This article reviews a framework developed by John Street which positions aesthetics, style and performance, and celebrity politics as legitimate features within representative democracy. It applies this framework to the example of (RED), a political consumerism campaign fronted by U2 singer Bono, which raises funds for African AIDS victims. It accounts for the use of style by Bono as a celebrity politician to represent himself as an authoritative figure and (RED) as a legitimate response to the epidemic, and relates this representation to the organisational arrangements underpinning the campaign. Further, it examines the relationship between the interests of these organisations and the manner in which (RED) represents AIDS. The article argues for a further integration of textual readings of celebrity politicians based on their aesthetic qualities, and an appreciation of the organisations that contribute to the production of their campaigns.Keywords: celebrity; political consumerism; philanthrocapitalism elements of this framework to an example of a celebrity-fronted NGO campaign: Bono's political consumerism campaign, Product (RED). I demonstrate how Street's bs_bs_banner

No abstract

Since the mid-2000s, entertainment celebrities have played increasingly prominent roles in the cultural politics of climate change, ranging from high-profile speeches at UN climate conferences, and social media interactions with their fans, to producing and appearing in documentaries about climate change that help give meaning to and communicate this issue to a wider audience. The role afforded to celebrities as climate change communicators is an outcome of a political environment increasingly influenced by public relations and attuned toward the media’s representation of political ideas, policies, and sentiments. Celebrities act as representatives of mass publics, operating within centers of elite political power. At the same time, celebrities represent the environmental concerns of their audiences; that is, they embody the sentiments of their audiences on the political stage. It is in this context that celebrities have gained their authority as political, social, and environmental “experts,” and the political performances of celebrities provide important ways to engage electorates and audiences with climate change action.More recently, celebrities offer novel engagements with climate change that move beyond scientific data and facilitate more emotional and visceral connections with climate change in the public’s everyday lives. Contemporary celebrities, thus, work to shape how audiences and publics ought to feel about climate change in efforts to get them to act or change their behaviors. These “after data” moments are seen very clearly in Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary Before the Flood. Yet, with celebrities acting as our emotional witnesses, they not only might bring climate change to greater public attention, but they expand their brand through neoliberalism’s penchant for the commoditization of everything including, as here, care and concern for the environment. As celebrities build up their own personal capital as eco-warriors, they create very real value for the “celebrity industrial complex” that lies behind their climate media interventions. Climate change activism is, through climate celebrities, rendered as spectacle, with celebrities acting as environmental and climate pedagogues framing for audiences the emotionalized problems and solutions to global environmental change. Consequently, celebrities politicize emotions in ways that that remain circumscribed by neoliberal solutions and actions that responsibilize audiences and the public.

This article engages with several pressing issues revolving around 'citizen witnessing', with specific reference to the human rights advocacy group, WITNESS. In the course of tracing WITNESS' development over the past two decades, it offers an evaluative assessment of the challenges its members have faced in promoting a grassroots, citizencentred approach to video reportage. More specifically, this advocacy is informed by an ethical commitment to advancing human rights causes by equipping citizens in crisis situations with cameras, and the training to use them, so that they might bear witness to the plight of others. In so doing, this article argues, WITNESS offers a tactical reformulation of the guiding tenets of peace journalism, one with considerable potential for recasting anew its strategic priorities.

2020) The cultural politics of climate branding: Project Sunlight, the biopolitics of climate care and the socialisation of the everyday sustainable consumption practices of citizens-consumers. Climatic Change, 163. pp. 117-133.