Celebrity Diplomacy

Girl power and ‘selfie humanitarianism’

“…Chouliaraki, 2012;Richey and Ponte, 2011;Vastergaard, 2009) is exemplified by the central role of celebrity advocacy (Littler, 2008;Chouliaraki, 2013;Cooper, 2008) and the incorporation of social media into humanitarian communication (Chouliaraki, 2012;Cooper, 2014). Both these practices seek to address and redress the inadequacies of earlier NGO communications paradigms and to engage western publics with far away others.…”

Non-western celebrity politics and diplomacy: introduction

“…Not only has our understanding of politics and diplomacy developed beyond the usual suspects of government representatives to embrace informal actors, this under-55 standing has also been enhanced both empirically and conceptually over recent years by the recognition of the multi-dimensional salience of celebrities (Cooper 2008, Wheeler 2013, Brockington 2014. We now talk about celebrity politicians, celebrity diplomats and political celebrities, and apply categories such as CP1 (essentially politicians who instrumentalise aspects of celebrity) and CP2 (celebrities typified by U2's Bono 60 who enter into the field of politics and international diplomacy; see Street 2004).…”

The mediatization of celebrity politics through the social media

“…Although celebrity activism had become increasingly politicized, it usually operated within a framework where agreed normative principles concerning human rights and liberal internationalist causes have been apparent (Cooper 2008). With the divisive exception of Vanessa Redgrave's support of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) when accepting her Academy Award in 1978, Israel-Palestine had remained a no-go area.…”