What role do celebrities play in environmentalism? What distinguishes some celebrities from others? Is celebrity environmentalism helpful, hurtful, or both? In this review article, the authors identify and unpack 9 different celebrity tropes with regards to environmentalism. Check out the abstract below, and then click through to the main article to learn more:
The Tropes of Celebrity Environmentalism
Peer-reviewed research by: Crystal Abidin, Dan Brockington, Michael K. Goodman, Mary Mostafanezhad, Lisa Ann Richey
Celebrity advocacy for environmental causes has grown dramatically in recent decades. An examination of this expansion and the rise of causes such as climate change reveals the shifting politics and organization of advocacy. We address these changes to the construction and interpretation of celebrity advocacy and detail how they have produced a rich variety of environmental celebrity advocates. We also account for differences between legacy (e.g., radio, TV, newspapers) and online celebrities and their practices (e.g., hashtag publics, brandjacking, online communities). Environmental celebrity advocates’ performances can be divided into nine tropes, each characterized in part by the particular varieties of environmentalism that they promote. We present the tropes and discuss their five cross-cutting themes. We conclude with a set of questions for future research on celebrity environmentalism.
Click here to read the full open-access article, published in 2020 in the journal Annual Review of Environment and Resources.
Full Reference //
Abidin, C., Brockington, D., Goodman, M. K., Mostafanezhad, M., & Richey, L. A. (2020). The Tropes of Celebrity Environmentalism. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 45(1), 387-410.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Knowledge Stitch amplifies open-access peer-reviewed academic research. If you have research you would like readers to check out, click here to suggest your work.