What is the role of the media in turning people into celebrities?

Observations of a non-expert:

It is probably safe to say that in today's world no person can get or maintain wide celebrity status without the help of media coverage. It might also be possible for the media to turn virtually anyone into a celebrity, at least for a short time.

It may be a cynical observation, but whether or not the media buy into the process of "creating" a celebrity probably has to do with market forces. Social media in general are driven by the need to gain exposure to the largest possible audience, and to hold on to that exposure, obviously for the purpose of capturing the largest share of advertising dollars.

So there is likely a kind of 'feedback' loop that media moguls are tuned into. They look for potential stories of interest and the likelihood that the story will produce market share. Then they go for it. And if there is a sense that competing media are beaming in on a certain individual for whatever reason, then it's all over but the shouting.

This is one reason that you might often see (in the US particularly) utterly endless, dumbed-down and perpetually repetitive coverage in ALL media of the most mundane bits of information surrounding a news item that broadly speaking might have some weight. Deity forbid that some segment of the media suffer a drop in market share because someone else "got the exclusive" that the tooth fairy visited Senator Bight.