Circulation of Celebrity Culture on Social Media Studying Iranian Celebrities and their fans on Instagram

Due to some socio-economic changes in recent decades, celebrity culture has emerged in Iran society. Popular media products such as yellow magazines and TV shows transform sports athletes, music and cinema artists to popular celebrities. Rising online social media is a new opportunity for celebrity culture, because in one hand new informal space have been created that the government could not have control over it, and on the other hand, ordinary users have obtained power to participate in creating and sharing content. In this context, Instagram has a key role in Iranian Celebrity Culture. Instagram is an online mobile photo and video-sharing and social networking service that enables Iranian celebrities to share their photos with their fans. Moreover, Instagram is one of the few non-Iranian social networking services that have not been filtered by Iranian government and therefore, both celebrities and ordinary users can freely access this application. In this article, I studied Iranian celebrities and the activities of their fans on Instagram. Using qualitative methodology approach, I analyzed celebrity photos and texts on Instagram and their fans’ comments on their posts. Results show that both celebrities and fans use this space for different purposes. In fact, the result of these online activities is the circulation of celebrity culture on Iranian Instagram.