Fans all around the world are grieving over the sudden and shocking death of former One Direction star Liam Payne.
The 31-year-old was found dead following a fall from a hotel’s third floor in Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires on Wednesday, local time.
With vigils being held globally and fans expressing their emotions on socials, among other reactions, it poses the question of why do we react so strongly to the death of someone most of us don’t even personally know.
Listen to The Briefing’s bonus episode, where Helen Smith sits down with Justin Hill to analyse the reaction to Liam Payne’s death:
The circumstances surrounding Payne’s death and public behaviour leading up to the events have also sparked questions, commentary and debate, including anger at popular celebrity gossip site TMZ posting a now-deleted picture partially showing Payne’s dead body.
Do ‘normal’ people with no connection to Payne deserve to demand private and intimate details about how and why he died?
Host of LiSTNR’s The Streaming Service Justin Hill told Helen Smith on The Briefing that fans have “so much access to celebrities,” providing an unprecedented look into their lives.
“We can literally just open our phones and see what someone is eating for dinner, and so I think these days we feel like we have an ownership over them,” Hill said.
“We have a friendship with them that we’ve never had before and so it’s that tricky space of where they’re giving us a look into the intimate parts of their life, but also to trying to keep some privacy.”
While acknowledging fans’ relationships with celebrities, Hill said it was important to remember that these people also have their own family and friends that fans and the media need to consider.
“You have to remember that you have to treat it the same as if a family member had died because, for many fans, this is just as important as a family member or a friend passing away,” he said.
“There have obviously been photos that have come out of his hotel room, and while they do give context to the situation and what happened, we just need to remember that there was a death,
“Liam has a seven-year-old son, and you have to think about parents shielding their children from this news in the media.”