The star and COVID-19: Serie A soccer celebrities and the self-narrative of contagion on social media

Being a sports celebrity does not mean being immune to COVID-19. Fame, prestige, and an athletic body have not prevented many athletes around the world from being infected. This has meant, however, having to deal with a disease about which little or nothing was known in the early periods of the pandemic. Nevertheless, celebrities’ lives have maintained an individual dimension that is always intertwined with the public one, since it is characterized by emotional ties and continuous relational negotiations with fans. Social media have marked new ways of elaborating celebrity, public relations, and the meanings attached to them. In Italy, soccer celebrities have had to face their condition of sickness, to manage the uncertainties and the consequent inconveniences, moreover within an industry that has experienced many man- agement problems – including the cessation of competitions, matches without many players, absence of fans on the terraces, and so on. The players have often used social media profiles as a place to construct meanings about their experience, acting in these individual and social spaces, and narrating various aspects of their self even during illness. The identity and communication aspects of their media narrative of the self are the focus of the case studies examined in this chapter.