Taking over the net

Network culture (Varnelis, 2008) witnessed the birth of a new form of celebrity – Internet celebrity. The aim of this study is to recreate and develop the principle of popularity accumulation in virtual social networks and environments alike, and to witness the effect of media on popularity accumulation. The study employed principles of Critical Discourse Analysis by Teun van Dijk and supplemented the approach with the capital accumulation scheme of Pierre Bourdieu. The study shows that Internet personas can become popular by disseminating their representations in the network available to them and when a certain popularity is reached within the network it is supplemented by mass media interest and therefore mass popularity. The technical architecture of social networking sites helps to accumulate and maintain popularity for the already popular networked personas