Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet are two of the biggest working actors we have today. They have starred in incredible projects and have gained a large following because of it. Their online presence is quite professional, and their social media is mostly used to promote their upcoming projects. However, it didn’t used to always be like this.
They are quite popular for their online presence earlier on in their careers. They both used to be incredibly active on X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram. They would engage a lot with their fans, whether it be through liking posts, commenting, or exchanging messages. This led to audiences and fans identifying with the actors more due to their authenticity.
A lot of theorists would agree that identity is not something that is fixed but rather something that changes constantly based on situations individuals are in. This is evident in both Zendaya and Timothée’s online presence.
As previously mentioned, their social media accounts are mostly used to promote their work and don’t really show their personality or identity like they did before. They are also less active, engage less with fans, and have both unfollowed everyone that they previously followed. This is a great example of what the theorist Goffman has said about people constantly trying to set themselves in the best light that is favourable to them.
In Goffman’s 1959 book, ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’, he describes the world as a stage and the people in it as performers. This idea can be applied to celebrities, and in this case, celebrities are performers, and social media is their stage. This is due to the fact that they can portray themselves however they want, which ties into the overall idea of impression management. Impression management is known as using certain words or acting a certain way depending on the situation and the audience that’s being interacted with to give the best impression. It can be used to describe Zendaya and Timothée specifically because they once went from constantly engaging with fans to being strictly professional in order to give off the best impression to everyone. This also suggests that celebrities and public figures can be more selective with what they choose to put out there into the world, which means that they can hide more of their personal lives and therefore influence how they are perceived by others. This is known as ‘backstage’, which is a concept in the theory of impression management.
So seeing how Zendaya and Timothée act online now compared to how they did in the past is evidence of how identity is in fact complicated to define because of how it’s constantly changing and is being used for different reasons. All of this can also be used to backup theorists claims of identity being fluid and not fixed.
Really love your idea of the choice of going with and mentioning celebrities with the use of social media. It’s very well descriptive and very informed about social media and how not only us but also well-known celebrities are using social media, such as, in this case, Zendaya. Using examples of tweets posted via celebrities as evidence to back up your point is just well put.
Although your blog post is well put, the format and layout could have been changed, such as mentioning media theories (e.g. Goffman’s 1959 book, the presentation of self in everyday life, and how you talk about it after you mention the use of social media and Zendaya. While it could’ve been used as more of an introduction or a starting point to your blog to gain more of a sighful see of the topic the fact that there are a lot of Twitter screenshots of tweets of celebrities, which is a bit overwhelming to see and sometimes people say, ‘less is more.’
Overall, it’s a good blog to read, but it could use some work to improve it to make it a much more entertaining sight of the use of social media.