LOS ANGELES (AP) – The night before the “Rob & Chyna” baby special premiered on E!, Rob Kardashian announced to his 8.2 million Instagram followers that his fiance and mother of their month-old daughter had abruptly left him and taken the baby with her.
A few days later, Kardashian replaced those posts with various images of holiday-themed socks from his company. He explained in another entry that he’d been “in an emotional bad place and did some things that embarrassed myself and my family” in the days before. He apologized to fiancee Blac Chyna, said he is “seeking help” for his “flaws/issues” and asked his fans to “please pray for me.”
The drama continues to unfold across multiple media platforms. The couple’s reality show has been renewed for a second season, and according to Kardashian family tradition, social media is where future plot points are born.
The Kardashians are the reality-TV experts of cross-platform storytelling, said Katie Walsh, a doctoral student at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, who presented her studies on reality TV and fan culture at last year’s Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Montreal.
“Rob and Chyna have a TV show, and you can continue watching it on social media,” she said. “The other aspect of social media that makes it so important is that it’s participatory… Everybody has access to Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and then you can actually participate in the story line of the show by making comments on their Instagram.”The Kardashians are also champions of using social media as marketing, said David Schwab, head of celebrity strategy firm Octagon First Call.
[sOURCE:-The Washington Times]