Virtual Celebrities, Familiar Strangers in Social Media Era

Virtual reputation is available to ordinary people who publish their private pictures, friendly texts and entertaining videos, and ask attention of other users through this. Celebrity culture researchers have described famous social media-based figures with different names, among them the term "micro celebrity" is more than the others. With the advent and the expansion of social media and the membership of millions of Iranian users in them, "earning of attention" has become a pleasant and desirable commodity, So that people from any group and from any age are demanding it. Some of these ordinary people are now celebrities of social media. But Iranian researchers have been less concerned with the reasons for their reputation. In this study, based on ethnographical approach to virtual pages, we identified some Iranian women who have come to fame on the Instagram for various reasons in recent years. We found the similarities and differences between them. Dividing Iranian micro celebrities into seven categories and describing the characteristics of each category are the most important findings of this research.