Political Celebrity Research Articles

Teoria i praktyka celebrytyzacji politycznej. Celebryci polityczni w internetowych serwisach plotkarskich

Celebrities are becoming a subject of growing interest for researchers and journalists. Studies on fame and popularity have become a separate research field with its own academic periodical. There are emerging books devoted solely to celebrities in the world of politics discussing the phenomenon of the increasing role of fame in modern politics, given the context of tabloidization, post-politics or the ‘entertainization’ of politics. Although the corpus of literature dealing with studies on political celebrities is increasing, this field continues to struggle with at least two fundamental issues. The first difficulty concerns the operational application of the concept of celebrity to describe the realm of politics. The second one concerns the limited number of empirical analyses of the phenomenon of political celebritization. The aim of this paper is to begin to fill this gap. The first part analyzes terminological difficulties concerning the concept of political celebrity. Next, the author suggests a new approach to this concept.

Political celebrity and the Olympic movement: exploring the charismatic authority of IOC presidents

In this paper, we explore the modernisation of the role of president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by analysing the actions of three men who held the position during the twentieth century: Pierre de Coubertin, Avery Brundage and Juan Antonio Samaranch. Employing Weber's concept of charismatic authority, and considering its connections to, and congruence with, contemporary understandings of political celebrity, we examine how each of these men mobilised their influence and authority to reinvigorate the political energy of Olympic sport and benevolent Olympism, particularly in times of crisis and/or apathy. In turn, we illustrate how the IOC under Samaranch came to embrace celebrity culture and spectacle in a way that solidified the organisation's legitimacy, power and influence amidst the challenges of governance posed by late modernity. Our central argument is that all three of these men were charismatic leaders, in the Weberian sense, and that they mobilised this authority using the forms, means and opportunities of power particular to their respective time periods. In turn, the extent to which they can be considered political celebrities should be considered against the ‘routinised authority’ that has become ascribed to the position of the IOC president itself.

Domesticating Electricity: Expertise, Uncertainty, and Gender, 1880–1914 (review)

Reviewed by: Domesticating Electricity: Expertise, Uncertainty, and Gender, 1880–1914 Carolyn M. Goldstein (bio) Domesticating Electricity: Expertise, Uncertainty, and Gender, 1880–1914. By Graeme Gooday. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008. Pp. ix+292. $99. The preeminence of electricity in the home was not inevitable, argues Graeme Gooday in this intriguing book. Locating his study “outside the sway of modernization theory,” the author rejects the deterministic quality of previous scholarship interpreting the “impact” of technology on the home. Influenced by Anthony Giddens and Clifford Geertz, the author embraces a “domestication” approach used in cultural studies to understand recent media technologies. Rather than ask how British homes were electrified, Gooday frames his study by asking why British householders chose to have electricity in their homes at all. Gooday characterizes the domestication of electrification as a “two-fold process” that involved both the translation of electric lighting and power supply from the public world to the private home, and the “taming” of electric light and cooking for the purposes of adapting these power sources to the domestic order. This second aspect of the process required overcoming cultural uncertainties, including concerns about safety and aesthetics, about both arc and incandescent lighting. The many “contingencies associated with the domestication of electricity” [End Page 935] (p. 220) are thus the subject of this investigation, which focuses on England, while making many useful comparisons to the United States. Most of the book is devoted to examining the cultural debates about electricity in the 1880s and 1890s, with a focus on the considerable efforts of promoters, entrepreneurs, and commentators who helped to demonstrate why consumers should have electricity in their homes. Through a close reading of the contemporary press, Gooday considers the class and gender identity of these historical actors and their audiences, and he reveals the technical and cultural work that a group of experts performed in creating a stable meaning—and market—for electricity in the home. Domesticating Electricity calls attention to the large number of accidents caused by electricity in the late nineteenth century, and makes a convincing case for a resulting fear that provided a significant obstacle to electrical promoters. The examination of the diverse public response to a much-publicized death in 1881 of a domestic worker at the home of political celebrity Lord Salisbury provides a jumping-off point for Gooday to explore an array of technical, organizational, and cultural efforts—ranging from wiring regulations to theatrical productions featuring electrical fairies—to establish electricity as safe. In one of the book’s most interesting examples, the author highlights a gendered conflict that was central to the introduction of electric light. While most men appreciated the brightness of incandescent light, many women objected to its glare. In response, in the early 1890s fixture companies hired women to design silk lampshades and find other aesthetic solutions. Alice Gordon, the wife of electrical engineer James Edward Henry Gordon, mounted a campaign to promote an idea of “decorative electricity.” She emerged as an influential female voice, guiding wealthy homeowners in a series of techniques to temper and soften incandescent lighting. Rather than push a modern or industrial look, Gordon emphasized strategies for making electric light appear more traditional. The story of Gordon’s campaign and its reception points to the idea that authorities and experts were often audience-specific, and offers a look at how individuals establish their authority as experts. Gooday’s thorough examination of the reception of Gordon’s book suggests that the issue of electrical aesthetics was a major one in its time. It also highlights the untidy, “nonconsensual” array of ideas about who was qualified to speak as an expert about domestic electricity and why. There is great value to setting aside assumptions that electrification of the home was bound to happen, and Gooday does an excellent job at critically examining a process that many scholars have taken for granted. In contrast to David Nye’s Electrifying America (1990), this work points our attention away from effects of technological change on the home to paint a more complicated, gradual picture of the process by which engineers, [End Page 936] entrepreneurs, experts, and consumers together adapted electricity to the domestic environment. By uncovering sources...

The City Personified: The Geopolitical Narratives of Rudy Giuliani

The article examines the growing interest in political celebrity and urban branding within media and cultural studies. It stresses the significance of narrative strategies in political statecraft, with specific reference to the intimate relationship between mayors and cities. It focuses on the figure of Rudy Giuliani, both in his period as mayor of New York between 1993 and 2001, and in his subsequent political and private lives, paying close attention to how the event of 9/11 acted as a pivot in his political career. After conceptualizing the relationship between mayors and cities through a discussion of public discourse, celebrity, and political scale, the paper then identifies three processes by which Giuliani has personified New York: first, through narrative control and self-projection within the New York political sphere, by considering his use of selected city sites as a form of synecdoche in his media strategies, and his marginalization of those who challenged him politically; second, through his elevated celebrity status and visual representation by the media in the aftermath of 9/11; and third, through the genre of autobiography and branding, via his book Leadership and related commercial activities, whereby he shifted the scale of his narrative beyond New York.

LIFE AFTER POLITICAL DEATH: FORMER LEADERS IN WESTERN DEMOCRACIES

What comes next after high political and governmental office in contemporary Western representative democracies? The role of former leaders is a neglected issue in the study of political leadership in representative democracies. There is no fixed or predetermined role—former leaders have to work it out for themselves, and what they do depends very much on personal choices and on circumstances. In the era of the career politician, the presidentialisation of leadership and the political celebrity, and with intensified and personalised media coverage of politics and leaders, it has become more difficult for former leaders to quietly retire and fade from the scene—even if they want to, and many do not. Individual agency is only part of the picture, however. Contextual factors play a crucial role. First of all there is the importance of the immediate political situation in terms of the circumstances of the former leader's exit from office, alongside the internal party dynamics and relations with the successor-leader. Second, institutional factors structure the opportunities and choices that former leaders face. Finally, the broader environment of modern politics, from the 1960s and 1970s onwards, has clearly opened up new opportunities and possibilities for former leaders.

Lights, Camera, Election: Celebrity, Performance and the 2010 UK General Election Leadership Debates

The 2010 general election was the first in the UK in which a series of televised leaders’ debates were broadcast. This article takes forward research on mediated political performance and the relationship between celebrity and politics through an analysis of these debates. By discussing how the candidates perform ‘personality’, the article highlights the use of performance in constructing informality and a personalised audience address, contrasting these with where candidates engage in conventional political speech-making. The article also examines the strategic use of language, particularly where it is designed to align speakers with the public in opposition to the political establishment. The article argues that celebrity should not be viewed as an innate quality but instead as an interpretative set of frames, the terms of which are established through performance. The article concludes by reflecting upon the implications that can be drawn about the relationship between performance, framing and political celebrity.

Message from the Women's Worlds Congress: Women, Globalization and Modernity

In this paper, I analyze how the global feminist conference, Women's Worlds Congress 2011, imposes on its audience a certain political vision of the current order and the position of women. Modernity, which is implicitly regarded as the best way for women to improve their lives, is really only one of the many options available, but is made to look like as if it were the only reasonable choice women could make. One of my recent leadership experiences, namely my participation as a presenter at the Women’s Worlds Congress in Canada, focuses on what are frequently referred to as “girls’ and women’s issues”. The Women’s Worlds Congress (WWC) is especially interesting for me to analyze as it was an international-level event, which received media coverage reaching tens of millions of people around the globe and involved participation of prominent political figures and celebrities. So, it can be claimed that this event has left a trace in at least some of its audience’s views and perceptions. The postcolonial theory course provided me with the theoretical foundation I can now use to critique some of the major assumptions underlying the global feminist conference, specifically the language used by WWC when presenting its vision and goals. This language raises a number of critical questions theorized by Mohanty, Chakrabarty, and some other authors. Most importantly, borrowing from Mohanty’s analysis, this language portrays women as an “alwaysalready constituted” and homogeneous group based on shared oppressions and exclusions from the benefits of various phenomena, particularly, in the WWC context, globalization (200). This is evident in the following phrases: “How are women particularly restricted, excluded, or secluded from any possible benefits of globalization?”, “Globalization has contributed to the destabilization and marginalization of women and communities. Yet certain consequences have yielded positive results for women”, and “Women are using new tactics to break cycles of

Political Celebrities – a New Dimension of Political Leadership

Political leadership is still a research area requiring the most up-to-date approaches, since, being a constant phenomenon in its essence, it is subject to the processes of form transformation. Throughout history, we can indicate the directions of change of the leadership phenomenon. From tribal communities, where often quasi-political functions were combined with religious functions (based on the charismatic authority of shamans), through the time of statesmen and ideological leadership, we have now arrived at the era of media leaders.

From Street into the World: Towards a Politicised Reading of Celebrity Humanitarianism

Since John Street's article on celebrity politics in 2004, the integral role of celebrities in contemporary humanitarian politics has been increasingly acknowledged in the study of international relations. However, as argued in this article, this research has been limited to analysing appearances rather than examining the aesthetics of celebrity representations and their ‘thought worlds’ that contribute also to the structures, relations and processes of world politics. This article addresses this dearth of critical attention and proposes an approach to engage with celebrity humanitarian imaginaries politically by turning to critical humanitarianism and cultural and post-colonial studies. It concludes that by failing to acknowledge the historicity, conditions and effects of celebrity humanitarian intelligibilities and imaginaries in a globalised world, research in this area is in danger of missing the very location of politics. What is called for is future research that broadens the understanding of this activity in world politics without closing the question of the political.

PEOPLE JUST LIKE US

The article explores the representation of political celebrities and their families in photo-interviews in mass market women's magazines and the role of the local personality system in the process of building the nation after Slovenia's succession from Yugoslavia in the 1990s. My aim is to trace how a common national normality was redefined/performed through the celebrification and humanization of political figures in the popular media, and how celebrity discourse has reshaped the understanding of the ‘national ordinary’ and contributed to the individualization of political trust. The visual iconography and the discursive regime within which public personalities were represented in the domestic settings, are explored. The article suggests that the stories on national politicians and their domestic life in women's magazines, were one of the key discourses/institutions through which the audiences have come to imagine themselves as members of a re-ethnicized national community. Classless national community, traditional gender roles and domesticity are here associated with political democratization and new ethnic classless collective self. The photo-interviews or photo-essays of representative families and the entanglement of family and nation are to be understood as part of the hegemonic struggle to define not just national community but also hegemonic masculinity, femininity, the notion of family and domestic normality.

Consensus and Debate in Salazar's Portugal: Visual and Literary Negotiations of the National Text, 1933-1948 (review)

SAPEGA, ellen. Consensus and Debate in Salazar's Portugal: Visual and Literary Negotiations of the National Text, 1933-1948. University Park: Penn- sylvania State UP, 2008. 184 pp.The Portuguese Estado Novo (1933-1974), an authoritarian regime headed from its inception to 1968 by the charismatic prime minister Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, strove to create a homogeneous conception of nationality grounded on economic corporatism, colonial domination, conservative social values, and close ties between the government and the Catholic Church. In order to shape the Portu- guese nation into a community of supporters, the state developed a well-oiled propaganda machine, which appropriated images and heroes from the country's long history to justify the present and to convert the disbelievers, in the apt expression of Luis Reis Torgal. Salazarist propaganda forged collective memories of a glorious national past that necessarily culminated in the Estado Novo. This teleologica! narrative, according to which the figure of Salazar often acquired mes- sianic undertones, was conveyed through a variety of state-sponsored means, including theater performances, films, exhibitions, political celebrations, popular festivities, architecture, and sculpture. Ellen Sapega's well- researched book Consen- sus and Debate in Salazar's Portugal analyzes some of the ways in which the artists and intellectuals working for the regime deployed tradition and collective memory so as to generate a consensual adherence to the the government's policies. Yet, as she points out, the discerning eye can often glimpse alternative discourses to the official ideology in the fissures of propaganda. These contending views on the national project are all the more explicit in nonpropagandistic artworks. In spite of widespread censorship, several authors and artists deviated from the official narrative of national grandeur and presented other, often bleaker interpretations of the country's present. Sapega skillfully illustrates the nuances that characterized the Portuguese artistic and literary panorama in the first fifteen years of the Estado Novo, and her study is indispensable reading for all students and scholars working on this topic.One of the strengths of Sapega's book is the fact that she touches upon a variety of literary and artistic practices. While there have been numerous works that focus on one or another aspect of artistic production under the Estado Novo, it is less common to find scholarly analyses that attempt to encompass different perspec- tives under a unifying guiding thread. Undergirding Sapega's work is the assump- tion that, in the first years of the existence of the Estado Novo, there was a sometimes explicit but often subterraneous debate among the various sectors of the country's intellectual milieu about the definition of portugalidade (Portuguese- ness). The author begins by delineating the government's version of what it means to be Portuguese through the description of some of the projects undertaken by the Secretariat of Propaganda, later rebaptized the National Secretariat for Infor- mation, Popular Culture, and Tourism. One of these was a competition that took place in 1938 to identify the most Portuguese village in Portugal. The winner would be the village that most closely approximated an idealized notion of historical purity in terms of its architecture, traditions, arts, festivities, dress, and so on. The goal of the government was to reactivate the country's connection to its historical origins, while, at the same time, emphasizing that age-old rural traditions and hierarchichal social structures could be emulated by present-day society. Rich landowners and poor peasants supposedly lived in harmony in rural Portugal, and the patriarchal rules that bound them should serve as a model for structuring the relations between the Portuguese and their leaders.Another event organized by the Secretariat of Propaganda as a means to create a cohesive, nationalistic interpretation of the country's past was the Exhibition of the Portuguese World that took place in 1940 as a part of the celebrations to mark both Portugal's eight hundredth birthday as an independent nation and the commemoration of the country's independence from Castillian rule in 1640. …

Flexicurity: In Pursuit of a Moving Target

Flexicurity – the contraction of flexibility and security – has in a short time become a political celebrity. In this article we trace back the genealogy of this celebrity. We begin by analysing the reasons behind the current celebration of flexicurity by the European Commission, and describe the European evolution of the concept. Then we take one step backwards and describe the conceptualisation and development of the Danish case of flexicurity, which is currently the most prominent real-life example of flexicurity in action. Our final step back in time takes us to the Dutch origins of the concept. With the near-universal celebration of flexicurity in both policy and academic circles there is a real risk of the concept becoming diluted, and eventually meaningless. In order to understand what flexicurity could and should mean we discuss various definitions of flexicurity, and arrive at a new understanding of flexicurity as an analytical concept. We suggest distinguishing between internal and external dimensions of flexibility and security, and arrive at two ideal models of either internal or external flexicurity. This distinction opens up for empirical enquiry combinations of flexibility and security that go beyond simple trade-offs and include virtuous and vicious circles between flexibility and security. The distinction also raises the issue of the difficulty in shifting from one balance of flexicurity towards another – and, thus, uncritically trying to imitate specific flexicurity examples.

The Downside of Celebrity Diplomacy: The Neglected Complexity of Development

Celebrities have become important participants in the debate on the future of development. The Irish rock star Paul Hewson, better known as Bono, is not only the front man of the band U2 but has also become the champion of an antipoverty movement with worldwide impact. Bono is supported by US economist Jeffrey Sachs, who has become a global spokesperson for poverty reduction, especially in Africa. Surprisingly, the recipes being suggested by Bono and Sachs are breath-takingly one-dimensional and akin to the sweeping propositions of the 1960s: give aid to Africa, waive debt, and provide education, and the continent will develop. While these remedies may look seductive, unfortunately the reality is far more complex and demands attention to the specific circumstance of each individual country or subregion. Grand ideas for development are a dangerous recipe and may in fact worsen the situation of the poor. In this article we address three issues related to the role of celebrities in international relations. First, we chart the rise of prominent celebrity activists in international affairs, in particular their impact on development policies of the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Second, we examine the competence of celebrities to handle development issues and suggest a more nuanced and less paternalistic approach. Third, we consider the legitimacy of celebrity activists and whether these nonelected individuals are well positioned to berate democratically elected governments. Celebrities in Politics At the beginning of the twenty-first century, development policy is heavily influenced, in the words of Paul Collier, by development biz and development buzz. (1) Development biz encompasses the aid bureaucracies, aid agencies, and development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), all of whom make a living out of development. Development buzz, for its part, comes from rock stars, celebrities, and NGOs. Development buzz has been a door opener for Bono and other celebrities in recent years. In 1999, Bono had an audience with Pope John Paul II. Six years later, Time magazine named Bono, together with Melinda and Bill Gates, as Persons of the Year. Bono has attended the World Economic Forum in Davos as well as several summits of the Group of 8 (G8). He and fellow activist Bob Geldof gained particular prominence at the Gleneagles G8 summit of 2005 and the Heiligendamm G8 summit of 2007. At Gleneagles, Bono had one-on-one meetings with George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroder, and Paul Martin and also met Jacques Chirac after the summit. (2) At Heiligendamm, Bono again claimed center stage, holding meetings with various leading politicians. His supporters even set up camp in Berlin months before the event. The attention celebrity diplomats received surrounding Heiligendamm was overwhelming. For example, for its May 2007 edition, Vanity Fair had a German singer, Herbert Gronemeyer, as its guest editor, and dozens of celebrities expressed their concern about poverty and hunger. Concurrently Bob Geldof was guest editor of an issue of the German tabloid Bild-Zeitung that laced pleas for greater development assistance with pictures of dying children and people afflicted with AIDS. (3) Efficient public relations work has made celebrities core players who had better be consulted. Politicians today can hardly avoid meetings with Bono. When Stephen Harper, Canadian prime minister, said he was too busy for a meeting with Bono during the Heiligendamm summit, the rock star did not take no for an answer. He growled that Harper had blocked progress on aid for Africa, and the intimidated prime minister promised to find time for a meeting. (4) Celebrity diplomacy extends well beyond G8 meetings and development issues, of course. George Clooney pronounces on Darfur. Robert Red-ford pronounces on Iraq. Not everyone is impressed. …

Argumentation in political talk show interviews

This paper is about how argumentation theory can aid discourse analysis-not only in describing the types of argumentation found in discourse data, but also in evaluating the soundness of the arguments. Being able to evaluate the quality of argumentation is important for analysing particular types of media interview formats which do not favour dialectical argumentation. A case in point is the political celebrity talk show interview. While in the political news interview, the interviewee is ideally confronted with the whole spectrum of public opinion through the interviewer's questions, in the “soft and feel-good genre” ( Clayman and Heritage, 2002:340) of the celebrity talk show interview, interviewer and interviewee collaboratively produce a consensual point of view. The paper presents an attempt to describe how this is done within the framework of argumentation theory, discourse analysis and Goffman's (1974, 1981) model of frames and footings. The data are two interviews from the American Larry King live-show, broadcast during the US 2000 post-election controversy. The first interview is with an expert, the second one with a politician; the interviews are connected by sharing the same topic. The results show an intertextual argument structure overarching the two interviews: in the expert interview a claim is made, the validity of which depends on the fulfilment of a number of conditions. The second interview represents an attempt to satisfy those conditions. The evaluation of the argumentation shows a number of weaknesses that would be fallacious in the discourse types of rational discussion or political interview. In the genre of the talk show celebrity interview, however, such argumentation has to be considered part of the “feel-good” generic style. Findings show that, even in the context of a political controversy, the genre of the political celebrity talk show interview is a format which disprefers an attitude of critical doubt. It lends itself to exploitation by the politician who is able, through subtle changes of footing, and with the support of the host, to pursue his political agenda. The analysis bears witness to the usefulness of an integrated approach.

National Days/National Ways: Historical, Political and Religious Celebrations around the World. Reviewed by Gabriella Elgenius

National Days/National Ways: Historical, Political and Religious Celebrations around the World. Reviewed by Gabriella Elgenius

The Prime Minister and the News Media: Political Communication as a Leadership Resource

The news media interest in political celebrity, backed up by the phenomenon of process journalism, magnifies the modern prime minister, placing him or her centre stage in key political processes. Tony Blair’s communication strategy has had two objectives. First, whenever possible, to try to secure favourable media coverage of the government. Second, to keep the government and its supporters on message while defining what that message is. Prime ministers can significantly influence the news agenda through use of authoritative, self-referential communication. Such influence is not uncontested because senior ministers, opposition politicians and backbench critics also use the news media to promote themselves and their competing agendas. The news media itself will also spin the stories it is spun, create those stories and thereby probe- and sometimes help fashion- intra-governmental differences and prime ministerial challenges. Nonetheless, by dominating government-centric political communications- and therein significantly influencing the news agenda- the prime minister can thereby reinforce his or her ability to agenda set within government. The news media, always an obstacle as well as a resource, a permanent critic as well as an occasional friend, can therefore provide an additional power resource to an already powerful and predominant prime minister.

Media Darlings and Falling Stars: Celebrity and the Reporting of Political Leaders

The combined influences of three current trends in news reporting: tabloidization, personalisation, and the commercial pressures of competing for declining audiences, together with the increasingly mediated nature of politics, has had a marked change on the way politics is performed and reported in most Western democracies. Whilst leaders such as Prime Minister Blair and former President Clinton are seen as skilled exponents of celebrity politics, for others the personalisation of politics can detract from media assessments of them as ‘serious’ politicians. This is a particular risk for women leaders. Using the example of the short-lived leadership Natasha Stott Despoja of the Australian Democrats, who was seen, for a while, as a master of image politics and achieved the status of a minor political celebrity, this paper explores the degree to which image-conscious politicians are vulnerable to attacks by political commentators and political rivals for valuing style over substance.

Community Building within a Festival Frame: Working-Class Celebrations in Germany, 1918–1933

The concept of festival can help to understand the framework within which political community building took place in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and the methods employed in doing so. Political communities were established within different kinds of cultural performances such as gatherings, demonstrations, party conventions, and – most frequently – political celebrations, which obtained a festival-like structure. Referring to examples from the labour movement, this article examines different techniques of creating communities and discusses the impact of theatrical strategies and certain types of theatre in this crucial field of modern politics.

Holding on in Berlin: March 1948 and SED Efforts to Control the Soviet Zone

March 18, 1948 dawned cold and rainy in Berlin. Although the city government had proclaimed the hundredth anniversary of the 1848 revolution an official holiday, Berliners awoke to a day that seemed ill-made for personal or political celebrations. One century earlier, some nine hundred persons had died on Berlin's barricades, dramatically challenging the Prussianancien regimebut falling short of their aspirations for a free and unified Germany. After one hundred years that had seen only a brief interlude of tumultuous democracy between the world wars, competing forces in postwar Berlin both claimed the democratic legacy of those barricade battles in a new contest for the city. But that legacy proved difficult to control. For the Soviet-supported Socialist Unity Party (SED), Berlin represented at once the core of the party's expanding power and the greatest threat to its realization. Like the 1848 revolutionaries, the SED leadership in Berlin found the lines between victory and defeat decidedly blurred.

Suicide in the Media: A Quantitative Review of Studies Based on Nonfictional Stories

Research on the effect of suicide stories in the media on suicide in the real world has been marked by much debate and inconsistent findings. Recent narrative reviews have suggested that research based on nonfictional models is more apt to uncover imitative effects than research based on fictional models. There is, however, substantial variation in media effects within the research restricted to nonfictional accounts of suicide. The present analysis provides some explanations of the variation in findings in the work on nonfictional media. Logistic regression techniques applied to 419 findings from 55 studies determined that: (1) studies measuring the presence of either an entertainment or political celebrity were 5.27 times more likely to find a copycat effect, (2) studies focusing on stories that stressed negative definitions of suicide were 99% less likely to report a copycat effect, (3) research based on television stories (which receive less coverage than print stories) were 79% less likely to find a copycat effect, and (4) studies focusing on female suicide were 4.89 times more likely to report a copycat effect than other studies. The full logistic regression model correctly classified 77.3% of the findings from the 55 studies. Methodological differences among studies are associated with discrepancies in their results.