This response to the special issue on ‘Governing Celebrity: Multiculturalism, Offensive Television Content and Celebrity Big Brother’ highlights its contribution to key socio-legal debates about popular legal consciousness, responsive regulation and social change through law. The response also discusses some of the methodological challenges posed by research into media regulation. How should such research be theoretically framed and is it necessary to distinguish clearly between deconstructionist and modernist understandings of human rights? Are social-psychological dynamics a relevant factor for explaining whether some forms of speech become labelled as racist? The concluding section provides suggestions for further research into the patterns that shape how socio-legal researchers read the social world and how the opening up of a new field of inquiry – the governance of celebrity – can be extended to understanding celebrity politics.