Spending time in the network

Celebrity relationships on Twitter

Abstract

There have been very few studies on the time celebrities spend building and maintaining relationships with other celebrities. To fill the gap in the literature, the current study investigates how celebrities are connected through Twitter. A seed list of celebrities was developed from the attendees of the 2019 Annual Camp Google. After a Twitter crawl, a total matrix of 136 celebrities was created and UCINET was used to measure density and centrality within the network. The results show that a loose emergent network exists among uber-celebrities. However, although the links are tenuous, several leaders do emerge within the network. There are multiple take-aways relative to the current study including the notion that celebrities are continually forging and terminating relationships, the idea that there is obviously an interpersonal network among uber-celebrities which is hidden from public view and further support for the notion that there is a complicated and loose industry revolving around celebrity.