Celebs use Twitter 'to get closer to audience, amplify professional status'

London, Oct 13 (ANI): A new study from the school of English at the University of Leicester will examine 15,000 posts from 30 of the most popular celebrities on the social networking and microblogging site Twitter to see how they engage with their audiences.

Ruth Page will analyse tweets by celebs such as Stephen Fry, Britney Spears Sarah Brown, Lily Allen and Jamie Oliver as part of her research into how stories are told through the different forms of social media, including blogs, discussion forums and Facebook.

"Social media is a phenomenon of our time so it is important to make sense of it. It magnifies social interactions and can tell us a lot about ourselves and how our relationships function," The Telegraph quoted Page as saying.

Celebrities use Twitter not only to create an illusion of immediacy and proximity with their audience but also because it amplifies their professional status, Page said.

"Whereas the former is used as a private social network, the latter is essentially an online environment for public news dissemination," Page said, talking about Facebook and Twitter, respectively. (ANI)