Could social media have saved Diana?

When the song came across my favourite German radio station the other morning, my eyes rolled with the familiar lyrics: “Your candle burned out long before your legend ever will.” Still, with the 20-year anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, Elton John’s prediction is holding up strong.

Lady Di’s “death by media” was a watershed moment — one of the defining events for which many remember where they were when they heard the news (though, given the technology of the time, it was likely to be near a radio or TV). As such, it also provides a reference point to assess the changes that society has undergone over the past two decades.

In 2017, the paparazzi who denied Lady Di her privacy (and whom some blame for the Paris car accident that killed her) haven’t gone away, but social media has arguably made them much less relevant. Take the example of Beyonce, whom many consider music royalty. She’s a singing superstar and business mogul with more than 100 million followers on social media — her fans even call her “Queen Bey”. But whereas Lady Di and her charity work were dependent on the same media she both needed and despised, Beyonce, through her Instagram, is able to take complete control of her image, ensuring the world sees only what she wants it to see. She simultaneously offers up her life for consumption and strictly controls access to it.

In February, Beyonce took to Instagram to announce that she was pregnant with twins, posting photos from an elaborate floral maternity photo shoot. By breaking the news of her pregnancy first, Beyonce scooped the paparazzi at their own game. She cut out the need for any speculation, any observations about her body or her weight, and instead made room for immediate celebration among her fans. And again, after the twins were born earlier this summer, Beyonce was the first (and only) person to release photos of them.

Digital world

When she posts a photo, Beyonce gives the public the same thing as the paparazzi: Fuel for our celebrity obsession. But by sharing the photos herself, before the tabloids, she liberates herself from the pressure of having the media constantly breathing down her neck, something Lady Di was unable to do, up until her dying moment.

Of course, for celebrities as well as for any individual, there’s a fine line between cherry-picking the important things you want to share (for both business and private reasons) and feeding your entire life to what French psychoanalyst and philosopher Clotilde Leguil calls “the online Other”. In a piece penned for Le Monde, Leguil warns that the “mass narcissism” of our time “eventually diverts everybody from their own existence”, and calls for a rethink of psychoanalysis’s role and place in our hyperconnected digital world.

We’ll never know whether social media could have saved Lady Di’s life, but judging by our Facebook and Twitter feeds, it’s fair to say that the candle is still burning.

— New York Times News Service