The standard view of celebrity advocacy focuses on the ability of celebrities to help causes make news and capture the public's attention. Drawing on an analysis of the advocacy efforts and news-making success of hundreds of celebrities, we argue, however, that the standard view of celebrity advocacy significantly overstates the news-making abilities of celebrities in the political arena. Our assessment of the celebrity advocacy tactics used by fifty-three environmental groups suggests that celebrities instead play a growing role as part of an emerging strategy for political advocacy. Spawned by the difficulty most groups have making news, and made possible by the evolution of technology and the public sphere, this new celebrity advocacy strategy represents one aspect of a broader shift in American politics being ushered in by the digital age.
"Look to the Stars," http://www.looktothestars.org/ .
4.
The observant reader will notice that this search method does not comprehensively include Al Gore, who is typically not identified as a celebrity. We did not include Gore for several reasons: First, he was in government during most of the time period in question. Second, Gore is not a good example of the conventional wisdom's argument about the usefulness of "typical" celebrities. That said, Gore appeared in 112 New York Times global warming stories in 2006 and 163 stories in 2007 after appearing in just 7 stories in 2005.We are inclined to believe that the success of Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth explains much of the increased media attention to global warming since 2005.
5.
Data retrieved September 24, 2007, from http://www.opensecrets.org/.
6.
We derived this estimate by using ProQuest to determine how many NewYork Times stories there were on a single day in 2006 and simply multiplying by 365.
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