Fame and Celebrity Within A Virtual World : A Case Study Of World Of Warcraft

Abstract: Despite the vast amount of research conducted by media academics over the past decade, little is known about the concept of internet celebrity, or e-celebrity, within an online-gaming environment. The overall impression that emerges from literature in this field is that e-celebrity has been studied in popular, user-based or social networking websites. However, this paper aims to contribute to the field by further exploring the role, concept and practices of e-celebrity within a virtual world: the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game World of Warcraft. By exploring Marwick’s concept of micro-celebrity and by studying players via qualitative means using virtual ethnographic participant observation supported by interviews, the data collected in this paper aims to add nuance to our understanding of the changing concept of celebrity on a virtual level.