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Chinese newspaper coverage of 'celebrity' and 'charity' (2000–2013). Source: Cnki.cn, accessed August 14, 2014.
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Based on a statistical analysis of 91 celebrity-endorsed charities in the People’s Republic of China, this paper challenges the popular assumption that celebrity involvement with not-for-profit organisations attracts extensive media coverage. Although China is the largest media market in the world, previous studies of celebrity philanthropy have be...
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This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the development of, and public responses to, celebrity-fronted philanthropy in the People's Republic of China. It explores the extent and nature of celebrity philanthropy with reference to a sample of mainland Chinese celebrities in entertainment and sports. It then draws on interviews condu...
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... This problem could be alleviated by professionalization in accounting and human resources that contribute to fundraising cost efficiency particularly among nonpublic foundations (Ni et al., 2016). Other studies addressed foundations' responsiveness to different types of inquirers (Nie & Lam, 2022), tax-exempt status (Wang et al., 2021), geographic distribution of charitable resources (Song & Fu, 2018), overseas philanthropy (Deng, 2019), and the role of celebrities in foundations and how they foster charity (Deng, 2015;Hassid & Jeffreys, 2015;Jeffreys, 2015). Lastly, two studies on foundation transparency involves political connections. ...
In this conceptual paper, we discuss Chinese foundations in global perspective by reviewing two recent frameworks that aim to capture key dimensions of foundation development and relations with the state. In exploring the overlap and differences in these frameworks, we draw out conclusions for new directions that future foundation research in China might take. In particular, Chinese foundation research is still heavily focused on the generation of resources for foundations, such as private giving, fundraising and the importance of celebrities, whereas Western foundation discourses are frequently more occupied with the uses of foundation resources for public purposes and the advantages and disadvantages thereof, including questions over the legitimacy of foundation intervention into public affairs. These discourses are shaped by the relative prominence of grantmaking versus operating foundations, as functions differ significantly between these two foundation types. While this differentiation has not been introduced in the Chinese foundation literature yet, a deeper exploration of differences between foundation types might generate additional new insights into the development of Chinese foundations.
... We find that among the celebrities who reposted official messages, those who have more Weibo followers, who are younger, and who are from the mainland and Hong Kong reposted more than those who have fewer Weibo followers, who are 13 Jeffreys 2010. 14 Jeffreys 2015a;2015b;Deng and Jeffreys 2018;Hassid and Jeffreys 2015;Jeffreys and Xu 2017. 15 Kokas 2017. ...
In China, celebrities can dominate public discourse and shape popular culture, but they are under the state's close gaze. Recent studies have revealed how the state disciplines and co-opts celebrities to promote patriotism, foster traditional values and spread political propaganda. However, how do celebrities adapt to the changing political environment? Focusing on political signalling on the social media platform Sina Weibo, we analyse a novel dataset and find that the vast majority of top celebrities repost from official accounts of government agencies and state media outlets, though there are variations. Younger celebrities with more followers tend to repost from official accounts more often. Celebrities from Taiwan tend to repost less than those from the mainland and Hong Kong, despite being subject to the same rules. However, the frequent political signalling by the most influential celebrities among younger generations suggests that the state has co-opted celebrity influence on social media to broadly promote its political objectives.
... Celebrities use their public visibility, brand credibility, and personal wealth to promote not-for-profit organizations (Jeffreys and Allatson, 2015). Although China is the largest media market in the world, previous studies of celebrity philanthropy have been conducted almost exclusively in Western contexts (Hassid and Jeffreys, 2015). This study brings a new perspective to the discussion of celebrity impression management and philanthropy and provides the latest experience and evidence from China. ...
Background: In China, celebrities, represented by entertainment and sports personalities, are often involved in charitable activities to assist the party-state in solving social problems. Although previous research has addressed the manifestation of prosocial behavior by Chinese celebrities, altruistic engagements have rarely been theorized from the perspective of impression management.
Methods: Based on the perspective of impression management, we use the discourse analysis approach to analyze the interview manuscripts of Chinese celebrities in media reports and then summarize the charitable motives and impression management strategies adopted by Chinese celebrities in their self-presentation.
Results: Chinese celebrities’ self-presentation of philanthropic motives in the media can be roughly divided into five categories: motivation for empathy-altruism, motivation for social responsibility, motivation to gain prestige, and pursue fame, motivation to reduce negative emotions, and motivation to achieve fulfillment and satisfaction. The philanthropic motives presented in media reports include the impression management processes of celebrities. They adopt a variety of image management strategies to self-present their philanthropic motives, and sometimes several strategies coexist.
Conclusion: Our paper helps to expand the existing understanding of the relationship between impression management and philanthropy. The presentation of Chinese celebrities’ philanthropic motivations in the media reflects the uniqueness of China’s political, institutional, and social environment in influencing celebrity philanthropy. As a philanthropic phenomenon with Chinese characteristics, this study could provide some insights into the understanding of celebrities and philanthropy in other cultural contexts.
... For example, (i) Zindagi Trust that is run by the famous Pakistani singer Shahzad Roy, works for improving the education quality and making it available to every Pakistani and (ii) Shahid Afridi Foundation that is run by the famous cricketer Shahid Afridi, aims to provide basic healthcare, education, and sports facilities to the under privileged people of Pakistan (Salman, 2017), and (iii) the Yuvraj Singh Foundation that is run by the famous Indian cricketer, aims to create awareness about cancer and educating people about the deadly disease (Sachdeva, 2019). It sounds logical that the involvement of celebrities in philanthropic activities receives profound media publicity in social as well as conventional platforms (Hassid & Jeffreys, 2015). Along this vein, Ilicic and Baxter (2014) argued that celebrity philanthropy can be termed "celanthropy" and defined as the "perceived philanthropic activities of a celebrity." ...
... In order to bolster their social character, firms tend to involve celebrities in their marketing campaigns who are actively engaged in philanthropic activities. The engagement of celebrity philanthropy in marketing campaigns may be due to the fact that it is viewed as a growing and highly mediatized phenomenon (Hassid & Jeffreys, 2015). Therefore, the second objective of this study is to investigate the impact of celebrity philanthropy on WoM intentions. ...
... Simultaneously, he was being used as a celebrity endorser in an anti-dandruff shampoo advertisement of a leading multinational company. The idea of selecting a sports celebrity was taken from the work of Ilicic and Baxter (2014) and Hassid and Jeffreys (2015), and this idea of a vignettebased survey was adapted from previous studies such as Zhou and Whitla (2013). ...
Philanthropic activities have gained paramount importance in today’s world. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, the authors propose a model to comprehend the process of philanthropy (corporate as well as celebrity) in creating word of mouth intentions (hereafter WoM). Secondly, it attempts to explore the interaction effects of these philanthropies on WoM intentions. A structural equation model is tested in a sample of 400 FMCG consumers in Pakistan. The results confirm that both corporate and celebrity philanthropy directly and positively affect WoM intentions. However, their interaction effect is found to be insignificant on WoM intentions. This study has meaningful implications that involving philanthropic celebrities in corporate philanthropy-based advertisements may garner favorable consumers’ WoM intentions. It lies among the pioneering studies to empirically investigate the understudied model of corporate and celebrity philanthropy in order to understand the creation of WoM intentions.
... Despite pervasive celebrity involvement in humanitarian causes, doubts have been raised about their actual ability to alter policy (Brockington, 2014;Brockington and Henson, 2015;Couldry, 2004;Couldry and Markham, 2007;Dieter and Kumar, 2008;Driessens et al., 2012;Goodman and Barnes, 2011;Hassid and Jeffreys, 2015;Scott, 2015;Street, 2012;Thrall and Stecula, 2017). Rather than acting as a catalyst for stirring public interest, celebrity involvement in humanitarian causes can alienate the public (Brockington and Henson, 2015). ...
The paper brings together two segments of contemporary humanitarian practice – celebrity advocacy and virtual reality (VR) – in order to more fully comprehend the relationship between emergent technologies and humanitarian advocacy efforts. Numerous VR documentaries intended to immerse audiences into the full experience of “distant suffering” have been crafted for audiences in the global North. Between 2015 and 2019, the United Nations invested in at least 21 VR documentaries covering crisis situations around the world. VR’s popularity is premised on the promise of bringing spectators and “distant sufferers” together through immersive experiences. Performances of humanitarian advocacy use traditional representational tools of Western humanitarian discourse. This leads to the question whether advocacy efforts using immersive VR flatten real and material differences that exist between sufferers and spectators in safe zones through the “illusion of co-suffering”? To what extent do such experiences risk “improper distance” by translating the irreducible alterity of other lives into familiar terms?
... The authors noted that this high percentage of philanthropic involvement may be attributed to the desire to leverage their celebrity brand (i.e., prominent names with more public allure), thus capitalizing on their capacity to attract media attention. Some recent literature suggests that these individuals can use their platforms and highly visible channels of communication-such as social media accounts-to spur social action and involvement by their followers and fans (Bennett, 2014;Hassid & Jeffreys, 2015;Jeffreys & Allatson, 2015). ...
Professional athletes are increasingly engaged in social impact efforts via charitable endeavors. Despite seemingly good intentions in these efforts, the media’s representation of athlete philanthropy varies widely. This study examines how discourses of athlete charity are represented in U.S. media coverage. Over 100 newspaper articles were obtained for the period of 2005–2017. The authors conducted a qualitative analysis which consisted of attribute coding for basic article characteristics, identification of both framing and reasoning devices, and deductive coding to identify generic media frames. The authors present an adapted frame matrix highlighting the salient frames in media coverage of athlete philanthropy. Our results show that athlete charitable efforts are related to a personal or emotional connection or linked to an economic perspective around philanthropy. A third frame reflected a moral underpinning to athletes’ charitable work. The authors discuss managerial implications for teams and leagues that provide support for athletes’ charitable work, as well as for the athletes themselves.
... Literatürde ünlü aktivizminin genel olarak uluslararası siyaset (Budabin, 2015); uluslararası ilişkiler (Huliaras & Tzifakis, 2010); Birleşmiş Milletler (Cooper, 2008;Wheeler, 2011); hayırseverlik (Jeffreys & Allatson, 2015;Hassid & Jeffreys, 2015;Jeffreys & Xu, 2017;Yang et al., 2018) çerçevesinde ele alındığı görülmektedir. Ayrıca literatürde, sosyal medyada ünlü aktivizmini ele alan çalışmalar (Marwick & Boyd, 2011;Tüfekçi, 2013;Bennett, 2014;Buente & Rhatnayake, 2016;Duvall & Heckemeyer, 2018;Ellcessor, 2018) da bulunmaktadır. ...
... In the 1990s, the terms 'philanthropy' and 'charity' were rehabilitated and increasingly translated as gongyi (public welfare); this term has caught on among the government, the general public and mass media (Lai et al. 2015). The 10th and 11th 'Five-year Plans' both mentioned developing philanthropic enterprises to address rising social demands and inequality (Hassid and Jeffreys 2015). The agenda was enshrined in changes to the regulatory framework. ...
... Following a series of substantial legal changes, private foundations 'are becoming the most important players in the field of impact investment in China (Yu 2016). ' Since private foundations are still nascent in China, there is great scholarly interest in understanding their general features (Lai et al. 2015;Zhang 2015a;Hassid and Jeffreys 2015;Deng 2015;Ni et al. 2017). However, their connections with NGO development remain underexplored. ...
Two trends are gaining prevalence across China: (1) NGO needs for funding in order to survive and (2) the transformation of the government and private foundations into major NGO donors. This study explores grassroots NGOs’ experience with the government’s purchase-of-services contracting and private foundations’ grant schemes in Shanghai, Beijing and Sichuan. The research findings show that two opposite effects of the funding game are simultaneously felt: growing space for diversity and increasing isomorphic pressures. The two donor types have jointly created a result-driven and institutionalized environment in which NGOs easily lose sight of their missions and uniqueness. Nonetheless, despite finding their options extremely limited, NGOs adopt constantly evolving, multifaceted resource strategies.
... Respondents covered all of the major occupational groups represented in the Chinese census. But the largest groups were professional and technical workers (26 per cent), followed by students58 Hung, Chan and Tse 2011, 6.59 Hassid and Jeffreys 2015;Thrall et al. 2008.60 Brockington and Hensen 2015. ...
This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the development of, and public responses to, celebrity-fronted philanthropy in the People's Republic of China. It explores the extent and nature of celebrity philanthropy with reference to a sample of mainland Chinese celebrities in entertainment and sports. It then draws on interviews conducted with employees of large charities to examine the kinds of links that are being forged between China's not-for-profit sector and commercial organizations managing the work of celebrities. Finally, it analyses the responses to a national survey on celebrity and philanthropy. We conclude that the relationship between China's government, not-for-profit and celebrity sectors is becoming more professionalized and organized. This development reveals how the roles and capacities of government are being reconfigured and expanded, even as it also enhances the scope for action and the influence of new social actors and organizations to address government-led national development issues.
... Thus, individual acts of giving do not become known to the public without the participation of the media. 46 This process of mediatization is also one of moral exemplariness, whereby the generosity of the giver is put on display for others to emulate. Thus, the media, including both official Chinese Communist Party outlets and commercial mainstream media such as the Oriental Morning Post, play a central role in the discursive project of producing cross-class love. ...
Several decades of economic reform have transformed China into one of the world’s most unequal countries. However, because this inequality has been studied primarily at the structural level, we know little about how it impacts on intimate relationships and affects individuals’ experiences of love and romance. This article engages with this question through a case study of ‘Love on the Assembly Line’, a series of ‘wedding photos’ featuring Chinese rural migrant workers, and the subsequent series of television reports of the same name, dating from 2012–13. It first examines the political-economic context of this minor cultural phenomenon, then examines current contestations over the meaning of love and romance, and finally documents the responses of rural migrant individuals themselves to the project. Combining ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews, and critical discourse analysis, this discussion goes some way towards demonstrating how inequality of emotion can be fruitfully studied, thereby advancing a new and alternative approach to researching inequality in China – one that views love/romance as a cluster of contested cultural narratives and discourses; as a social practice that involves a particular form of distributive injustice; as an integral part of class politics; and as the product of the interaction of these three realms.
