00;00;01;03 - 00;00;26;17
Stasia Walmsley
Welcome to the Providence College Podcast. I'm Stasia Wamsley, your guest host for this episode. Today we are talking to Andrea McDonnell, an associate professor and the director of the college's new communications program. She is a media scholar and writer whose work examines the intersection of gossip, celebrity, gender, politics and everyday life with coauthor Susan Douglas. Andrea published Celebrity A History of Fame.

00;00;26;18 - 00;00;31;05
Stasia Walmsley
Her most recent book in 2019. Andrea, welcome to the PC podcast.

00;00;31;12 - 00;00;33;23
Andrea McDonnel
Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be with you.

00;00;34;12 - 00;00;49;08
Stasia Walmsley
I'd like to start by asking you to describe a little bit about your field of study. Our listeners may not be aware of the important research and academic study being done specific to the topics of pop, pop culture and celebrity and and of that intersection with media studies.

00;00;49;25 - 00;01;21;08
Andrea McDonnel
Yeah, absolutely. So I've researched celebrity culture. I started out in the field researching celebrity gossip magazines and magazines, of course, now are a sort of older form of media that aren't as popular in everyday life as people have turned more to social media. My interest in celebrity has shifted more into what's going on on platforms like Twitter, the intersection of celebrity and politics, particular early during the Trump administration.

00;01;21;17 - 00;01;47;14
Andrea McDonnel
And I've always been fundamentally interested in talk and gossip as a form of talk. And the way that gossip has historically been feminized and devalued. And the what I kind of see as a false distinction between gossip and news and how that distinction works to relegate certain types of speech to the margins while elevating other types of communication.

00;01;47;26 - 00;02;13;01
Andrea McDonnel
So yeah, there's actually a good body of research in the field of communication around celebrity studies and studies of media that engage with celebrity culture I think are an important and growing part of the field. Although we often think about celebrity as something that's kind of ephemeral and trivial. I argue that it's actually fundamentally reflective of what's going on in our culture.

00;02;13;21 - 00;02;56;19
Stasia Walmsley
For some folks, they may see this obsession or focus on celebrity being very contemporary or and very current day with the Kardashians and the emergence of Tik Tok. But I know that you have done some research and looking back to the kind of the origins with Beatlemania and Ed Sullivan Show. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how this is a has been an ongoing kind of reflection of of of the culture and how it's so, you know, you were just talking about the importance of it and that it isn't just something that's that is current day but has been part of our cultural history for quite a while.

00;02;57;11 - 00;03;23;17
Andrea McDonnel
Absolutely. So one of the things that Susan Douglas and I wrote about in our book is the way in which celebrity can actually be historic sized and fame is a concept that we can actually trace back even further than the Beatles all the way back to ancient Greece. We can look at the way in which fame and notoriety circulate and renown as a concept.

00;03;24;06 - 00;04;03;01
Andrea McDonnel
Susan and I argue that fame is distinct from celebrity and that when we think about celebrity, it's fundamentally a concept that is linked to media technology, because each concomitant rising media technology has brought with it additional opportunities to expand and proliferate the nature of of fame. So, for instance, we can look back to the fan magazines that develop around the emergence of cinema in the early 19 teens and the way in which that created the concept of the modern movie star.

00;04;03;21 - 00;04;37;01
Andrea McDonnel
And then, as you mentioned, you can trace that all the way up through television to the Internet and now, of course, through platforms like Tik-Tok. It's not that what they're doing is new, but they're expanding and changing and in some instances challenging the way in which we produce and consume celebrity culture. So yeah, I think it's easy to think, Oh, all of this is just brand new and we're suddenly engulfed in this celebrity world or obsession.

00;04;37;01 - 00;04;58;25
Andrea McDonnel
But I do think what's going on is distinct and has different features which are interesting and important. But I think it's also notable that it's part of a continuum of celebrity engagement that is really actually quite something that's sort of been quite baked in for for centuries.

00;04;59;05 - 00;05;39;01
Stasia Walmsley
Mm hmm. Well, even thinking about the old studio actor, model, actress, model, that that was prevalent and this is symbiosis between the media and fandom or celebrity or fan making, I should say, and and celebrity. One of the how this intersects kind of beyond Hollywood, but also touching on Hollywood. I will say that the most recent example of this that seemed to to really be something that captured the interest of the cultural zeitgeist was the Amber Heard Johnny Depp trial.

00;05;39;19 - 00;06;10;21
Stasia Walmsley
And I imagine that that was something that you were able to take a look at pretty closely related to your area of study. And I'm just wondering your take on what Tiktok's involvement in that? Certainly. But beyond that, how celebrities commented and used social media to on Twitter and Instagram to engage in the discourse around that trial and its intersection with feminism and gender representation.

00;06;10;22 - 00;06;18;15
Stasia Walmsley
It was such a for, you know, what it was it seems to me a rich area for study.

00;06;19;12 - 00;06;53;03
Andrea McDonnel
Absolutely. I have so many thoughts about Johnny Depp, Amber Heard Case and so Drew so many people. I was just in Scotland at a conference and I went to the oldest sweetshop in Scotland and there was a mother and daughter who running the shop, and they asked me where I'm from and they asked you what you do. And so low behold a 40 minute conversation about Johnny Depp, because people want to talk about it and they want to talk about it because it is so rich, as you say.

00;06;54;02 - 00;07;21;23
Andrea McDonnel
Again, it's easy to see that as a tawdry, trashy bit of media that we should just ignore or, you know, get over that It's just, you know, malicious and petty and all these things. But in actuality, the Johnny Depp case, it reveals so much. It's actually quite political in my mind. First, it's easy to forget that it's a libel case.

00;07;22;04 - 00;07;49;29
Andrea McDonnel
It's not a divorce lawsuit. It's not a criminal case. It was about him suing her for comments that she made to the press in which she did not name him. And so the idea that he would win, which essentially he won, he was awarded much more money than she was from the case that he would win a libel case against someone based on comments that were made that did not name him.

00;07;51;02 - 00;08;53;25
Andrea McDonnel
I see that as part of a broader trend in the United States that we have seen under the Trump administration, a push towards what he would call opening up libel laws, making it easier to prosecute people for engaging in free speech. So there's that component. The media component is fascinating, as you point out, the way in which the both sides, both sides, PR teams used social media platforms to engage the public around the case, the way in which fans of Johnny Depp in particular use platforms like Tok to to rally behind him to defame her in the public sphere as a way of shifting public sentiment is a fascinating sort of case study as to

00;08;53;25 - 00;09;33;23
Andrea McDonnel
how fandom can operate the the positive affordances and potential dark side of fandom to my mind. And then I think it's actually a really harrowing case when it comes to the public's treatment of women in positions of visibility. So we have had this sense, I think, in America for the last couple of years, and I've heard the term bandied about that we're in a post MeToo moment that suddenly we have crossed the threshold where sexual assault cases and harassment are no longer going to be tolerated.

00;09;34;04 - 00;10;14;18
Andrea McDonnel
And I think what this case shows in terms of the vitriol that was directed against Amber Heard and the way in which Johnny Depp came out largely actually looking quite good in the public eye, despite what what emerged in the trial of clearly what was, to my mind, an instance of domestic abuse is that we are not post anything, that we are still very much in a culture in which women are not believed when they come forward with these kinds of accounts.

00;10;15;08 - 00;10;45;16
Andrea McDonnel
And it's reflected in a number of other cases that are going on right now. For me, I'm very interested in the lawsuits against Marilyn Manson, and there have been a lot of similarities in terms of the way that Marilyn Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, has tried to use the criminal justice system to essentially silence those who have come forward with allegations against him.

00;10;46;26 - 00;11;08;01
Andrea McDonnel
So I think that the case is really a fascinating microcosm of celebrity culture of what's going on in politics and what's going on with gender relations. Unfortunately, to me, it's a very negative reflection, but it makes sense that people want to talk about it because there are strong feelings there.

00;11;08;22 - 00;11;30;08
Stasia Walmsley
And the precedent that it sent in. And I think there is some interest by Marilyn Manson to have his own libel cases, bring his own libel cases, as I understand it. So it is beyond what people are talking about. It's setting potentially some, you know, civil law precedents, too, right?

00;11;30;09 - 00;12;04;21
Andrea McDonnel
Yes. Yes. Melania Trump had sued for libel when she was first lady, Marilyn Manson has filed numerous lawsuits, including, I think, one of the more recent ones, when Evan Rachel Wood recently released a documentary on HBO about her experience as a domestic violence victim of of his, that he he sued her a couple of weeks before in order to try to prevent the release of the documentary.

00;12;05;12 - 00;12;40;08
Andrea McDonnel
So, yeah, I think I think there are not a number of cases. It's a growing trend, really, as I see it, in which powerful and famous people, usually men of of financial means, will use their financial position and their public power in order to try to prevent unflattering, damaging information from coming into the public sphere. And we can link this with Ellen.

00;12;40;18 - 00;13;22;09
Andrea McDonnel
I'm not saying that he's doing this, but, you know, you can think about this in the context of Elon Musk trying to purchase Twitter and people like Sheldon Adelson purchasing newspapers and things like that are are now I'm blanking on, oh, like Bill Gates for wanting to purchase wanting to control the press through financial leverage. And I think that that is really a threat to democracy because when you have that, you know, the question of what is true, what is real, it starts to be up for grabs.

00;13;22;09 - 00;13;52;16
Stasia Walmsley
But yeah, and I think it's very interesting that you mentioned a little while ago that there is a it's worth talking about gossip and news as being linked. Maybe more than people would like to think it is. But what is fascinating to me in in terms of what you have just mentioned is how do you keep up with all of this news?

00;13;52;16 - 00;14;05;24
Stasia Walmsley
It's coming. You know, it's coming so fast and there are so many intersections here and there are so many channels. You know, how do you how do you keep up with all of what's going on in this this area?

00;14;06;15 - 00;14;38;03
Andrea McDonnel
I think the average consumer of information is struggling to keep up. And I think that is why we have seen statistically lower end and continuing to decline levels of trust in media, including mainstream, including sort of legacy media like the New York Times and network news. I think people don't know where to turn. Even media savvy people, even educated people.

00;14;38;09 - 00;15;08;29
Andrea McDonnel
It's like drinking from a fire hose every day. You're getting your news on Twitter, you're getting your news from your friend's Facebook page. You're getting news on TikTok. Whether or not you can sexualize it as news, you're getting information there. Maybe you're still reading a local paper. What what if they disagree? And then, you know, if you pop on TMZ, is that news if you're watching, you know, last week tonight with John Oliver, is that news in lots of ways, All of these things are news, but they're also entertainment.

00;15;09;08 - 00;15;41;06
Andrea McDonnel
And some of it is a joke on purpose and some of it is not true on purpose or not on purpose. You know, we're all kind of in this constant stew of churning information. I don't blame people who say, you know what, I'm just like tuning out because it can be overwhelming. But I think that's that's one of the reasons we've seen this lower trust in news organizations, because people are overwhelmed.

00;15;41;23 - 00;15;58;21
Stasia Walmsley
Yeah. And for you personally, personally, being an academic in this area, do you do you struggle or take breaks or need to disconnect in different ways because it can be so all consuming with this amount of content?

00;15;59;11 - 00;16;31;20
Andrea McDonnel
Definitely. I consumed a lot of cable news during the Trump administration. There was a sense of needing to know, having a civic responsibility, to know about certain issues, but that also brought with it a lot of anxiety for me personally, to be honest. And once Biden came into office, I actually, for a variety of reasons, canceled my cable subscription.

00;16;32;13 - 00;17;01;28
Andrea McDonnel
You know, for a media scholar, you're like, Wow, I needed a break from the churn. Now, of course, I'm still on Twitter. I'm still reading news online. I know I'm still getting information. And of course, I love talking about things with people. So I get a lot of interpersonal news as well. But I definitely think that it's understandable and even healthy to look at your media diet sometimes and say, you know, what?

00;17;01;28 - 00;17;45;05
Andrea McDonnel
Am I constantly consumed? You know, how is this making me feel? And what if you feel as I do? There's a kind of ethical responsibility as an informed citizen to have a level of knowledge about topics that impact us at the same time, being aware of how that can have an impact on our mental health. You know, like I know couple of weeks ago when the decision and the Supreme Court decision came down about Roe versus Wade being overturned, there was a lot of sharing on social media that was powerful and important, but also deeply personal and traumatic.

00;17;45;05 - 00;18;16;03
Andrea McDonnel
And people can understandably be, you know, very emotional about that. Sure. There's only you have to you have to balance your need to know, your desire to know your responsibility. And I do think that we all have a responsibility to tune in to things, especially when there's a lot at stake. But we have to balance that with our own ability to be healthy and treat ourselves well.

00;18;16;18 - 00;18;56;02
Stasia Walmsley
Sure. And I think that's actually a really good segue way to what I wanted to talk about next, which is the program that you are leading here at Providence College on the communications program and the recent launch of the new Communications minor here. And I'm just curious how some of these topics come up in your classes and in classes of your colleagues with with students and kind of their their interest and understanding of the responsibility they have in consuming media and how they they balance that with their own mental health at a precarious time in their own adulthood.

00;18;56;02 - 00;18;56;11
Stasia Walmsley
Right?

00;18;57;05 - 00;19;32;28
Andrea McDonnel
Absolutely. So I think that my goal as someone who teaches communication and media studies is to foster media literacy, meaning that helping students to understand where they're getting their media from, you know, what are the structures in place that shape that content? What effect can they have on it? And also to put it in a historical context, one of the things that I try really hard to do in the intro class, which I'm teaching again in the fall, is to look at the history of media.

00;19;32;28 - 00;20;02;22
Andrea McDonnel
We go back to print and radio moving forward and say, you know, what is it about these technologies that change the culture? And also, hey, those issues, we think about that as being something from the past, but actually issues about fear and anxieties about what the potential problems of radio could be are not really all that different from some of the fears and anxieties that we might have about something like Tick tock or Instagram.

00;20;03;01 - 00;20;35;20
Andrea McDonnel
And so to put students own experience in a kind of context of the field, I always also am deeply aware that students are in many ways the experts on contemporary platforms. There are things that they are using and they know them in a granular detail that I, as an elder millennial, will never understand or use in that way.

00;20;36;01 - 00;21;19;07
Andrea McDonnel
So I always look to see what are they doing and how are they using and experiencing this technology. So I love that opportunity to bring their own expertise in media, which they all have. Like they can tell you instantly the differences between this, this and that and where you go for this kind of behavior and where you go for that and to kind of get them thinking about, okay, if you feel awful every time you go on Instagram, why are you still going on that platform to have those conversations and and they talk to one another about those issues.

00;21;19;23 - 00;21;46;26
Andrea McDonnel
And sometimes they do research projects and see what scholars are finding out about the effects of these. And I think that, you know, there's this real fascination and intellectual curiosity that students bring to these topics because it's it's just so ingrained in their lives. You know, the students who are 20 years old today, you know, have had a cell phone since many of them since they were in elementary school.

00;21;47;06 - 00;22;17;03
Andrea McDonnel
It's a it's a fundamentally different lived experience than, you know, you and I have had. Absolutely. So so being able to, I always think, think critically about media without necessarily being negative, but to think about what am I doing? Why am I doing it? What is the impact of that? How could I, if I were to move into this industry, how could I have that have a positive impact?

00;22;17;03 - 00;22;33;17
Stasia Walmsley
And I know in your previous role before you came to PC, you were Emmanuel College and worked advising students there in their research studies. Have you had an opportunity to work with any students here at PC in particular areas of research?

00;22;34;13 - 00;23;01;21
Andrea McDonnel
I haven't had the opportunity in my first year here to do independent studies with students, and I look forward to doing that this year as we have nine students who are going to be seniors this year in the program. But I have worked with students in the intro program and they have done group projects for their final projects about topics ranging from conspiracy theory in media.

00;23;02;12 - 00;23;32;28
Andrea McDonnel
They're looking at the impact of media on politics. Some of them have looked at those social media pages, the impact of photo editing on body image and beauty ideals. So these are topics that they come up with organically, topics that are salient for them. And then it's really such a pleasure for me to be able to work with them to develop those projects and to see where they take them.

00;23;34;15 - 00;24;18;27
Stasia Walmsley
And I thought it was very interesting that you were saying, too, that their their experience and their attitudes and behaviors helped to inform your understanding of the of the discipline. And I also know that you have worked kind of outside of of PC and with particular groups and conferences. And I think very recently, I think I saw on your Twitter that you had gone to a seminar with the Ross Priory Group for research on broadcast Talk, and I was wondering that seems like it was a a place where like my like minded scholars in this area could talk about what's what's new and next.

00;24;18;27 - 00;24;25;01
Stasia Walmsley
So I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about what some of the hot topics were at that at that session?

00;24;25;24 - 00;24;50;09
Andrea McDonnel
Yeah, definitely. So I've been really fortunate over the past five years to be part of the Ross Priory Group. This was actually the 30th anniversary of the meeting and I was originally introduced to the group by one of my dear friends and mentors, Paddy Scannell, who's a founding figure in media studies, and it's a group of Scholars International.

00;24;50;09 - 00;25;32;15
Andrea McDonnel
I'm actually the only American person who was there this year, but so it's actually fascinating to see globally kind of what's going on in the UK, what's going on in China, what's going on in Sweden, what are people talking about when it comes to broadcast? And, you know, broadcast is in this context broadly defined. So looking out at social media, looking at different media platforms and so, well, one of the hot topics this year was looking at what's going on with the UK elections and the prime Minister thinking about how the news discourse around this is constructed.

00;25;33;26 - 00;26;16;29
Andrea McDonnel
We also had a really interesting talk from Professor Martin Montgomery about the question of the real what is how is reality constructed in in TV news and interviews? What if we what if we can agree on what is real, that kind of thing. Also looking at what's how during the pandemic communication on broadcast changed or different platforms have been used during the pandemic to communicate in ways that had different affordances that were necessary during that time.

00;26;16;29 - 00;26;46;28
Andrea McDonnel
Yeah, So it's just always interesting to see There tends to be kind of themes that converge, even though it's not planned that all these different people are sometimes thinking about similar topics without knowing it. So I find it so engaging and inspiring and motivating to listen and talk with people. It's a very small conference compared to many academic conferences, so it's really like a get together in a meeting.

00;26;46;28 - 00;27;17;27
Andrea McDonnel
It's really a workshop, if you will, to talk about what people are into. And this year I presented on on some of these are assault cases and celebrity media with specifically looking at Hulk Hogan, Marilyn Manson and Donald Trump and the way that they have used discourse in the popular press to try to distance themselves from allegations of sexual assault.

00;27;17;27 - 00;27;25;15
Andrea McDonnel
Yeah, So that that's a project that I'm working on right now, and it was great to be able to share it in an early stage with with folks at the meeting.

00;27;26;08 - 00;27;40;21
Stasia Walmsley
And I was just I was going to ask, what are you working on right now and kind of what's next within your within your area of study? And then also, you know, how that will inform how you continue to lead the program here at PC?

00;27;41;05 - 00;28;05;26
Andrea McDonnel
Oh, definitely. Yeah. So I actually just finished up an edited collection with my colleague Adam Silver, who is a political scientist at Emmanuel College called A Gossip Politic. And that's going to be out later this year with Paul Grace and a number of members of the Ros Priory Group have chapters in the book. It's divided into three parts.

00;28;05;26 - 00;28;41;09
Andrea McDonnel
It looks at the relationship between gossip in the press, gossip in the presidency and gossip in the public. So each section takes up that topic as a way of thinking about precisely what we started off the conversation with, thinking about the way in which gossip and news are intertwined and the effect that gossip has had on presidents and and White Houses, and then also thinking about how the public has been influenced and has influenced gossip in the public sphere.

00;28;41;09 - 00;29;18;20
Andrea McDonnel
So excited about that. And then the next project that I'll just starting on now is this project about sort of the way in which these powerful male figures have worked to try to use this, this their celebrity persona as a kind of shield against allegations of sexual assault? So, yeah, definitely. I, I see, you know, my work informs my teaching and that celebrity is definitely a place where students are often interested.

00;29;19;02 - 00;29;43;25
Andrea McDonnel
So it can be a kind of sort of fun, if you will, meeting ground and to which to say, Oh, you're interested in that. I'm interested in that, too. What do you think about this? And when they start to kind of peel the onion open, they start to have these really rich conversations about, oh, well, you know, I'm a fan of, you know, this athlete or this celebrity.

00;29;43;25 - 00;29;49;06
Andrea McDonnel
And, hey, you know, when I start thinking about it, actually, there might be more to it than meets the eye.

00;29;49;14 - 00;30;06;04
Stasia Walmsley
Right. Right. So thank you so much for being with us today. Is there anything that we didn't cover in terms of the topics that you wanted to discuss or wanted the the the community who listens to our podcast to know about about what you're doing with them here at PC or or otherwise?

00;30;06;25 - 00;30;27;22
Andrea McDonnel
Oh, I just love to say that one of the things that sometimes students think they have to be declared in the communication minor in order to take the Gateway class Comm 100, but you don't. So if you're interested in communication at all and you'd love to talk or learn more, even if you don't have any intention of being a communication minor, I'd love to see you in Comm 100.

00;30;28;01 - 00;30;35;03
Andrea McDonnel
Please feel free to reach out. And I'm looking forward to what the New Year has in store for the communication program.

00;30;35;03 - 00;31;02;06
Stasia Walmsley
Very cool. That's great to know and we'll make sure that that is we let our student population know that that is that is an option for them. I know it's a very popular topic, even with our prospective students and families coming in to interested in communications here at PC. So I wanted to end the podcast by talking a little bit where we're big fans of our our furry friends here at the PC podcast.

00;31;02;06 - 00;31;09;00
Stasia Walmsley
So I know that I've seen on your Twitter that you have a dog named Gizmo, and he's adorable. So how is Gizmo doing?

00;31;09;17 - 00;31;45;09
Andrea McDonnel
Gizmo is doing great. Yes. We have a dog called Gizmo. He is, we think, a corgi spaniel mix and adopted him from Arkansas about three years ago now and very big proponent of of pet adoption so adopt don't shop and yeah I just love spending time with the dog taking him on walks around Rhode Island. He loves to go to the beach and swim and chase the ducks with some illusion that he will one day catch one with his that I hope will never come true.

00;31;47;00 - 00;31;59;14
Stasia Walmsley
That's great. Well, thanks so much for being with us, Andrea, and have a wonderful rest of your summer. Looking forward to seeing you on campus this semester, this fall. So thank you so much.

00;31;59;28 - 00;32;02;25
Andrea McDonnel
Thank you. So nice to see you.

00;32;02;25 - 00;32;21;22
Stasia Walmsley
Thank you for tuning in to the Providence College Podcast. Episodes are available wherever you get your podcasts and on the college's YouTube channel or your smart speaker. Thank you to our guests. Andrea McDonald and PC podcast producer Chris Judge. I'm Stasia Walmsley. Thanks for listening.