http://uk.eonline.com/
E! Online is a website run by E! Entertainment Television, and provides up-to-the-minute entertainment news and celebrity inside information. E! Entertainment Television is a 24 hour network “dedicated to the world of entertainment” and is available to “97 million cable and satellite subscribers in the United States”, as well as to a global audience – including the UK.
E! Online was launched in August 1996 as “the comprehensive entertainment news website” and today has more than 20,000 entertainment news stories archived on the site. This makes it a self-confessed “unparalleled resource for celebrity-driven entertainment information”.
I chose this website because for me it typifies the state of contemporary America. I think E! Online reflects a strong aspect of contemporary American society and culture, which is now more than ever driven by a consumerism that is exported around the world through United States soft power. A website dedicated to the entertainment industry (one of America’s biggest exports) and its focus on the success, wealth and fashion of the celebrities involved sells an identity which has become sought after in many Western cultures and can be recognised as American.
For me it is not America’s hard power, such as its military or economy, which makes it strong today, but the selling of this cultural identity and soft power, which allows it to keep its status as a global hegemon.
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