Communication and Popular Culture: My Relationship with Whitney Houston

As we all have heard, Whitney Houston, was found unconscious and later died on the eve of music entertainments biggest celebration of the year, the GRAMMY awards.

Whitney sings with daughter, Bobbi
Source: mirror.co.uk

This devastating news has emotionally affected me and I do believe this a result of my parasocial relationship I held with the 48-year old, talented, pop-music Queen.

On Saturday night at about 7:58 p.m. I just so happened to pick up my Blackberry to check Twitter while I was shopping at a mall. The first tweet I read was from The Associated Press. I was stunned. I re-freshed my Twitter stream to watch the story unfold. I couldn't believe what I was reading. I even consulted with my best friend to make sure that I was reading it correctly.

This is a screen shot of the tweet that informed me that my "friend," Whitney Houston, had passed away.

Source: @AP Twitter

I immediately left the store to then sit in my car and watch the story unfold via social media on my Blackberry smartphone, which included Facebook and Twitter. The longer I sat there, in my car, the more I started to accept and realize that she really had passed. As more credible sources started tweeting I knew it had to be the truth.

I decided to drive home so I could follow the user-generated text more closely on my Macbook. During the ride home all I could think about was hundreds of celebrity guests arrived to the Beverly Hills hotel finding out the biggest star had passed away. Ambulances, stretchers, caution tape and an 18-year old child who is now motherless.

When I arrived home I fired up my Macbook to read the news stories in detail. Of course I was playing my favorite Whitney song, I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

Source: Youtube.com

A tweet that I re-tweeted: "Whitney would have asked that the music go on. And her family said the show should go on." - Clive Davis Pre-GRAMMY Gala

After a couple of days I sat back and analyzed what had happened. I will admit that I had a close connection with, Whitney, as if she was my friend. The more I thought about it I was like "What am I doing? Whitney didn't really know me." Theorists and Communication Professionals call this a parasocial relationship.

What has happened was the media has fed me enough information about, Whitney, that I believed I had a close connection with the Queen of pop music. This led me to be emotionally attached and mourn the loss of an incredibly talented woman. This was a one-sided relationship.

I wonder how Whitney's daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, will turn out after losing her mother at such a young age. I visited her Twitter to find she has removed all her most recent tweets. Her last tweet is from December 26, 2011. The last few images Bobbi tweeted include the following:

Other things I have learned from this experience (according to the study of media logic) is that we really take the medium for granted and don't realize the strong influence. This has also influenced my critical thinking skills because I had to interpret the 140-charactor texts on Twitter, which influenced the messages I was receiving on my end.