"How far will Miley go next?”: Miley Cyrus and the news in celebrity gossip magazines

Abstract

This thesis examines news values in celebrity news. News values have been thoroughly analysed with regard to “serious” news, but little has been done to see how useful existing conceptions of news values are for celebrity news in gossip magazines. This thesis examines coverage of Miley Cyrus in four Australian gossip magazines from December 2010 to July 2014 according to traditional news values, and argues they are inadequate for understanding how celebrity news is produced. It then proposes and tests a different set of news values that function for celebrity news. Using a queer approach to heteronormativity, this thesis argues that the news values employed by celebrity magazines uphold and maintain a normative hierarchy, through the promotion of non-normative behaviour as scandalous gossip, and normative behaviour as worthy of celebration.