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Non-profit organisations are increasingly collaborating with celebrities to increase charitable donations. Consequently, choosing the right endorser to promote charitable giving is central to the communication strategy. The present research investigates how the attractiveness and credibility of celebrities, as well as cause-endorser matchup and meaning transfer, influence people's donations. This research provides evidence of serial and parallel mediation effects by measuring and manipulating the four constructs in four separate studies. We demonstrate that credibility mediates the effect of attractiveness on generosity. Additionally, we highlight two legitimation pathways to explain how attractive endorsers become perceived as more credible cause promoters. This study provides a comprehensive model that illustrates, through an affective-cognitive-conative sequence, how attractiveness, congruence and meaning, and then credibility leads to charitable donations. Accordingly, we provide non-profit organisations with concrete and actionable recommendations for selecting celebrity endorsers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing the #MeToo movement as its case, this article examines celebrities' symbolic power using social media's connectivity to enlarge the impact of social causes. This article adopts social network analysis as the primary method to explore the relationship between two #MeToo networks and media coverage regarding celebrities' roles. Based on theories of social capital and celebrity capital, the results of this article find that famous people's symbolic power in one social field can transfer into the social activism field through investment in their celebrity capital and social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study interrogates the common assumption that parasocial grief, or grief for celebrities, is always less intense than grief for people in social relationships. An online 2 (Parasocial or Social) × 2 (Close or Distant) experiment with participants recruited on MTurk (N = 271) examined differences in people's anticipated grief responses after imagining the hypothetical death of either a celebrity or a person in their social network, who they considered to be either close or a more distant acquaintance. The results revealed that closeness, but unexpectedly not parasociality, affected people's imagined grief. Specifically, for both close others (i.e., parasocial and social friends) and mere acquaintances (i.e., parasocial and social connections who are less familiar), higher levels of closeness were associated with more intense grief. It did not matter whether participants reported on the death of a celebrity or not. These findings provide evidence that parasocial grief is comparable to grief for deaths in social relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Online pro‐ana communities encourage, rather than denounce, eating disorder (ED) behaviours. Most research analyses online pro‐ana content. Fewer studies have interviewed bloggers directly. To the authors' knowledge, no previous studies have analysed both posts and interview data from pro‐ana bloggers. This study aimed to explore bloggers' experiences of online pro‐ana communities, analysing posts and interview data. Method: Five pro‐ana bloggers participated in semi‐structured interviews over Skype or Telegram. Bloggers' posts and interview data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis, a qualitative method of analysis that emphasises the detailed exploration of participants' individual experiences and how they make sense of these experiences. Results: Five superordinate themes were identified: ambivalence towards pro‐ana; social support; 'Ana' way of life; body/weight desperation; and hidden ED identity. Participants reported hiding their pro‐ana blog, for fear of judgement from offline others. In contrast, participants experienced online pro‐ana communities as a source of understanding, connection and solidarity that counteracted stigma experienced in the offline world. All participants idealised 'Ana' (anorexia), either as an admirable lifestyle or as the idealised, personification of anorexia, named 'Ana'. Simultaneously, participants experienced pro‐ana communities as deceptive and/or harmful, demonstrating ambivalence towards pro‐ana. Conclusions: Findings suggest that community and shared understanding are important to individuals accessing pro‐ana content. Therapists may explore this further with clients, alongside any ambivalence towards pro‐ana and/or alternative supportive environments, such as online support groups. This may reduce isolation, without idealising ED behaviours. Future research could explore bloggers' relationships with the personified 'Ana' and experiences of non‐Western and male users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2022, at the annual Met Gala, Kim Kardashian made an appearance in the iconic dress worn by Marilyn Monroe at President John F. Kennedy's birthday celebration in 1962. Controversy ensued, relating both to the actual wearing of the dress and to the celebrity status of Kim vs. Marilyn and whether Kardashian had the moral and cultural right to wear the dress. In the aftermath of the Met Gala, debates about the ways in which the two stars are perceived emerged, particularly in media. The Kardashians have been a topic for the tabloids for around 15 years, with the initial rise to fame on Kim's part taking place through a leaked sex tape. The popular image of Marilyn Monroe combined innocence and unattainability while being the ultimate sex symbol of the 1950s and early 1960s. This paper examines the construction of the celebrity myth in relation to Kim Kardashian and Marilyn Monroe as presented in media and research, with focus on the notion of the sex symbol. Kardashian's recent Met Gala appearance along with subsequent media attention and controversy indicates that further analysis is warranted of the intricate connections between the two celebrities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As political control tightens, many Chinese celebrities have started to repost official messages on Weibo to signal political loyalty. What is the impact of celebrities’ dissemination of official messages on public discourse? Using novel data, this article finds that, for reposted official messages, younger celebrities receive more fan engagement while celebrities with more followers receive less fan engagement than their other non-political personal lifestyle posts. Furthermore, fan engagement is higher for anti-foreign intervention reposts concerning sovereignty and territorial integrity than for other reposted official messages. The findings suggest that the majority of Chinese fans on Weibo are not blind cheerleaders of the government. Instead, they selectively engage with celebrities’ political reposts of official messages. However, the fans that are avid government supporters can still dominate the online discourse. Second, the findings also suggest that younger celebrities serve as examples for citizens to emulate regarding how to engage with politics by echoing official messages. Overall, this article presents a more complicated picture of Chinese celebrities’ and fans’ online political behaviors and their impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in Terror Management Theory finds that close interpersonal relationships (e.g., parents, romantic partners) mitigate threat reactions to reminders of mortality. Parasocial relationships (imagined relationships with media personalities) afford many of the same benefits as interpersonal relationships. Do these benefits extend to mortality concerns? We investigated whether those with strong parasocial attachments were differentially influenced by reminders of death. Results showed that those with strong parasocial relationships had more defensive reactions to a mortality prime, suggesting that such attachments may not afford the same existential benefits given by close human others and may instead indicate a heightened vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media have reinvigorated the shift of focus from a party-centered politics to a personality-based one. This has made how politicians personalize on social media, especially in government, consequential for them and their administration. Vice presidents across the globe, especially in the United States, play crucial constitutional roles central to the country's political discourse. Though they are ignored in the extant literature, their rhetoric has ramifications for contemporary democracy. Using a multimodal rhetorical approach, I analyze Vice President Kamala Harris's tweets (n = 357) in her first year of office to understand how she constructs her public image through personalization. Results indicated that she displayed strong family bonds, reflected on her education and its influence, her historical accomplishments, as well as her emotional moments. I discuss the implications of the image she constructs in this present study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With high rates of both e-cigarette and social media use among adolescents and young adults (AYAs), social media influencers who promote e-cigarettes are particularly concerning but are understudied. We examined the association between AYAs' use of 11 different social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube) and exposure to social media e-cigarette influencers. From November 2022 to February 2023, we conducted an online, US national survey of AYAs (14–29 years) who endorsed past-30-day e-cigarette use. We used binomial logistic regression to examine associations between the frequency of use of each social media platform and following e-cigarette influencers, controlling for age, sex, race, ethnicity, e-cigarette use frequency, and other tobacco and substance use (i.e., alcohol and cannabis). The model was stratified by adolescents (14–17 years; n = 293) and young adults (18–29 years; n = 654). The most frequently used social media platforms were Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram among adolescents, and YouTube, Instagram and TikTok among young adults. In adjusted models, following e-cigarette influencers was associated with more frequent use of TikTok (adjusted odds ratio [95% CI]; 1.33 [1.05, 1.68]) and Pinterest (1.18 [1.02, 1.38]) among adolescents, and more frequent use of Twitter (1.17 [1.06, 1.29]) among young adults. The use of different platforms was associated with exposure to e-cigarette influencers: TikTok and Pinterest among adolescents and Twitter among young adults. These findings can inform tobacco regulatory policy and social media platform restrictions of e-cigarette influencers on the platforms that are popular among AYAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to empirically examine the mediating impact of consumer's parasocial interaction on the relationship between celebrity images on the consumer's purchase intentions. It aims to empirically investigate the moderating role of celebrity liking in the formation of consumer's parasocial interaction. Four different versions of self-administered questionnaire using different celebrities as a stimulus were developed. Data were collected from 484 respondents. Quota cum judgemental sampling method was used for the study. The findings show that parasocial interaction mediates the relationship between celebrity images and purchase intentions. It also reveals positive moderating effect of celebrity liking. It has significant implications for marketers and academicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arab Journal for Scientific Publishing is the property of Research & Development of Human Recourses Center (REMAH) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this work, the level of influence of the posts published by famous people on social networks on the formation of the cryptocurrency exchange rate is investigated. Celebrities who are familiar with the financial industry, especially with the cryptocurrency market, or are somehow connected to a certain cryptocurrency, such as Elon Musk with Dogecoin, are chosen as experts whose influence through social media posts on cryptocurrency rates is examined. This research is conducted based on statistical analysis. Real cryptocurrency exchange rate forecasts for the selected time period and predicted ones for the same period, obtained using three algorithms, are utilized as a dataset. This paper uses methods such as statistical hypotheses regarding the significance of Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and Pearson’s correlation. It is confirmed that the posts by famous people on social networks significantly affect the exchange rates of cryptocurrencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Social Work is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Many brand collaboration platforms—such as sponsorship, celebrity endorsement, influencer marketing, product placement, cobranding, and human branding—build strong relationships between brands and contribute to the brand equity of two or more brands. Brand equity, since inception, has been concerned with the value of a brand, how this value is built and measured, and how the marketplace responds to it. Based on previous work and in response to current marketing practices, the authors suggest that the concept of shared brand equity, where collaborative efforts result in connectivity between brands, is needed to better explain and guide advertising and marketing communications research and practice. Drawing on developments in cognitive psychology, we explain how shared brand equity is developed and how it persists, the role it plays in semantic/associative neighborhoods, and how it explains research findings. We offer a set of research propositions, as well as concrete examples of the usefulness of the theoretical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research conceptually assumes that sponsorships might have a stronger impact on brand attitude than do celebrity endorsements primarily due to the more indirect and less commercial intent to persuade. However, empirical evidence is lacking on why and under what conditions this assumed effect of sponsorships actually occurs. This paper empirically analyses potential mediating and moderating drivers of the effect of sponsorships compared with that of celebrity endorsements. The results reveal that higher level of perceived brand authenticity mediates the effect of sponsorships versus celebrity endorsement on brand attitude. Furthermore, the effect of sponsorships on brand authenticity is superior when (a) relative corporate social responsibility (CSR) spending in the industry is low and (b) the corporate reputation of the firm is good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instagram and its famous personae are nowadays an important news source for many users, which may stem from celebrities' and social media influencers' (SMIs) repeated engagement with political topics on their otherwise entertainment- or lifestyle-oriented accounts. Yet, to date, no study has systematically investigated the type and framing of this political content. This content analysis examined 1,256 Instagram posts and 2,936 stories of the 59 most popular opinion leaders (19 athletes, 20 celebrities and 20 SMIs) in Western countries, and documented, for the first time, the prevalence of types of political topics and their framing. Results from multilevel analyses suggest that SMIs and athletes are more likely to post lifestyle-oriented political topics, while celebrities engage more with conventional topics. Moreover, political topics appear more often in ephemeral than permanent content. Generic frames were overall rare, but the most dominant frame of political content was the human impact frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there an economic incentive for celebrities and well-known media firms to commingle falsehoods into news stories? We conducted five experiments, plus a field validation using secondary data. When presented by celebrities and well-known media firms, a commingled partisan falsehood in an otherwise true news story significantly increased viewing and sharing intentions among politically aligned viewers. The effect was weaker but significant when we replaced the celebrity with an unknown speaker and disappeared when both the celebrity and the well-known firm were replaced by unknowns. This effect was explained by confirmation bias and the viewer's belief that the falsehood was true. In contrast, a false news story focusing on the same falsehood increased viewing and sharing intentions only when presented by unknowns, with viewers' belief playing a limited role. The field study found a significantly positive relationship between a commingled partisan falsehood in videos of well-known media firms and actual viewership. We conclude that commingled partisan falsehoods provide a significant viewership increase for celebrities and well-known media firms, creating an economic incentive for lying and posing complex challenges in the fake news era. We discuss the challenges and opportunities in this area for policymakers and media firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of streaming services, the proliferation of social media platforms, and the diminished relevance of legacy TV, it is important to acknowledge the enduring media discourses and the social purchase once cultivated by legacy TV. This analysis examines NBC's long running The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and that program's distinguishing feature, the opening monologue. I analyze 270 monologues to assess the display of celebrities and famous people in jokes that promoted and undermined conventional wisdom, celebrated and subverted shared experience, and derided political machinations. I review the history of The Tonight Show and Johnny Carson's role as monologist; the regular display of celebrities and famous figures in the monologues; the concept of Celebrity-Signifier; and the fashioning of the monologues and audience engagement with the monologues with attention to the comic mode of address and Thornburn's notion of consensus narrative. This analysis suggests that the comic monologues—fashioned by committee, corralled by institutional mandates, and delivered by a trusted master of ceremonies—sustained a form of public thought with unparalleled reach that refined a lingua franca of celebrity and made available a unique "way of knowing." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Dickens's involvement in the 9 June 1865 Staplehurst Rail Crash was a traumatic event that resonated with the author for the remainder of his life (which ended five years to the day of the accident). This article merges examinations of Dickens's symptoms of what is now termed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the Staplehurst Rail Crash, auxiliary personal events that may have contributed to his PTSD, and his position as a public figure who controlled his image and expressed himself through his fiction and nonfiction works. Combining these three means of understanding Dickens's PTSD provides further insight into how Dickens attempted to use his authorial identity and writing to control the trauma that haunted him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of media representations of transgender people in ameliorating attitudes towards transgender people and related policies has recently aroused attention. Since real-life transgender contact is rather seldom for most people, positive media representations may stimulate the formation of parasocial relationships, resulting in more supportive attitudes and policies, and thus less prejudices and discrimination. Current studies predominantly focus on entertainment narratives, approach attitudes towards transgender people one-dimensionally, and have shown interpersonal transgender contact is a predictor. This online cross-sectional study (N = 388, Mage = 32.34, SD = 10.76) contributes to the literature by examining the indirect relationship between evaluation of news coverage on transgender celebrities' coming out and policy support through transphobia and transnegativity, and the moderating role of interpersonal transgender contact. Findings indicated that a positive news coverage evaluation, rather than mere exposure, relates to more policy support directly and indirectly via lower transphobia and lower transnegativity. Interpersonal contact strengthened the association between transphobia and policy support, but did not moderate the indirect associations. Taken together, the results point to the importance of disentangling transgender attitudes into transphobia and transnegativity, and highlight the parasocial role of a positive news coverage evaluation in enhancing attitudes and policy support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the interplays between media organisations, platform affordances and governance logic on Douyin, one of the most popular short video platforms in China, and how these forces work together to construct the narratives of frontline care workers during the Xi'an lockdown. A digital ethnography was conducted on Douyin through the first two months in 2022. After sorting the videos based on their popularity, the first 100 'most liked' videos were documented and coded thematically. The results show that official media accounts were the main providers of the 'most liked' videos during the lockdown. Frontline workers were seen in over half of the videos (n = 58). Nearly a quarter of the 100 'most liked' videos (n = 22) featured frontline workers as the focus. The prevailing sentiments manifested by the videos when focusing on frontline workers include uplifting, endearing, touching, grateful and empathetic. Only four videos took on a critical tone. This study contributes a Chinese perspective to the current knowledge of Internet celebrity culture by expanding the discussions on the nexus between political and commercial forces during a pandemic lockdown and the implications on China's celebrity culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global pandemic motivated the emergence of grassroots celebrities in healthcare who led online opinion through their professional insights and sharing of health and medical-related knowledge in China. A certain number of practitioners introduced their professional guidance to general netizens through pay-for-answer subscription with the help of Chinese social media. This article interrogates grassroots celebrities via Zhihu, China's largest community for questions and answers (CQA). It extends Western-focused scholarship on microcelebrities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Human Sciences Journal / Revue des Sciences Humaines is the property of Universite des Freres Mentouri Constantine and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We explored the views of members of parliament (MPs) in Ghana on the call to decriminalise attempted suicide. We applied reflexive thematic analysis to Parliamentary Hansards (2017–2020) on calls to decriminalise attempted suicide in Ghana. 11 MPs shared their stance for or against the call. We developed three major themes that entailed, often, opposing views: (1) deterrent effect of the law (against: the law punishes and deters to protect life; for: the law is insensitive and has ironic effects), (2) enforcement of the law (against: leave things as they are, the law is not enforced, anyway; for: crime is not self-inflicted) and (3) prioritisation of suicide prevention (against: focus on more pressing issues, but resource support systems; for: the law and legitimate support systems cannot co-exist). The findings indicate two needs: to extend suicide literacy to Ghanaian MPs, and to initiate a public/private member's bill on attempted suicide decriminalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wikipedia is a widely used tool people use to gather knowledge about the world, causing it to have a vast impact on the way individuals perceive the reality they live in. It is then of paramount importance that the picture of the world Wikipedia provides is accurate. We cannot afford such an important tool to eschew inclusiveness or a fair representation of reality: an inaccurate picture of the world in such a tool can be used to claim unjust and unfair positions — such as that women are inferior to men — as if they were facts, because they are enshrined on an encyclopedia. In this paper, we study issues of fair gender representations for people in history noted by multiple language editions of Wikipedia: are women underrepresented on Wikipedia? We do so via a combination of natural language processing and network science. Our results indicate that there is indeed a higher bar for women to have their own biographical page on Wikipedia: women are only included when they have more significant connections than men to the rest of the network. There are visible effects of the initiatives Wikipedia is taking to fix this issue, showing that the gap is narrowing, which validates our interpretation of the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]