A study on the virtual versus real fame and the role of media in making people known

This paper examines the difference between the fame in real versus virtual world, aiming to introduce and develop new methods of studying the net and analyzing the extent to which the media-effect theories are applicable in an age when new issues are being born and expanded in virtual atmosphere. Moreover, the paper tries to compare and contrast the ability of different media on creating individual fame. In order to do that, Google has been chosen as the basic tool for generating a list containing the most famous people who share a similar first name (i.e. Mohammad). Using Schulman and Lamport’s method for quantifying the fame, a coefficient named as fame index has been then calculated for any of the people whose names are mentioned in the list and the numbers have been compared with the data gathered through a survey which was set to examine their fame in the real world. In the next step, the findings have been explained by cultivation theory. The findings indicate that the fame index and its ranking are significantly different in real and virtual atmosphere and different types of media have different capacities for promoting fame. In the other words, this shows that there is a difference between “what and who people want to know about” and “what and who people actually know about.”