It was the story that briefly overtook Brexit as one of the most searched-for Google terms in the UK, providing a weary nation with a brief moment of delightful schadenfreude – but Coleen Rooney’s claims about a fellow footballer’s wife have also highlighted the declining power of the British tabloid media to make celebrities do their bidding.

On Wednesday the wife of the former England footballer Wayne revealed she had published a series of false updates about her life on her private Instagram account in a bid to ensnare the person leaking them to the Sun. She then publicly accused Rebekah Vardy, the wife of England footballer Jamie, of being the individual whose account was responsible, setting off a chain of events that challenges the way tabloid journalists do business.

Industry insiders suggest the “Wagileaks” scandal, which has led to the unusual sight of the Sun writing front page articles about its own editorial processes, highlights the question facing celebrities as print circulations decline: is it wise to continue to engage with traditional outlets and attempt to win favourable coverage? Or can celebrities adopt a position of all-out war against an industry in decline and rally popular support from their millions of Instagram followers?

“Vardy mentioned in her statement [in which she denied leaking the stories] that she doesn’t need the money but celebrities also have a relationship to consider when they deal with the press; they want to stay in their good books and make sure they don’t get turned over,” said Chris Lochery, a writer at the celebrity and media gossip newsletter Popbitch. He also suggested that as celebrities publish so much material on their personal media accounts for free, tabloid journalists are choosing to dig deeper for exclusives. “If they can get someone’s close friends’ Instagram it’s an inside track – it’s the private version of social media.”

Vardy – who follows on Instagram two of the Sun journalists who wrote some of the disputed stories and has worked with the newspaper in the past – continues to protest her innocence. She has suggested her Instagram account could have been hacked and has employed unidentified ‘forensic’ computer experts to analyse it but does not intend to reveal what they find. Although sharing social media account passwords is risky, it is not unusual in a world where influencers often rely on management teams to post updates on their behalf.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Vardy said discussing the issue with Rooney was like “arguing with a pigeon” on the basis that “you can tell it that you are right and it is wrong but it’s still going to shit in your hair”.

Kate Randall, news editor at celebrity magazine Heat, said the Rooney story revealed the limits to celebrities’ public social media accounts, which sell themselves as a chance to have an authentic insight into a prominent individual’s life. “They have allowed these fans into what they think is their real life but as Coleen shows she’s not really allowing the fans into her real life. Most celebrities have probably got private Instagram accounts which show what’s going on in their lives but the public one is what they want to be seen and their brand.”

She also suggested that a wider distrust of the media had given celebrities the power to shut down truthful stories and turn their supporters on publications: “Celebs have the power to go on Instagram and - even if you know it’s true – say this is false.”

Meanwhile, print newspaper sales continue to plummet with the Sun’s circulation badly hit in particular. Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid now sells just 1.2m copies a day, down from close to 3m at the start of the decade. The Daily Mail is likely to overtake it imminently as Britain’s best-selling paper. At the same time,the Sun has been going through a cost-saving round of redundancies while its publisher is dealing with lawsuits from Prince Harry and England cricket Ben Stokes.

This has left it with fewer resources for paying sources and seeking out original material, and threatens its entire model of exclusives resulting in increased revenue. The Sun’s exclusives often appear on MailOnline and the Mirror’s websites within minutes of being published, challenging the economic rationale for a news outlet to pay a celebrity journalist to go out of their way to seek scoops. At the same time, publicists are increasingly adept at advising their clients to publish material directly on to social media, allowing them to control the narrative without having to deal with the irritation of journalists.

Jonathan Hartley, a media consultant who specialises in crisis communications and regularly deals with the tabloids, said that the audiences for tabloid websites such as MailOnline can still make a massive difference to an individual’s profile. He also insisted there is still a place for the celebrity journalist seeking a scoop in the face of a stream of Instagram content: “What they add is the stories that the celebrities don’t want out there. Potentially they are more interesting than the well-manicured stories that have been put on social media.”

Rather than undermining the rationale of gossip journalism in the modern era, he suggested that the reason that the Rooney story has resonated so widely is that the footballer’s wife and her management team have invested the time, effort and money to break an old-fashioned juicy tabloid story that the public want to read.

“The strange position is that she is doing the job of a celebrity journalist, where she has put out something that another celebrity doesn’t want out there.”