. @cite_2 study the role of celebrity self disclosure on Twitter and the reaction of fans. They report that increased celebrity self-disclosure leads to enhanced fans' feeling of social presence, thereby positively affecting para-social interaction with celebrities'.
@cite_6 @cite_2
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This study investigated how celebrities’ self-disclosure on their personal social media, particularly Twitter, affects fans’ perceptions toward those celebrities. An online survey method was utilized among a sample of 429 Twitter users who follow celebrities on Twitter. Results found that celebrities’ professional self-disclosure (e.g., sharing their work-related life) and personal self-disclosure (e.g., sharing their personal life such as friends, family, likes and dislikes) enhanced fans’ feeling of social presence. Further, retweeting celebrities’ tweets also increased the degree of social presence. Finally, data found that social presence positively influenced parasocial interaction with celebrities. This study ends with implications and future research directions. Social media provide fans with an additional means to engage with their team and are a valuable forum for sport organizations to better understand fan motivations and strengthen fan relationships. This study contributes to emerging research on the nature of social media use by revealing the motivations underpinning the desire of fans to communicate on the Facebook sites of several National Basketball Association (NBA) teams. Our findings indicate that fans exercise four key motives as they draw value from the social media enabled connection to the team: passion, hope, esteem and camaraderie. Further, and in light of our understanding of these motives, we identify how this platform can be used to facilitate interaction, a key construct in relationship marketing. A content analysis, using a netnographic methodology, was undertaken to explore online comments by fans of eight purposefully selected NBA teams over a two-week period during the off-season. This period represents strong potential for isolating highly identified fans who are motivated to seek engagement and interaction. Implications for sport managers to further relational goals are identified. Microblogging sites are the direct platform for the users to express their views. It has been observed from previous studies that people are viable to flaunt their emotions for events (eg. natural catastrophes, sports, academics etc.), for persons (actor actress, sports person, scientist) and for the places they visit. In this study we focused on a sport event, particularly the cricket tournament and collected the emotions of the fans for their favorite players using their tweets. Further, we acquired the stock market performance of the brands which are either endorsing the players or sponsoring the match in the tournament. It has been observed that performance of the player triggers the users to flourish their emotions over social media therefore, we observed correlation between players performance and fans' emotions. Therefore, we found the direct connection between player's performance with brand's behavior on stock market. Microblogging services such as Twitter offer great opportunities for analyzing the reactions of a wide audience with respect to current events. In this paper, we explore the correlation between types of user engagement and events centered around celebrities (e.g., personal or professional events involving Actors, Musicians, Politicians, Athletes).