Mengnan- Dissertation

Celebrities and Fans’ Philanthropy in China: A Critique of Parasocial Relationship

Msc PLANET Europe Mengnan Jiang June 2018

Student Number Supervisors:

Cardiff University: Professor Mark Jayne C1674007 Professor Arnoud Lagendijk

Radboud University Nijmegen: S4836081 1 2 3 4 5 Abstract

Fandom culture has attracted many academic researches in recent years. The inﬂuence of celebrity is no longer a new subject, while fans of celebrity have become a new powerful part of civil society in China. They start to get involved in social engagement by doing philanthropy. This phenomenon has gained social attention but has been an academic gap, of which it is worth studying the motivation and inﬂuence.

The relationship between celebrity and fans used to be called a parasocial one (Robers, 2007). However, with the development of entertainment market, traditional inﬂuence of celebrity directly on public is weakened, and it appears now that celebrity and fans are more complicated characters of the society and are sharing a evolving relationship with double-way interaction, which propels further social impact.

This research focuses on the motivation and social impact of celebrity and fans' philanthropy in China, through a critical perspective of the parasocial relationship between celebrity and fans, complements the existing researches on celebrity and fandom culture. In the research, I argue that celebrity and fans have reached a new relationship beyond parasocial, which motivates fans to do philanthropy and to cast impact on public. With appropriate improvement, future enlargement of celebrity and fans' philanthropy has huge potential to make positive differences to the society.

6 Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisors from both Cardiff University and Radboud University. Professor Mark Jayne and Professor Arnoud Lagendijk have both provided valuable knowledge and guidance for me. Thank you very much.

I also greatly appreciate all the 20 participants of interviews in the research. Thanks for giving your precious time to this study and providing so much interesting information. Thanks my parents and friends for always being of great support, especially all my classmates from PLANET Europe for sharing knowledge and supporting each other.

Finally, I would like to thank my partner Kuo Zhao for always keeping me company and being by my side.

7 Table of Contents

1. Introduction 1 1.1 Theoretical Context 1 1.2 Research Questions 2 1.3 Structure 3 2 Literature Review 5 2.1 Celebrity Charity and Fan Activism 5 2.2 Celebrities and Civil Society in China 9 2.3 The Social Impact of Celebrity and Fans' philanthropy 11 2.4 Conclusion 13 3. Research Design and Methodology 15 3.1 Research Philosophy 15 3.2 Methodology 16 3.3 Case Study: I Fight for the Fighting Boys 20 3.4 Ethical Consideration 22 3.5 Conclusion 22 4 Findings and Analysis 24 4.1 Interaction and Relationship of Celebrity and Fans 25 4.2 Motivation and Effect of Fans' philanthropy 33 4.3 Scale up Fans' philanthropy 43 4.4 Conclusion 53 5 Conclusions 56 5.1 Celebrities and Fans' Philanthropy: A Parasocial Relationship? 56 5.2 The Overall Theory Contribution 58 5.3 Recommendations 59 Appendix I: List of Interview Participants 61 Appendix II: Terminology and Abbreviations 62 Appendix III: Table 4.3.1 Original in Chinese 63 Appendix IV: Interview Guidance (English & Chinese) 65 References 67

8 List of Figures and Tables

Figure 2.4.1- Interaction Between Celebrity, Fans, and Public: Visual Conceptional Framework Figure 3.3.1- TFBOYS on Chinese New Year Gala Figure 4.0- Adjusted Model of Interactions between Celebrity, Fans and Public Figure 4.1.1-Fans Group ‘Teen Festival’ Posting on Weibo Figure 4.1.2-TFBOYS Reply to Fans from Sign Language League of Renmin University Figure 4.1.3-Data of Slogans Made by Fans as Weibo Topic (Karry, Roy, Jackson) Figure 4.1.4-Results of Googling “TFBOYS Positive Energy” Figure 4.2.1-First Fans' philanthropy of BelovedGlory for Celebrating Karry’s Birthday Figure 4.2.2-Fans Comments on RiceDonation Table 4.3.1-Incomplete Statistic of Karry’s 18th Birthday Supporting Projects Figure 4.3.2-Results of Searching TFBOYS in CYL’s Weibo & Latest Relevant Post Figure 4.3.3 Netizen Comments on Difference between Fandom Culture in China, Japan and Korea Figure 4.4.1 Comparison of Initial (Left) and Adjusted (Right) Model of Interactions between Celebrity, Fans and Public

1 1. Introduction

1.1 Theoretical Context

With the development of the Internet and social media, as well as the increasingly entertaining society, the impact of celebrity and fandom culture has become a noticeable phenomenon and attracted more academic research (Harris and Alexander, 1998; Rojek, 2001; Lewis, 2002). In Asia, the ‘fans support’ originated from Japan and South Korea is conquering the continent (Shim, 2006). In China, despite the short history of fandom culture, it has rapidly grew and reached an era of fan economy (Liang and Shen, 2017). Nowadays, fans can be the group of people who volunteer to pay for advertising the celebrity they worship in a bus or subway, even on a huge LED screen in a bustling business district, only for celebrating the birthday of the celebrity. However, there is one form of ‘fans support’ widely encouraged by public, which refers to fans doing charities or philanthropy in the name of their ‘idol’ (Li, 2016). In fact, the word ‘idol’1 has developed a new meaning as a specific career divided from normal celebrities, and refers to an image for encouraging fans to chase dream and be good people (Kim, 2015).

Fans always follow closely what the celebrities are endorsing, no matter it is commercial advertisements for products or Public Service Announcements (PSAs). This gradually leads to a new phenomenon in the ﬁeld of charities: fans' philanthropy (Chen, 2014). Fans donate in idol's name and the scale of other fans' philanthropy is gradually expanding. Appearing on more news reports, fans' philanthropy has caught even more attention than traditional celebrity philanthropy (Maclang, 2016). Meanwhile, the impact of celebrities and fans' philanthropy can be clearly observed. Many initiatives are taken, such as self-organized donation for the disabled and poor kids, activities for low-carbon life promotion and afforestation etc (Asia News Network, 2014; Li, 2016). The subject of philanthropy projects varies and the activities turn to be very powerful since they are being discussed all over newspapers and social media. The discussion can be intense regarding the motivation of celebrity and fans, the responsibility they are taking and the social impact they are making (Littler, 2008; Thrall

1 See Appendix for new deﬁnition of ‘idol’ in this case. 1 et al., 2008; Driessens et al., 2012). In this research, the key ideas I engage are the relationship between celebrity and fans, as well as the motivation and impact of celebrity and fans' philanthropy.

1.2 Research Questions

In China, due to the improvement of public consumption and the sensitivity of political topics, the public is paying more attention to entertainment news and celebrities, which leads to stronger impact of celebrities and fans' behaviours. There has been many discussions over the ‘crazy’ fandom culture in Asia, also regarding the pros and cons of the inﬂuence of celebrities from many aspects (Littler, 2008; Thrall et al., 2008; Driessens et al., 2012; Liang and Shen, 2017). However, there is an academic gap, a lack of research regarding fans' philanthropy.

The problem of celebrity and fans' philanthropy is that the public has trust issues for celebrity and understanding issues for fans (Driessens et al., 2012; Liang and Shen, 2017). The motivation and results of the philanthropy is yet to be revealed. The research believes that it is meaningful to ﬁnd out the motivation of fans' philanthropy, as well as the impact of celebrities and fans' philanthropy in China. It also aims to provide suggestion and recommendation for promoting positive social impact of celebrity and fans actions in the future.

This article aims ultimately to learn how the celebrities and fans' philanthropy are making social impact in China. To answer this question, there are three research questions formed.

1. How is celebrity inﬂuencing fans behaviours and what is the relationship of celebrity and fans? 2. How is fans' philanthropy motivated and making differences to public? 3. Is it feasible to scale up and develop more similar forms of “celebrities and fans charity” in the future?

The first question aims specifically to figure out the interaction between celebrity and fans. How do they communicate and influence each other through their special identities? There are meaning transfer model (Pornpitakpan, 2003, MaCracken, 1989) and theory of 2 different levels of worship (McCutcheon et al., 2002). Roberts (2007) put forward the form of 'parasocial relationship'. Still, the answer needs to be found out through research, which can explain the fandom culture now in China and part of the motivation of fan activities. The second question focuses more on all the factors that can possibly motivate fans' philanthropy, and also leads to the discovery regarding the relationship of fans and public. Fans can be motivated by sense of being pioneers (Garber & Paleo, 1983), of personal control (Harris, 1998), and of community (Jenkins, 2012) etc., while the research aims to find out most significant factors of it. Based on the answers of first two questions, the research will go further with the question of feasibility of scaling up in the future. It needs more analysis of the validity of the current phenomenon that fans are trying to make differences to the society. Supposing the findings from first two questions show that celebrity and fans' philanthropy are making positive influence, the potential of scaling up in the future should be figured out as well.

To answer all the questions, the research chooses the scope of study within the Mainland China, and the case study of TFBOYS, the most famous band of idols in China. The research is conducted through semi-structured interviews and online textual analysis as two methods to collect relevant information and datas from the three member of the biggest fans groups of TFBOYS. The interviews listen to the voice of fans and the sexual analysis focuses on ofﬁcial announcements and news report regarding celebrity, as well as fans and public's posts online. According to data and information collected, the research addresses the current social impact of celebrity and fans in China and the key factors of the motivation and inﬂuence, through the analysis of comparison and combination of data from two methods. The research also proposes recommendations for future development of fans' philanthropy for promoting positive social impact in China.

1.3 Structure

The study begins with the literature review regarding celebrity worship and fandom culture, celebrity philanthropy and fans activism, as well as the features of civil society in China. A model is drawn as the theoretical framework through the literature review to address the relationships between celebrity, fans and public built on existing theories. The chapter of literature review is followed by the methodology part, including the academic philosophy of the research, the overview of methods used in study, and the research strategy of the paper. Then, the ﬁndings and analysis are addressed through quotes and pictures after 20 3 interviews and deep online textual analysis, in accordance with corresponding research questions. The model drawn from literature review is also amended in the end of the chapter of ﬁndings. Finally, the study draws a conclusion as the answer to research questions, and proposes recommendations for potential further research.

4 2 Literature Review

This chapter goes through literatures that provide fundamental debatesf. Section 2.1 sums up researches regarding celebrity charity and fan activism in the UK and the US, which provides fundament for the research in China. Celebrity is considered to be powerful for social engagement (Fletcher, 2015) and the motivation behind is analyzed mostly as a method to raise proﬁle (Littler, 2008; Driessens et al., 2012). The Source Attractiveness Model and Meaning Transfer Model (Pornpitakpan, 2003) explains the inﬂuence of celebrity endorsement. As for fan activism, 'a sense of community' (Jenkins, 2012; Kligler et al., 2012) is proposed as main factor, while shared media experience and good wish are also emphasized (Kligler et al., 2012). Section 2.2 explains the Chinese particularity in terms of civil society, focusing on the state-led philanthropy (Frolic,1997) and censorship with social media (Bamman et al., 2012). Section 2.3 shows the social impact of celebrity and fans activities through the interaction between celebrities and fans, built on the theory of parasocial relationship (Robers, 2007) and the 'Idol Phenomenon' (Fairchild, 2007).

A conclusion is ﬁnally made to provide a cornerstone for further research afterwards. A conceptional model of relationships of celebrity, fans and public is drawn as the theoretical framework of the study, based on the results of literature review. In addition, three key factors of fan activism (Kligler et al., 2012) are stressed out as signiﬁcant reference for guidance of interviews.

2.1 Celebrity Charity and Fan Activism

Celebrities all over the world have grown more prominence and therefore have gotten more influence on public and society. Fletcher (2015) addressed that “celebrities are increasingly able to command authority to address weighty social and political issues”. He believes the phenomenon is reflected as a result of the interaction between celebrities and the public. On the other side, it is also encouraged that the celebrity aims to keep good reputation by branding. The image of celebrity is influenced by public comments and inquiries, and thus has grown to what the public prefer to see. Therefore, supporting charity becomes an ‘official part’ of celebrity job. It is not hard to understand that celebrities need to “raise their profile above the zone of the crudely commercial into the sanctified, quasi-religious realm of altruism and charity” (Littler, 2008), but there are still believes that many of them have good wishes to help genuinely. There are also opinions that the 5 motivation does not matter much as long as it is doing good to the public. Littler (2008) sums up a brief history of celebrity philanthropy in the West: With Audrey Hepburn’s work for UNICEF as the often-cited early example of charity in the history, celebrity involved in charity is claimed to be ‘normal’ over the last two decades. Part of the reason that there began to appear an ‘expansion of celebrity charity involvement in 1990s’ could be concluded as “the changing natures of the domain of celebrity culture and of those happening to the ‘third’ (or voluntary, or charity) sector”. The social marketing was expanding, and so was the ‘celebrity-based media entertainment’. Charity became a good brand for them. In the context of post-Fordism and the ‘cultural turn’, the widespread of celebrity philanthropy/charity can be understood well. Littler (2008) also pointed out the problems of this “marriage of celebrity and charity”: there can be inequality between celebrity and the organisation in terms of the financial benefit; the agenda-setting of organisation can be impacted by celebrity and the most important and urgent issues may not be tackled first; celebrities can be unhelpful by misleading people with inappropriate (even wrong) but powerful speech; and so on.

From a global perspective, the increasing phenomenon of celebrity charity is shown and situated in “a broader, and predominantly Western, neoliberal culture of individualisation”. (Bauman 2000; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001). Yet it is not only happening in the West. In China, there is less ‘neoliberal culture of individualisation’, celebrity charity has been rising through a quite different way. Jeffreys (2015) focuses on the celebrity philanthropy in mainland China and puts forwards that even with the government playing a signiﬁcant role in charities, China has lately shown the gradually increased social marketing, as well as the social and civic engagement regarding many issues, one of which is the phenomenon of celebrity philanthropy. However, not surprisingly, celebrity philanthropy involves government as a ‘correct leading’.

Following the endorsement and branding of celebrities, fans are taking actions as well, which is an understudied terrain of existing research on fandom and philanthropy. To understand fans' philanthropy/charity, there is a need to have a brief introduction of the historical rise of fandom culture, which also derives from the western postindustrial society. As a complex norm to explain, fans are shown as the “surprisingly intensified relationships created by a special category of audience” (Harris, 1998). Fandom, which is defined by Harris (1998) as ‘fans and their social and cultural environment’, can leads to a series of questions including what produces it, what roles are the fans playing in social and cultural 6 processes, who can remain the identity of fans, etc. According to Harris (1998), fans become a focus for academic researchers from early 1990s, and voices have been inconsistent. However, most of them focus on the level of fan practices, no matter from a critical or not perspective. Drawn from these articles, there are two significant elements of fandom culture: identity and engagement. People who claim to be fans of some objects can be very much possibly motivated by ‘a sense of community’ (Jenkins,2012), even “a sense of personal control or influence over the object of fandom” (Harris, 1998). While with these practices bringing fans ‘the sense’, fans groups aiming to various objects are growing rapidly, and thus fandom activism was generated.

There has been studies of fan activism in terms of civic and political participation in the US. In these researches, fans of popular culture instead of some certain celebrities or super stars are the objective of study. Jenkins (2012) deﬁnes fan activism as “forms of civic engagement and political participation that emerge from within fan culture itself, often in response to the shared interests of fans, often conducted through the infrastructure of existing fan practices and relationships, and often framed through metaphors drawn from popular and participatory culture”. Brough and Shresthova (2012) refer fan activism to a concept incorporated to “the range of intentional actions by fans, or the use of fanlike strategies, to provoke change”, and emphasise that fan activism is not something new, and it is noted that there were “early pioneers of the 1950s homophile movement met through fandom” (Garber, E & Paleo,L, 1983). Since then, many fan activities happened with few academic analysis on them. Charitable contributions also appeared to be one form of the fan activism when 9/11 terrorist attacks happened (Stein, 2002). With collective fans getting more and more engaged with civic participatory, fans groups can be identiﬁed as a new form of social and political participation, shifted from the traditional non government organisations. They are considered to be the ‘intersections of cultural and civic/political participation’ (Brough, M. & Shresthova, S, 2012). In this study, it also leads to the role of civil society, which is discussed further later in this chapter.

As the intersection of cultural entertainment and social actions, fan activism can be analysed through three elements according to Kligler et. al (2012): shared media experiences, a sense of community, and a wish to help. In this research, these three elements are referenced as the guidance for studying the motivation of fans' philanthropy. Prepared interview questions are designed based on them and then go wider and deeper

7 with the conversation. Speciﬁc contents are illustrated more in details in the methodology part.

Shared media experiences refer to the way of fans assembled through media. Fan activist groups are gathering people through the ‘power of the media experience that their members share’(Kligler et. al, 2012). In western postindustrial society, mass media and popular culture, along with their derivatives, have been highlighted as signiﬁcant parts of what are changing people’s daily lives. Everyone becomes self media. Culture becomes more individualised. People start to look for their community through self expression or even branding, namely, through shared media experiences and communication with each other. This also shows the feature of Internet age, and thus leads to a predictable result that these groups have a tendency of young people as members.

A sense of community, also called ‘a sense of collective’, is addressed by the fact that many fans activist groups are built on a base of existing community and can be developed to many local clubs making people ‘feel home’. Harris (2008) points out that in the context postindustrial world, due to the more class divided societies, one’s subordination ‘may be a source of anomie and despair’. From this point of view, some individuals may seek to ensure and express their identities to avoid becoming silence group through ‘a common interest in a symbol, icon or text’, and ‘redress their alienation through the social nature of fan practice’. Dell (2006) gives out a convincing conclusion based on the case study of postwar female fans of professional wrestling: the evolving of fan activities or movements can be triggered as the ‘specific responses to significant historical social and cultural shifts that threaten or displace social identities’. Besides, fans can create an exclusive atmosphere in which only them can understand each other. Many fans enjoy ‘the sense of creating their own cultures … which more perfectly expresses their own social visions and fantasies’ (Jenkins, 2002). Harris (2008) notes this phenomenon as the motivation of self- invention, ‘in which fandom provides an opportunity to live in and through a set of symbols that are expressive of ones aspirations rather than “reality”’. This appears to be proven in Chinese fandom culture of celebrities. There is even a popular article ‘The Fandom Jargon Dictionary’ (Luo, 2017) talking about the exclusive words and sentence patterns fans of the “fluxes” (famous new generation celebrities who have enormous number of fans and can bring huge views where they appear) are using, which is commented by public as “completely non-readable language of Aliens”.

8 A wish to help is essentially different with the other two elements which are ‘on the foot of fandom’. It emphasizes the volunteerism of some fans groups members to get engaged with civic participation (Kligler et. al, 2012). It certainly shows individual differences since good wish to help is a very personal thing and can hardly be a collective trait of a community. Furthermore, it can be the signiﬁcant even decisive factor to the consequence of fan activities. Do they really care and want to make differences? Or do they just want to improve their image and satisfy their ‘sense of personal control’? The volunteerism of fans who are taking actions should be studied in details when doing the research.

Among these three elements of fan activism, ‘a sense of community’ leads to the interaction of individual action and collective action. Since fans' philanthropy is regarding the collective and individual activities inﬂuencing each other, to conduct this study, there is a need to understand how normally the individual action is affected by communities or organisations. The ‘social proof heuristic’ of nudge theory helps with the understanding. (Sugden, 2017) A social proof heuristic refers to ‘the tendency for individuals to look at the behaviour of other people to help guide their own behaviour’. There has been relative study showing people’s choice of food nudged by social proof heuristic (Cheung et. al, 2017). It partly explains the reason of collective actions inﬂuencing individuals. Moreover, it is emphasised that this is the ‘golden age’ of online collective actions now for political or social participation because of the low threshold and costs of gathering people (Margetts et. al, 2015), which addresses the ‘shared media experience’ element further.

2.2 Celebrities and Civil Society in China

As one of the three major actors of the society, civil society is now discussed a lot more than it was in the past. The concepts of “associational revolution” and “power shift” are mentioned to describe the increasingly powerful role of civil society (Edwards, 2009). Many literatures also emphasize on the role of Non-profit Organizations (NPOs) and Non- government Organizations (NGOs). Beer et al. (2012) illustrate that the actions of NGOs work and shift between “advocacy, service Provision and regulation” due to tensions, scale of the organization and so on. In terms of many social change, the civil society is always a significant partner of the government and business. Literatures argue a lot that NGOs are showing great global influence. (Krut 1997; Price 2003; Fisher and Green 2004) Apparently, fan activist groups, who conduct the fan activism as a new type of civic participation shifted from traditional ways, can be defined as a minority form of civil society. 9 However, due to the political and social situation in China, there are some particular features in terms of the entertainment market, the celebrities’ influence, as well as the civil society.

China’s civil society is described by scholars as ‘state-led’ (Frolic,1997) and still it is today. The concept of GONGOs (‘government-organized NGOs) is put forward by Ho (2001) to describe the NGOs in China. He mentions the Beijing Environmental Protection Foundation as a typical case as a GONGO, using the facts that the Foundation can both publish draft for Beijing’s environmental legislation and engage with community activities, to illustrate its function as a NGO but with strong connections to the government. Yang (2003) points out three symbols of civil society’s development in China, including the growing number and change of social organizations, the more autonomy of organizations and individuals, and the nascent form of public sphere generated with the changing media. Yang (2003) also addresses the weakness of civil society in China and believes the state is still playing a signiﬁcant role to inﬂuence it.

It is also pointed out that celebrity and fans' philanthropy in China is one of the phenomena showing the influence of civil society in a different way from western society. China shows its particularity regarding the development of non-profit sector which is “intimately bound up with government-led efforts to create a new public culture of philanthropy” (Jeffreys, 2015). As an action promoting civil engagement, the celebrity philanthropy has the features of both civil society and business, since the philanthropy can work like commercial endorsement as branding. Studies also show that marketers are increasingly using endorsers to ‘shape and influence brand purchase’ and there is clearly different tendency of choosing celebrities (entertainment or sports, and different individuals) for endorsement when aiming at different consumers (Hung et. al, 2011). This addresses the influence on public behaviours can vary depending on different endorsers chosen for same products or philanthropy projects. However, the choice of celebrity endorsement is not only impacted by target groups but also the government. Jeffreys (2015) emphasised that ‘the close alignment of philanthropic activities with stated policy goals suggests that the government played an important role’. The civil society and celebrity in China are both related to the strong influence of government. However, Yang(2003) puts forwards that the development of internet has help with the growth of civil society by reducing geographical barriers, revealing news of environmental and social issues, and linking to relevant on-line pages addressing problems. 10 The development of internet brings a new era for politic profile, business, and civil society, to a large extent through new media, while China has its new problems. There has been clear increase of the linkage between politics and entertainment in the western world (Holbert and Young, 2013). However, it is not as common in China because of the speech restriction to some extent. This does not refer to the real ‘speaking’ in daily life but mostly on social media, which tends to be the way to acquire information for most young people. Bamman et al. (2012) conducts an analysis of term deletion rates over all messages on Chinese Weibo, and a comparative analysis of term frequencies on Twitter vs. Sina. The results show that deleted terms on Chinese social media are ‘a mix of spam, politically sensitive terms, and terms whose sensitivity is shaped by current events’. The current events refer to many hot topics that ‘may lead to unstability’ including sexual harassment on students by professors from universities, muslim criminal, children amusement in certain private kindergarten, etc. The governmental censorship is only part of the deleted terms, while Sina Weibo has been trying to ‘keep people stable’ by deleting many social topics in heat which may trigger excessive emotions (Botanwang, 2013). While not surprisingly, the almost only topics left that are popular but not harmful are entertainment- related: news and gossips of celebrities. A special phenomenon is triggered on Chinese social media that market and party control are trying to reach a balance on Chinese media (Winfield and Peng, 2005) and entertainment news has been the main ‘alternative’ topics on Chinese social media and has gained a larger market, and more attention from the public than they should have gained in a freely posting environment.

It also shows closed loops and self-entertainment of many Chinese stars and their fans. Even though Weibo is almost only used in China, fans applied for Guinness World Record for the most comments and the most comments on Weibo Award, in order to show how popular and powerful their idol is (ChinaDaily, 2016). The phenomenon shows what activities fans are doing and how enthusiastic they are about supporting celebrity, but why? The answer shall be analysis in section 2.3 which addresses the interaction and relationship between celebrity and fans.

2.3 The Social Impact of Celebrity and Fans' philanthropy

Due to that the influence of fan activism is still in the early stage of development and that visible quantitive change can be difficult to measure, broader ways of evaluation need to 11 be taken into consideration. To evaluate the impact of celebrities and fans' philanthropy, it would be reliable and persuasive to analysis from the general influence of celebrity, the motivation of celebrity and fans' philanthropy and the interaction between stakeholders in the case.

Celebrity influences people’s life in many ways. One that can be referenced it the endorsement. Traditional influence of celebrity endorsement on public are studied in many models. Two of which, as Pornpitakpan (2003) summarises, refer to the Source Attractiveness model and Meaning Transfer Model. Based on previous studies, it shows the influence of celebrity is more or less established on the source attractiveness especially physical attractiveness, which contributes to the change of public attitude towards many issues. Besides, celebrity endorsement can be recognized as a process of meaning transfer, in which the meaning ‘first resides in the celebrity’, and then gets ‘transferred to a product when the celebrity endorses a product in an advertisement’, and finally is ‘moved from the product to the consumer’ (Pornpitakpan, 2003, MaCracken, 1989). It is reasonable to compare celebrity philanthropy with the commercial endorsement which are both promoted by celebrity power. In return, public behaviour shows the effect of celebrity and the public plays a role of supervisor to inhibit the possible over exaggeration or false information made by celebrity.

However, with the appearance of ‘professional fans’ of celebrity, part of the direct impact of celebrity on public has shifted to the impact through fans. Producers have improved the way of building “authentic celebrity” (Fairchild, 2007) image in order to make closer connections between celebrity and fans, and establish a strong bonding, a stable relationship in which fans can show a highest scale of worship with ‘a mixture of empathy with the celebrity’s successes and failures, over-identiﬁcation with the celebrity, compulsive behaviours, as well as obsession with details of the celebrity’s life’ (McCutcheon et al., 2002). Fans are also known as the followers who are forming attachments to celebrity ﬁgures that develop in ‘parasocial relationships, which are essentially imagined relationships that tend to be experienced as real’ (Roberts, 2007), and thus they are willing and happy to support their idols by following relevant information and actions. This interaction between celebrities and their fans, also claimed as ‘Idol Phenomenon’ (Fairchild, 2007), leads to the explanation of fans activism based on celebrity endorsement and philanthropy.

12 The evaluation of fan activism as civic participation could be referred as well, in terms of which, it needs to be explained that fans are part of the public but can still have interaction with the broader public. Fans, as a group with clear purpose doing activities, influence public attitude and behaviours by propaganda, and in the form of pushing and nudging. They form and contents of propaganda is of great significant whether the influence is positive because it can trigger rebels in many ways. While by doing goods, there are still a number of fans making differences and changing the attitude of public that can not be ignored. Public, sometimes professional NGOs, volunteer to provide feedback to the fans and seek for further cooperation (Kligler, 2012). Through news report it is clearly shown that fans of some Chinese celebrities are claimed to have achieved ‘phenomenal support’ for their idols and according to rough statistics, there are over 500 millions of fans changing their behaviors due to the celebrities’ influence (chinanews.com, 2018). The ‘phenomenal support’ refers to clearly change on societal level which normally gets attention of big media and public.

While talking about impact on social change, there is an argument about the level of evaluation: on individual or on societal level? Quoted by Brough (2015), in the case of Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000), ‘Social change is sometimes measured as an aggregate of the individual’. This indicates the way in which ‘individual-level change aggregates to broader society-level change’ as the effect of accumulation. In the collective intelligence model, Pierre(1997) also puts forward another way of assessing the change or difference made by fan activism from the perspective of communication, referring to the change which occurs ‘through the interaction of a group’.

2.4 Conclusion

Literature review above starts with the studies of celebrity philanthropy in the US and the UK, and then goes through the context of fandom culture to fan activism, with the results of research in the US. It then sums up the current particularity in terms of civil society and celebrity in China, after which the studies regarding evaluation of impact made by celebrity and fan activism are reviewed. This chapter provides a context for the research regarding celebrity and fans' philanthropy, as well as the social impact of them in China.

13 Figure 2.4.1 Interaction Between Celebrity, Fans, and Public Visual Conceptional Framework

The theoretical framework of the research consists two parts. The first part is a conceptional model (figure 2.4.1) drawn through the literature review, in terms of the interactions between celebrity charity, fans activism, and public behaviour. Upon the model it is easier and clearer to understand the motivation of fans and public, as well as to evaluate the impact of transferring meanings from celebrity to fans and public. The second part is the three key elements Kligler et. al (2012) address to explain fan activism: shared media experience, a sense of community, and a wish to help. This part provides a basic framework as the guidance of interviews and online analysis, and base on that the study is going deeper to obtain more findings.

14 3. Research Design and Methodology

This chapter illustrates the research design and explains details of methodology. Section 3.1 starts with the philosophical models to address the epistemological and ontological consideration as the fundament of this study, then explains the qualitative inductive approach. Section 3.2 illustrates the concrete methods used in the research, including online textual analysis and semi-structured interviews and how they complement each other. Section 3.3 introduces TFBOYS as the case chosen to be studied, explaining the context of Chinese fandom culture. Section 3.4 makes a brief explanation of possible ethical issues with regard to the research. A conclusion is ﬁnally drawn to summarise the methodology of research.

3.1 Research Philosophy

The design of this research is built up based on the philosophy of epistemological and ontological approaches considered for the methodology. This section brieﬂy explains such philosophical assumptions in order to provide a better understanding of the research strategy ﬁnally selected.

The research follows an interpretivist epistemological stance, whilst incorporating elements of constructivism as an ontological approaches. It is a core issue to ﬁnd out what should be regarded as acceptable knowledge in a discipline and whether there is a same principle for the social world. The interpretivsm, as one of the two classic branches of epistemology, supports research practice of people to obtain an understanding of the objects by exploration, observation, communication and other deep analysis. Conversely, the positivism seeks to explain things through objective laws and rules, and under many circumstance put forward certain hypothesis to be proved (Bryman, 2015). In this reasearch, it is obvious that positivism is not applicable since there is not an assumption to be proved through any ‘experiment’. Walsham(1995) addresses that interpretivism has gained more ground in social researches especially for information systems research. Interpretivism is selected to illustrate this research because the objective of which is to summarise a conclusion through information system (online data collection), textual analysis, and answers from people who are doing interviews. There is hardly a hypothesis made to be proved, not only due to the qualitative essence of the research but also 15 because that this study is almost outlining a research void with regard to the celebrity and fans' philanthropy.

The research also incorporates the constructionist position of ontological consideration. There are two positions of ontological consideration that frequently refer to objectivism and constructionism. The objectivism emphasises whether social entities are objective enough to ‘have a reality external to social actors’, whilst the constructionism focus on whether the entities are built up ‘from the perceptions and actions of social actors’ (Bryman, 2015). Bryman also reckons that in the context of constructionism, social phenomena are generated and continuously updated to new forms through the activities of social actors. Since the topics of celebrity charity and fandom activism are still underdeveloped to many extents, it is predictable that the phenomena and the following theories are going through tremendous construction. Besides, there has been argument about whether the philanthropies are generated only from the goodwill of celebrities themselves (Fletcher 2015). This can be a long-term dispute which gives out another symbol of constructionism. The phenomena of celebrities and fans groups doing philanthropies are created through the interaction of different social actors, in this case mainly refer to celebrity, fans and public, but can also include the producer and operating teams of celebrity and relevant partner organizations. As the signiﬁcant ‘new bridge’ between celebrity and society, fans, whose voices have not been listened for the most of time, will be focused on through interviews in the study, in order to draw a path for how the phenomena are produced and where they are going.

Elo and Kyngäs (2008) emphasized on the inductive and deductive content analysis. In terms of this research, inductive content analysis will be the cornerstone of the study since it refers to a case where there are almost “no previous studies dealing with the phenomenon or when it is fragmented” (Elo and Kyngäs, 2008). The research strategy of this study is a qualitative inductive one. The methods include mainly textual analysis online and interviews. There are 20 fans as participants of interviewes. For how much inﬂuence it is making and how people are motivated, the conclusions are based on deep qualitative analysis of both interviews and online texts.

3.2 Methodology

16 As previously addressed, this study aims to answer three main research questions through the methods of Online Textual Analysis and Semi-Structured Interview. These two methods are taken simultaneously to make sure the research collects unbiased data through multiperspective view (Breitmayer et al., 1993; Boyd, 2000). The interviews show more subjective information from participants with various considerations, while the online texts can show more authentic ideas of larger amounts of fans under the cover of Internet IDs. They complement each other through the two aspects of research to "strengthen the design to increase the ability to interpret the ﬁndings" (Thurmond, 2001). This section explains why the methods are selected and how the work is conducted in the process of study.

3.2.1 Online Textual Analysis

With the development of internet and mass media, the age of online research methods has come, since ‘the permeation of everyday life by information and communication technologies has grown ever more ubiquitous’ (Raymond et al, 2016). Internet penetration rate of the world has now reached 47%(International Telecommunications Union, 2016). In China, there are 710 million internet users and the internet penetration rate has been 52%. It is also worth noting that 75% of the internet users are between the age of 10-39 (China Internet Network Information Center, 2016), which means when the research is focusing on newly generated phenomena among relatively young people, online methods can be utilitarian.

Hsieh and Shannon (2005) addressed three approaches of content analysis: conventional, directed, and summative. Being not conventional and highly summative analysis, textual analysis online has become a gradually increasing used method. This research is partly conducted through the analysis method based on David Bell’s An Introduction to Cybercultures (2006). Quoted by Bell (2006), John Butler (1998) addresses that there is a ‘high signal-to-noise ratio’ on the Internet, leading to the fact that ‘useful discussions are buried within a lot of idle chatter’. Butler refers that the resolution may be ‘a sense of what’s useful’ which unfortunately can only be developed through experience. Plant (1996) also emphasizes that ‘there is no selection on the net’. It is very important to draw out key information from the huge amount of texts, which, according to interviews done by Howcroft (1999), are not always useful for most of the scholars.

17 Links are playing an important role in the cyberspace. The importance of them are sometimes ignored and not taken as seriously as sites and pages (Bell, 2006; Shields, 2000). Links are the doors or channels between one and another ‘small world’, while the connected worlds can somehow be ridiculous because of the simple calculating of search engines. With the development of artiﬁcial intelligence and programs like cookies, links are getting more of use now and can save more time for researchers to ﬁnd valuable information.

Online texts involve complex elements to be anylised. Mitra and Cohend highlight six key features of them: intertextuality, nonlinearity, a blurring of the reader/writer distinction, ‘multimedianess’, ‘globalness’ and ephemerality. The intertextuality refers to the links issues talked above and makes the web a real ‘net’. It should be used well when more related information is needed to be discovered. In this study, hyperlinks on the official website of the entertainment corporate, as well as the links shown on the official page of celebrities’ social media, shall all be taken into consideration. The nonlinearity points out that there is no beginning or end for the web. The blurring refers to the identities and stances of internet users. In this case, it really needs to be careful about the truly intension of people expressing ideas and points online because in Chinese fandom culture there can be ‘performance’ out of certain purpose regarding competition. The ‘multimedianess’ addresses the convergence of pictures, sound, and texts online (Wise, 2000). In the case of Chinese net, especially social media, one special form shall be highlighted: memes. They are playing significant roles online and are worth analysing in many fields. While the ‘globalness’ is easier to understand under the circumstance of world wide web. In this study the internationalisation of celebrities shall be payed attention as one of the factors to be analysed. Finally, the ephemerality —— world is changing fast especially online. News keep popping up and people can forget the ‘old’ hot topic in several days. In the case of Chinese web, it may also refer to some information that can get eliminated within one hour. However, since most of the celebrities are standing with the government, this consideration may not be studied as key points in this research.

The topics include influence of celebrities, fans group as civil society, volunteer working, cooperation between social actors, initiatives from online to offline, social responsibility, sustainability and so on. As for the source of literature and documents, the qualitative analysis of most topics requires academic articles. However, in this research, there are many information needed to be acquired from news report and social media. In another 18 word, online research methods are very important in the process of data and information collection. Social media plays a significant role in this research as it shows visible datas of influence including the number of views, reposts, likes and comments. There are two major Chinese social medias in China: Weibo and WeChat. Weibo is comparable to Twitter, where there are three different kinds of users including verified individuals, verified organizations and common users. Till September 30th of 2016, the active population of Weibo has reached 297 million, increased by 34% compared with the same period in 2015. (data.weibo.com, 2017) WeChat is an application mainly focusing on instant message, which will be mainly used in the methods of survey. Relevant details will be elaborated in next section.

3.2.2 Semi-Structured Interviews

One of the reasons for selecting semi-structured interviews as the means of data collection is to the explore perceptions and more information regarding complex questions (Barriball and While, 1994). Since the research questions in this article are covering many sub- questions, semi-structured interviews are chosen to collect different opinions from 20 different fans. The speciﬁc designed questions are based on three aspects: shared media experience, a sense of community, and a wish to help (Kliger, 2012). Apart from the designed questions, when interesting points pop up from the interviewees, there are always impromptu questions for digging up more information, probing to "ensure that complete and consistent information is received across different interviews" (Harrell and Bradley, 2009). Probing is very important in these interviews, not only because there are many sub-questions originally from the research, but also because during the interviews new concepts and phenomena are expected to be shown. Barriball and While (1994) also sum up how probing ensures reliability of the data, including the clariﬁcation and exploration of more details and sensitive issues, as well as recalling the relevant memory of respondents.

Another problem refers to the social desirability. Respondents may answer questions in a way is preferred whether it is objectively true (Brink, 1991; Dearnley, 2005). It is important to use techniques when asking questions, especially gaining rapport (Leech, 2002). In this research, the barrier is reduced to the lowest through the interviewer’s maintain of conversation including appropriate etiquette. Besides, the textual analysis complements the data collected from interviews (Breitmayer et al., 1993; Thurmond, 2001). The 19 interviews in this research aim at 20 fans of three members of TFBOYS. Respondents include individual fans, members of fans group, and leaders of fans groups who are in charge of the organisation and coordination of all initiatives. The speciﬁc context and more details are illustrate in next section: case study.

3.3 Case Study: I Fight for the Fighting Boys

This research aims at the cases in China where the influence of celebrities and fans groups are growing rapidly. Three of the most popular celebrities and the fans of them will be picked as the topic to accomplish interviews. They are three teenagers who used to be in one band called The Fighting Boys (TFBOYS) but now started their own career life separately. These three teenagers are Karry Wang, Roy Wang and Jackson Yi. Each of them has been rewarded as one of the Top 10 most influential people on internet in China. Karry Wang is also the Guinness World Record Holder for holding ‘the most reposted Weibo’ for a total of 42,776,438 reposts. The endorsement of them has gone beyond commercial brands but more directed to philanthropy. Karry and Roy are both ambassadors of UN projects now. Karry is cooperating with UN Environment for saving endangered species (https://www.unenvironment.org/) and Roy stands for the project of children eduction in poor area under the cooperation with UNICEF (https://www.unicef.org/ zh) . The three boys have also all started their own charity foundation in 2017, focusing on different fields of charities (news.sina.com.cn).

Figure 3.3.1 TFBOYS on Chinese New Year Gala

20 However, the inﬂuence they made on philanthropy relies very much on their fans. Fans groups of many celebrities like them in China are considered to be ‘crazy’ by public because they are doing professional organized support activities for their idols, and philanthropies are one form of these activities (news.sina.com.cn). Fans claim that they have been making differences to the society because of their idols. However, many controversial voices are spoken against their ‘ﬂashy but useless’ work, and the public also questions why they are so motivated by some far away ‘stars’ instead of people who love them ‘in the reality’, or some touchable symbols and icons?

“In the discussion around fandom, the authentic voices of fans themselves are rarely heard. Fans who exist within an organized web of interpretive communities deﬁne themselves and their roles very differently from any of these groups…” (Harris, 1998)

Due to the objective to let fans speak their voices, and also due to restrictions for reaching celebrities themselves, the respondents of designed semi-structured interviews are selected to be the members and some leaders of each fans group. The content of these interviews covers all the three research questions listed in section 2.

A particular phenomenon that worth to bring up is the ‘Attribute’ of fans. Fans of different persons from same band have their own nicknames and the identity as whose fan is called ‘the Attribute’. For example, Karry’s fans are called ‘crabs’, Roy’s fans are called ‘rice balls’, and Jackson’s fans ‘paper cranes’. Most importantly and unfortunately, almost all of them literally hate each other because of the competition for resources, and fans want to ‘beat’ each other in every competition of ‘supporting activities’ to show that ‘My idol is more popular than yours’. This phenomenon leads to many, according to public media, ‘ridiculous ﬁghting’, but also generates peculiar motivation for them to take actions. It does not only exist between celebrities from the same band or group, but also appears when it comes to celebrities who used to cooperate and had conﬂicts. Despite the indecency, this phenomenon is something worth to study in this case and is brought up during the interviews.

Online textual analysis also takes place before and after the interviews with the fans, in order to prepare for conversation and to collect more datas that may not be shown during the interviews. Chinese social media Weibo and Weixin are main tools in terms of the 21 textual analysis, while some apps speciﬁcally for fan user groups mentioned in the interviews are also analysed as auxiliary tools. Tremendous information can be found online and only those can help with the answer of research questions are remained in this article.

3.4 Ethical Consideration

Despite that the conversation were not intrusive for the participants in nature, and in any conventional sense the interviewees could not be judged to be vulnerable, still certain questions could be perceived as professionally compromising when meeting some topics. For instance, when asked about original good wishes that were not generated by idols, some participants tended to show the goodness of themselves in an exaggerated way that are not shown through their actions. While one of the fundamental components of research ethics is the avoidance of harm to research participants (Economic and Social Research Council, 2010) and in this study, it mainly refers to interview participants. All the interviewees were assured of conﬁdentiality in the presentation of results. Many of them did not give their real name to the researcher at all, instead, they used online ID all the time. The results of the research also avoided to show any information that may identify the participants, and the researcher performed to be with no judgement, so that the participant are encouraged to speak freely and be brave enough to show the real persons inside them.

In addition to the conﬁdentiality, the research also faces the problem of cross-language studies, both in terms of textual analysis and interviews. Li (2011) suggests that interviewees should be given the choice of which language to use during the talk. While due to the facts that most interviewees in this study can only speak Chinese and the research speaks Chinese as ﬁrst language, the contents can be understood to the best in Chinese. All interviews were conducted in Chinese and transcribed into English to the best of researcher’s knowledge.

3.5 Conclusion

The research follows an interpretivist epistemological stance, incorporating elements of constructivism ontological approaches, and is conducted with a qualitative inductive strategy. It aims to answer the research questions regarding celebrity and fans' philanthropy through online textual analysis of Chinese social media Weibo and WeChat, 22 as well as semi-structured interviews with members and leaders of selected fans groups. Fans groups of Karry Wang, Roy Wang, and Jackson Yi are selected since they are extremely popular and famous in China now, also because they are all from TFBOYS, sharing similar background and resources but different fans.

The research is conducted with two methods complementing each other: online textual analysis and semi-structured interview. To legitimize the qualitative data analysis, these two are chosen to reach within-method triangulation. The triangulation mainly refers to ‘seeking convergence and corroboration of results from different analytical methods used on the same data’ (Leech and Onwuegbuzie, 2007), which in this case, focuses on the information directly acquired from interviewees’ responds, and the information drawn out of social media, both in terms of interaction between celebrity, fans and public. This is of signiﬁcance since when the participants of interviews express some points and provide some data out of their certain intention or purpose, the relatively more authentic information from online users with the virtual identities can play a corrective role.

The study, including the concrete work of textual analysis and interview questions designing, is based on the conceptional model of relationships between celebrity, fans and public, as well as the three key elements through the whole process: shared media experience, a sense of community, and a wish to help. Through the whole process, these are the guidance for collecting and analysing information. Both methods are fully considered with ethical issues to ensure that there is no harm to participants, and that information collected are genuine, reliable and valid as possible.

23 4 Findings and Analysis

This chapter sorts out the collected data, summarizes the current situation of celebrity and fans' philanthropy in China, and then addresses the findings in correspondence with each research question. Section 4.1 discusses the findings in terms of the relationship of celebrity and fans, reflects on 'parasocial relationship' (Roberts, 2007), as well as the theory of 'strong empathy and over-identified' (McCutcheon et al., 2002). Section 4.2 discovers the motivation of fans' philanthropy and how individual behaviours are encouraged to change. It makes comparison and complements for the three factors of fan activism (Jenkins, 2012; Kliger, 2012). Section 4.3 takes the research to a higher level through the consideration of scaling up the current phenomenon of celebrity and fans' philanthropy, in the context of Chinese state-led civil society (Frolic, 1997). Section 4.4 finally synthesises the findings after the interviews and online textual analysis, again integrating them as a whole with the theoretical framework of the literature review. The conclusion of this chapter is made with an amended model from theoretical framework of this research, showing the weakened impact of celebrity on public and the strengthened effect of public on celebrity.

Figure 4.0 Adjusted Model of Interactions between Celebrity, Fans and Public

The ﬁndings are based on data and information collected from interviews2 and online texts, taking TFBOYS and their fans as the case. Information acquired from interviews is shown mostly with direct quotes to keep the origin expression of participants. Data collected

2 See Appendix for List of Participants of Interviews and their Basic Information 24 online are mostly from the Chinese social media Weibo, and some from google. Online textual analysis is shown with screenshots (with translation) and relative explanation. The information from either way complement each other to make sure the research collects unbiased data through multiperspective view (Breitmayer et al., 1993; Boyd, 2000).

The findings tell that the current supporting activities for celebrity can be divided to daily supports and birthday celebration. Fans' philanthropy is more concentrated in birthday celebration activities, but can also be organized by certain fans groups for daily activities. The fans groups mentioned here are “professional”, which means they exists as self- established organizations with name, fixed members and specific work content. Hereafter the study refers them as PFGs (Professional Fans Groups)3. Fans in and out of PFGs can both be motivated by celebrity in many ways, and take initiatives in different forms. For fans' philanthropy, background information is that most celebrities have their own philanthropy foundations now, for example, Karry’s “Kindle Blue Fund”, Roy’s “Yuan Foundation” etc. Under this circumstance, further details about fans activism are discussed in following sections.

4.1 Interaction and Relationship of Celebrity and Fans

As drawn in the theoretical framework of literature review, celebrity and fans share a particular relationship that involves strong empathy and special parasocial interaction (Roberts, 2007; McCutcheon et al., 2002). This has been greatly developed since the blooming of entertainment market. Fairchild (2007) pointed out that producers have improved the way of building “authentic celebrity” image in order to establish a strong bonding and a stable relationship between celebrity and fans. During the interviews, many fans admit that after being the ‘stars chaser’ for a while, they are very aware of how the celebrity is ‘produced’. However, they still free strong empathy that keeps them on the track.

“We fully understand that there is a certain routine of producing a star in a industrial way. However, the one we choose to be our idol is special to us, normally because we have been growing up with him since he was almost nothing. We feel his joy and his pain. We are proud when he achieved something and feel angry when he is hurt. It’s more like raising a baby.”

3 See Appendix for “Terminology Explanation”. 25 (Shaw, ﬁrst year Master student, fan of TFBOYS)

The words ‘raising a baby’ are more literal than exaggeration. Like many other fans of TFBOYS, Shaw fell for the three boys since 2014 when they were only 14/15 years old children. Nearly all participants (18 out of 20) have been to live concerts, holding light boards to support their idol. Posts on Weibo show that supporting is important. From the perspective of fans, light boards let idol see them and know that they goes there from all parts of the country just for him/her. This is typical ‘parasocial interaction’ (Roberts, 2007) since most fans would never have chance to communicate with celebrity face to face. On Weibo, it shows that for each big event, there are well organised supporting activities initiated by both fans groups and individuals. In stead of light sticks, light boards with idol’s name on it have became the mainstream. Figure 4.1.1 shows one of the biggest fans groups of TFBOYS, Teen Festival, posing on Weibo to ask if any individual fans are willing to give or sell their tickets for concert, so that they can manage to support boys with huge light boards.

Figure 4.1.1 Fans Group ‘Teen Festival’ Posting on Weibo

In addition to the one-sided ‘let him know’ support, another classic behaviour of parasocial relationship is the comments of fans under the social media account of celebrity. The one way conversation is a comfort for fans and as they stresses, it is not always ‘single arrow’. They get ‘treats’ now and then, both online and ofﬂine. For example, for the fact that his fans on Weibo reached 10 millions, Karry Wang prepared a funny video of himself on Weibo as a gift for fans. On the live concert of his 15th birthday celebration, Karry randomly chose three audience to get on the stage and play games together. Dating back 26 to 2014, the three member of TFBOYS used to reply fans comments online and even through phone calls. However, it is easy to understand that with the number of fans growing rapidly, the two way dialogue becomes harder for celebrity, therefore any feedback that fans can get are considered as ‘treats’ by fans.

“They made a video as reply to our university’s sign language song and did sign language in the video in 2014… back then I was still a fan of the whole band. I reposted it on Weibo. It is posted by Beijing Welfare Fund for Disabled People.”

ҁBei, Senior Student, fan of Jackson)

Figure 4.1.2 TFBOYS Reply to Fans from Sign Language League of Renmin University

The particular relationship between celebrity and fans have increasingly motivated fans to take initiatives to support their idols. When celebrity promotes something, fans are keen to take actions immediately. Celebrity has been devoting more to philanthropy, which motivates fans to focus more on tricky environmental or social issues, and to support celebrity by donating or doing goods.

27 “To be honest, I would say every action fans have been taken are focused on Roy. Even though part of us wants to do true goods to the society, the reason why we are doing it is that Roy promotes to do philanthropy. We want to make him happy and proud, and we want a good reputation for him and his fans…I am in charge of many PFGs of Roy. We do work like maintaining idol’s image, protecting him from hurt, obtaining more opportunities…We need to be professional. This is our responsibility as fans. We should do more than just being entertained by Roy or just saying I love you so much. We should be sweet and useful to him.” (Minnie, new media worker, fan of Roy Wang)

Minnie is a ‘head fan’4 of Roy. She has over 10,000 followers on Weibo, and has power to influence many individual fans. Her thoughts above are widely shown during the interview, also among the online discussions. Fans are not satisfied with being ‘takers’; they want to be ‘givers’ as well. Minnie thinks you need to be a fighter. She does not like the two former teammates of Roy because “they shared Roy’s fame and resources”. It is funny to realise that every fan, no matter of which idol (Karry, Roy or Jackson), considers their idol to be the one whose fame and resources are shared, or even taken unfairly by his teammates. Fans of one member take the other two as rivals. Because of this, the competition between fans are formed in terms of Fans Supporting Activities (FSAs).However, there are different opinions as well, but mostly from fans of the band instead of one certain member.

“I think fans should support idols in a mild way since it is hardly the real life. I ﬁnd it quite nasty that fans of different members are ﬁghting all the days. It can be really boring and tiring. Why people can not focus more on their lives? I do not disagree that we should support them as possible as we can, but it is deformity now, the fandom culture in China.” (Penny, designer, fan of TFBOYS)

The online textual analysis confirmed her words. In the comments area of each boy’s posts, fans who have different idols are always verbally attacking each other. On the other hand, they also compare whose fans are making more positive influence, making secret competitions to prove which celebrity is most influential. They also have certain mean

4 Fan of celebrity who has many other fans as followers See Terminology Explanation in Appendix 28 nicknames for the celebrities they do not like, which they have been using a lot in online “battle” with other fans.

This is not the only aspect where the interviews and online textual analysis fit. During the interviews, fans expressed the same core rule of celebrity worshiping: “Everything we do is based on and aimed for idol’s benefits.” From the youngest interviewee (Yi, 19 years old) to the eldest one (Fo, 34 years old), the participants have reached the agreement that the celebrity is of most significance. In term of this point of view, online fans have shown surprising consistency. For example, fans have there own slogan for their idol (which is always rhythm in Chinese). Karry’s fans always tag #beginning to future, only for Karry#. Roy’s fans tag #love only for Roy#. Jackson’s fans tag #wholeheartedly, Jackson Yi#. The thoughts ‘everything only for him’ are shown everywhere on Weibo, WeChat and other social medias.

Figure 4.1.3 Data of Slogans Made by Fans as Weibo Topic (Karry, Roy, Jackson)

29 “Everything is for idol.” What if celebrity misbehave? This was not directly answered by most participants of the interviews. For example, despite Roy has been described as ‘not good at singing’ by some professional online commentator, Minnie reckons that Roy is very gifted for singing. She also believes Roy is a kind boy “like an angel” and the other two members from the band have been “copying Roy’s promoting and market modes”. While Zoe, a sophomore fan of Jackson, says some of Roy’s fans have been doing “things they should be shameful of”. She reckons Jackson is the boy who hardly makes any mistake and who is a real idol.

“As a rational fan, I would say that they are people, they make mistakes as well. However, since I really like them, I believe they do not mean it to misbehave. Also, they do not dare to. Chinese public is extremely strict with this. It is not like Justin Bieber. Chinese society is less tolerant. Misbehaving can lead to vital risks of their career. TFBOYS have surprisingly innocent history and they show up everywhere when a positive image is needed. They have been chosen by the government to encourage or inspire young people to be hardworking and patriotic. Even when they are criticized by public, fans tend to blame the agency instead of boys themselves.” (Jade, fan of TFBOYS, ﬁrst year NGO worker)

Figure 4.1.4 Results of Googling “TFBOYS Positive Energy”

30 Jade shares a point strongly supported by online data. Search for “TFBOYS, Positive Energy” on Google, there are about 4,8000,000 results (ﬁgure 4.1.4). However, the opinion of criticizing celebrity Jade has shared can not easily be supported by online information. Fans online are posting similar contents even with certain format to compliment celebrity. Essential information may have been hided into this ‘ocean’ as the ‘high signal-to-noise ratio’ pointed out by John Butler (1998). Nonetheless, this “information buried” phenomenon can be related with some other data collected from the interviews: comments control, which has increased the difﬁculty of online textual analysis for research, and makes some information from the interview very valuable.

“I did not join any fans supporting groups. I was in the data group. Data group is for improving the data of celebrity and works together with the comments control group. The data mentioned here refers to numbers of reposts, comments and views of relative trends, which makes investors think the celebrity is powerful. Fans also do comments control to ﬁlter the information to be seen by public, to cover the negative news and critical comments. The comments you see have been ﬁltered by fans who work like machines and who are highly organised.” (Kong, 20, freshman student)

“I am not sure if this is typical Chinese fans stuff, but I used to be in fans group of Korean stars and never experienced comments control there.” (Nin, 25, kindergarten teacher)

The comments control not only increases the difﬁculty of textual analysis online, but also changes the public image of celebrity through fans actions. It shows the thoughts of fans to be useful for idols, and adds a new form of interaction of fans on celebrity. The relationship between celebrity and fans becomes closer.

One thing celebrity shows powerful inﬂuence refers to the celebrity endorsement, both commercially and regarding philanthropy. The public may pay attention to what celebrities are endorsing or promoting, but they choose to buy or contribute based on their own choices. Fans are different. They are keen on getting same style of idol, including clothes, restaurants, even articles of daily use. When searching on AliExpress, the key words

31 “Same with XXX (Celebrity names)” are everywhere. The participants of interviews all admit that they follow the newest endorsements of idol.

“We follow closely to the update of his endorsements. Commercial ones, we need to buy enough volume to show his power of inﬂuence, in order that more brands come to cooperate with him. As for charity, we focus on the data improvement, but also knowledge. For instance, Roy’s fans are now very familiar with the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) because of the cooperation between UNDP and Roy. When possible we also promote relevant philanthropy activities. Sometimes we lack resources, then we would do other topics as well. Roy said publicly to us that he wants us to focus more on charity work and public goods. He wants us to bring positive effect to the society.” (Minnie, fan of Roy)

Apparently Minnie always think things through from a leader’s perspective, to lead fans make moves to bring improvement to the career of Roy. While other fans do more individual work. “I just feel happy when I have a same shirt with him. That’s all. Simple.” Shufen, fan of TFBOYS said so. The simple thoughts of “I want to be same/similar with him” explains part of the motivation of fans activism and charity. It is clearly shown that most general phenomena and points of view have been proved to be reliable through the complementing of interviews and online texts. What does not ﬁt is mainly about the critical perspective of celebrity from fans, which were hardly shown on social media texts. While the ﬁndings have shown relevance and connections to the literatures reviewed.

The highest scale of celebrity worship concluded by McCutcheon et al. (2002) was described as ‘a mixture of empathy with the celebrity’s successes and failures, over- identification with the celebrity, compulsive behaviours, as well as obsession with details of the celebrity’s life’, which has been confirmed by information from both interviewees and online posts. Like Shaw said, fans feel like raising babies and can always feel the emotion of celebrity. The interaction and bonding are built based on strong empathy. Fans also mentioned their one-sided conversation and support, which is academically referred to the “parasocial relationship” with celebrity (Roberts, 2007). When “raising” their idols, many of the fans call themselves as “mother fan”; when celebrity show sexual attractiveness, some of the fans then call themselves as “girlfriend fan”. These two norms showed up both in interviews and posts on Weibo. The self-identity of fans have partly fitted the “parasocial 32 relationship” in which “the essentially imagined relationships that tend to be experienced as real”(Roberts, 2007). However, fans believe a double-way relationship exists. They get 'treats' and online responding posts from celebrity and feel this is enough for them. While Shaw, an interviewee mentioned above, shared her Weibo account with me, and her signature says: “Idol Worship. Do not take it serious. Do not spend too much.” When asked about it, she explained:

“I know I should be like this and I am trying. This so-called relationship sometimes is not healthy, even sickness. I am trying to focus more on philanthropy as well to get rid of other meaningless moves of worship.” (Shaw, 22, fan of TFBOYS)

It is not expected from the literature review that many fans are actually aware that celebrity worship has both good and bad effect on them. Many fans mentioned that real life should come ﬁrst before idols. Listening to their voices help with understanding their behaviours and motivation behind them, regarding which section 4.2 discusses more.

4.2 Motivation and Effect of Fans' philanthropy

Celebrity philanthropy is not newly raised phenomenon no matter in Western or Eastern countries (McCracken, 1989; Litter, 2008; Jeffreys, 2015). Fans show thorough knowledge of their idols’ endorsement during interviews. They understand it is part of celebrities’ social responsibility and pay close attention to idols’ philanthropy. Fans are willing to learn more about what problems are happening and what the celebrity is doing to help. The two major ways of doing philanthropy are to be an 'ambassador' of a project, and to make donations. Fans mention that the ﬁrst one, as part contents of celebrity endorsement, help them with their awareness of many environmental or social issues they have never noticed before.

“I admit that I had stereotypes for AIDs patients until I learnt more about them when my idol participated in a song recorded for AIDs. We are very proud that he is trying to improve people’s awareness and we are more than willing to spread the knowledge we have learnt from him.” (Xin, 24, ﬁrst year Master student)

33 While fans do more than just propaganda. According to answers from most interviewees, the rise of fans' philanthropy in China started from around 3 years ago. “Before that, fans charity also existed, but was mostly for Korean stars.” Nin used to be fan of Korean singers before she changed her idol to domestic celebrity. Literature shows K-pop fans did fans' philanthropy before (Asia News Network, 2014), and it is no surprise that similar fandom culture with Korea has been generated and localised, especially many fans of newly developed Chinese celebrity used to be fans of Korean or Japanese stars.

One of the earliest established fans groups of Karry, “BelovedGlory”, is a good online example to be studied. BelovedGlory started to support Karry from 2014, when the supporting activities are only preparing gifts, light boards, and propaganda through large billboards. While in 2015, except for these, there was ﬁrst fans' philanthropy shown up for celebrating Karry’s 16th birthday (see ﬁgure 4.2.1).

Figure 4.2.1 First Fans' philanthropy of BelovedGlory for Celebrating Karry’s Birthday

Similarly, Roy’s fans began to focus on philanthropy in 2015 as well. AtmanRoy, a fans group who only does philanthropy support was established in May, 2015. Till now, the group has kept doing various types of philanthropy for three years. For Jackson it is the same. “JacksonVCharity” (hereafter referred to as “VCharity”) claimed its establishment by

34 fans in June, 2015. The research managed to contact the principal of VCharity as one of participants in the interviews: Fo. She is a 34 years old designer, who began to be enthusiastic about charity work since becoming fan of Jackson.

“My initial motivation to do charity or philanthropy work is completely because of Jackson. I had no experience and knowledge at all. In fact, I had nothing but a heart that wanted to do something nice for my idol. Of course there has been setbacks and frustration, but we are a group of people who share same belief. When there is an inside voice telling us to give up, we think about Jackson. We remind ourselves he is a boy worth us ﬁghting for. He made my life beautiful and I should pass this beautifulness to public by doing goods.” (Fo, 34, fan of Jackson)

When asked about motivation, fans share same thoughts. “He makes me want to be a better person.” Many of interviewees expressed this point. “He himself has done many charities.” Fans believe celebrity philanthropy is not only a means to improve reputation. In addition, the three boys have all made public announcement that they hope fans can focus more on doing charity in stead of spending too much many on helping with their propaganda. This fundamental motivation for fans refers to “a wish to help” (Kligler et al., 2012) stressed out. However, an interesting answer from another perspective given by Jin, a staff working in entertainment market, has clearly shown that celebrity is not the only character who needs to build a image. It is same for fans as well.

“I understand for many celebrities, it is a routine to do charity when you become famous. It is part of their responsibility and helps with their reputation. But for me, I truly believe he does this also out of inside goodness. He does mean it. He does care about children education and sustainable development. That is why we fans are so motivated to do charity work.” (Minnie, 24, fan of Roy)

“I wanted to save the image of fans. Fans have been deﬁned as lunatics by a large part of the public. They see us being crazy with celebrity worship, while they do not see us doing goods out of love. I chose to support my idol in this way, not only because he wants us to do charity, he makes me want to be better, but also

35 because I want to prove to the public that fans are not all crazy people like their stereotype.” (Jin, fan of Karry and Roy)

Apart from the motivated good wish out of affection and worship, the belief that celebrity means good and fans should follow, as well as the purpose to improve image of both idol and fans, it is also highlighted that fans enjoy doing things together with people who have same interests —— in this case, their same idol. Many participants of interviews addressed that friends they met online because of idol were very important to them.

“It is very nice to have accompany when you go to some events or organise activities. Also we keep each other informed when there are any chances to do supports for our idol. It’s not only about idol now. We have a WeChat group of fans which has become a sisterhood group. We have different ages, specialities, jobs, and backgrounds. We provide and take suggestions from each other in terms of any problems popped up in life. As for fans activities, it also becomes more than just supporting idols, but also something you enjoy doing with your friends.” (Xin, 24, ﬁrst year Master student)

“I prefer doing these things (fans activities) with other fans to by myself. I love the atmosphere that people are excited and making efforts for one target together. It’s touching. It’s about a sense of belonging. Plus, at first I did not know how to do it. I needed ‘old fans’ to teach me. I don’t work routinely for any groups, but when they call for fans, I apply. It saves me time and provides me flexibility. I also made some pretty good friends through these activities.” (Shaw, 22, first year Master student)

Fans are gathered through new media, and then become friends in real life. This phenomenon shows many trails online and fits the theory of 'shared media experience' and 'sense of community' (Kligler et. al, 2012). Posts on Weibo show that fans talk to each other like close friends even though they have never met each other and it might be the first conversation between them. The PFGs call for application when fans are needed to do supports including official supporting activities at live concert, off-line supporting and philanthropy activities. The interviewees reached an agreement that Weibo is the main media they follow for information. “Weibo is the only and official tool to chase idols in 36 China. Every information we publish otherwhere we put a same one on Weibo account.” Zoe emphasized. She is the deputy chief of a PFG for Jackson.

As one typical type of philanthropy, what differentiates fans' philanthropy from others is that fans care more and spend more time on publicity and branding. Fans enjoy doing all the philanthropy without signing their own names. Instead, they leave the name of their idol. They broadcast their work online, mostly through Weibo posts. These contents are reposted by all the online fans who are following the group’s account, thus the purpose of branding is achieved. Fans do not obey the traditional Chinese social rules of being modest or even anonymous after doing goods. They work loudly to raise the reputation of idol.

“We need to let people know, not to know that I as myself did charity, but that his fans did this. As long as we did it, we do not think that telling people is wrong. We don’t lie. We just say what we did. There is nothing to blame.” (Mount, doctor, fan of Jackson)

There are also examples of direct positive effect of fans' philanthropy. Many stories were told by fans in interviews. Jin told that they played songs of TFBOYS to children at welfare home to bring them joy, and kids remember TFBOYS as kind brothers to them. Zoe told that they cooperated with a local NGO to help with stray animals, and because of their excellent work, a staff in NGO commented that “You guys have changed my impression of fans. I thought fans were just crazy teenagers. I bet Jackson is a good idol for all of you.” Not only that, the staff invited Zoe and her friends in fas group to the annual meeting of the NGO to present their work.

A very classic and interesting story is from Nin. She ships two members from the band and became relatively reputable because of writing fan ﬁction. She sells her published stories to other fans and uses all of the income to do charity. Particularly, she does this on her own instead of with a group. While like any other fans, she never leaves her own name to the charity organization she cooperates with. She leaves the names of her two idols. Then comes the best part of the story: coincidentally, one of the principals of the organization is a part time staff who is actually working as a producer in a large Chinese media company. Because Nin had been doing charities using her idols’ names, the producer had a very good impression of these two celebrities. She asked Nin to prepared two CVs of each 37 celebrity for her and helps with recommending them to her colleagues, in order to have more chances for these two stars.

“I was very happy. This is win-win for all of us. Real goods were done to children. My idols got good reputation and chance. The producer got more knowledge of available potential celebrities to cooperate with. I satisﬁed myself with sense of accomplishment. I know this can not be a universal phenomenon since it is quite a coincident for me. What I am trying to say is that if fans keep doing these, and if more and more fans are involved, people will eventually know.” (Nin, 25, fan of Karry and Roy)

All the stories show that fans' philanthropy can indeed make differences to the society, to celebrity, and to fans themselves. It is encouraging to learn about the positiveness of fans' philanthropy. However, how to evaluate the real effect of their work? Is there any negative inﬂuence? Are fans bragging about their charity activities?

“We are not professional charity practitioners. We are more like volunteers who can only do those work that anyone can do. We want to link our charity topic to idols’ endorsement, but sometimes it’s too professional for us to do. We may not be helpful, even counterproductive. Besides, there are many other factors inﬂuencing our activities. For instance, once we went to help with abandoned dogs in suburb of Beijing, but it turned out many girls were afraid of too many dogs. We did not give up the project but after that only some of us who are not afraid of dogs go there routinely.” (Jin, 24, fan of Karry and Roy)

The example Jin gave out shows that fans have various personal feature, and it is often more difﬁcult than they expected to execute real work. This has also, to a large extent, explained why fans are usually more keen on donation than taking initiatives. When analysing online data, it is discovered that many so-called charities are simply fans raising money and donating to charity foundation. Actions can be limited due to the variety of participants and time issues. Meanwhile, some of the fans may not truly care about bring positive effect to the society but focus more on improve reputation of their idol and fans.

38 “Though I am a fan, I reckon that the philanthropy is not fans’ purpose. Fans are here to worship their idol, not for speciﬁcally doing charity. It doesn’t mean we did no goods. I still believe there are real good inﬂuence of our work. We just care more about our idols.” (Minnie, 24, fan of Roy)

Minnie was very frank about this, while not all of the fans share same idea with her. Many fans who are leading or doing philanthropy explained how they were interested in doing charity and how they really enjoyed the feeling of helping with people, environment and society. Fo started to love charity since he initiated fans' philanthropy for Jackson. Similarly but different, Nin has always enjoyed doing charity.

“Of course I am happy when I receive thanks from others, when I see the good and visible result of my work or donation. I may start to do these charity works because of my idols, but I will insist doing so even if I do not like hime anymore some day in the future.” (Fo, 34, fan of Jackson)

“I am a kindergarten teacher. I love kids.I would do charities for kids no matter I worship celebrity or not. The difference is mainly about leaving whose name on the note, but I don’t deny that they give me more power to carry on and not to give up. I go into the mountains where my money goes every year, to see the donated children and how their lives are. It’s part of the project. The foundation I cooperate with is quite professional with follow-up. I go with them every time because I really want to know how the kids are. It is also nice to know I contributed and it worked. This way of transparency keeps me doing more.” (Nin, 25, fan of Karry and Roy)

Nin is special case because she is doing charity on her own as a fan, and is cooperating with charity organization directly. For many fans, there are issues regarding follow-ups and feedbacks. Generally speaking, what fans normally do as philanthropy can be divided to two types: donation and practical action. For donation, unlike professional charity organizations, PFGs usually give out a total number of donations as result. An announcement would be posted like “The donations of fans have ﬁnally reached XXX Yuan and are donated to XXX (Organisation) for XXX (project).” and that is all. Fans 39 groups hardly follow up with the results and effects of the project, also are not transparent enough to let donators know their money is on a list, while in fact most of fans may not care as well.

“Sometimes I just give my money to them because they say they are going to use it for philanthropy. After that I forget to check the results. To be honest I don’t think I see feedbacks that often. Sometimes I am not sure where my money goes to.” (Tracey, 23, fan of Karry and Roy) “I have another idol, Jingting Bai. His ofﬁcial fans group is doing much better in terms of the transparency of philanthropy. Every bit of donation is listed and posted to public online, even though some of them is only 5 or 10 Yuan. I think this is what every organiser of fans' philanthropy should learn.” (Shufen, 22, fan of TFBOYS)

“There are now organisations and apps focusing on fans donations. They offer fans a certiﬁcate for donation, compliment their work of philanthropy, and say thanks to the celebrity they worship. Many fans philanthropies are accomplished in this way.” (Feng, 24, fan of Karry and Roy)

When comparing, practical action takers turn to show more concerns of philanthropy projects themselves. The kindergarten teacher Nin who insists on helping with children and goes into mountains routinely has showed her real care through the whole interview. Jin also showed sincere when explaining her good wish as motivation for philanthropy. Besides, there are also combination of donations and practical actions. For instance, individual behaviours as donations are also taken spontaneously by fans. RiceDonation5, an app mentioned by fans in interviews focuses on encouraging people to donate their “positive behaviours" including walking steps, healthy routine etc. When analysing this app, it can be seen that most of the comments are from fans of many different celebrities. They made donation, and leave their identity as one’s fans. Figure 4.2.2 shows the percentage of fans (red circled ones) among the donators. Meanwhile, many principals of PFGs show thorough concerns of both ﬁnancial and practical actions, while not only because of good wish but also due to a sense of responsibility and public supervision.

5 An application in which people collect “rice” as money in the system by certain behaviours, and donate “rice” to projects they select. There are companies as sponsors to donate real money according to the “rice” amount. 40 “Jackson’s fans donated two primary schools in poor areas and got Liked by Jackson’s Ofﬁcial Studio account, and then jumped into Hot Search6 on Weibo. It costed a million Yuan. We fans were very proud and there was no need to panic at all (…) I think doing philanthropy as support is the best. We will not be worried about public’s feedback.” (Zoe,19, fan of Jackson)

Figure 4.2.2 Fans Comments on RiceDonation

Normally when fans supporting activities appear on Hot Search, many fans would be worried that they leave a bad impression to the public that they are crazy and then damages the image of idol. Zoe gave one of the reasons why fans are more proud and excited to let people know they are doing philanthropy. She also explained that because of public supervision, they are more motivated to do their best for philanthropy every time.

“The public here not only refers to people who are not fans, but also includes many fans who bought our Gift Packages7. Gift Packages are our only source of income and fans want to see you use the money well. My friends and I are those kinds of people who hate to be judged, and we always go on-site to make sure our donation

6 Hot Search: a function of Weibo to show what key words are being searched most by users.

7 Gift Packages are sold to individual fans by fans groups, include celebrity photos taken on site with copy right, and other side products (keychains, posters etc.) based on these photos. 41 in place, help with basic operation, and take pictures to report to public on Weibo posts.” (Zoe,19, fan of Jackson)

In terms of fans activism, three key elements of motivation are summed up in literatures: shared media experience, a sense of community and a wish to help (Jenkins, 2012; Kligler et al., 2012). The factors explain many behaviours and fit with the findings through interviews and textual analysis. However, the findings also show the changes and evolvement of the existing theory. This study indicates that the shared media experience is the fundamental element for fans' philanthropy initiators, the sense of community and the wish to help as the direct and significant motivation of philanthropy as fan activism.

Among fans who do philanthropy, it shows complexity. There are fans who have never done philanthropy before, but also who used to volunteer in lots of projects, while they all agree that celebrity has motivated them more to do goods to the society and to be “better persons”, which refers to “a wish to help” that Kligler et.al (2012) stressed out. It is also discovered that a sense of community is very important for fans. Interviewees gave out many cases that they became friends with other fans and enjoy doing fans activities together very much. Besides, the comments on Weibo show that fans talking is even described as “incomprehensible terminology” by public netizens and they use many initials for certain words which are “hard to associate to the original words” by people “out of fandom culture”.

In terms of the essential explanation behind fans' philanthropy, the Source Attractiveness model (Pornpitakpan, 2003) would explain why people fancy celebrity at ﬁrst and the willingness of imitate celebrity as trends at the early stage of stars endorsement, while the Meaning Transfer Model (Pornpitakpan, 2003) has evolved with the development of fandom culture and can well explain the phenomenon of fans activism especially philanthropy. Like addressed by many participants of the interviews and many posts online, the power of idol is always stressed by fans as “they made me want to do better”. Meanwhile, no matter what reason is behind, the phenomenon of celebrity philanthropy has shown a great inﬂuence on fans who are willing to imitate their idols, make donations and take practical actions.

42 In this section of analysis, the interaction regarding public is also shown, both with fans and with celebrity. Unlike the old days, celebrity has lost part of the powerful inﬂuence directly to public because of the information explosion in this Internet era. Fans become a bridge between celebrity and public as self-media. Also according to the Meaning Transfer Model put forward by Pornpitakpan (2003) which has evolved here, the meaning of philanthropy is transferred to celebrity as carriers, and then transferred to fans as broadcasters, and ﬁnally to public. People may choose to do or not to do practical activities to mitigate the problems and to make positive differences, but public awareness can truly be improved a lot through this model.

However, literatures showed silence regarding the interaction between fans and public. Kligler (2012) mentions that public including some professional NGOs volunteer to provide feedback of activities to the fans and seek for further cooperation. In the interviews there was indeed this type of case, but principals of fans activities have shown more concerns of all fans and netizens. The supervision comes from both fans who buy products from fans groups, and netizens who pay attention to hot topics online. Fans' philanthropy is to a large extent motivated by these supervisions as well.

4.3 Scale up Fans' philanthropy

In China, both business and civil society can be state-led (Frolic, 1997). Fans' philanthropy, as new activism in China, shows particularity regarding the motivation of fans, the involvement of government, and the impact on public and society. In this section we talk about the development, and trends of fans' philanthropy, then discuss its advantage and inadequacies. Finally, the study summaries the feasibility of scaling up fans' philanthropy.

Fans have shown mutual agreement in the interviews: it is good that fans are doing philanthropy. Some of them holds more positive attitude that it is making good differences to the society and this should and is going to have a larger scale, while others have more concerns about the disadvantages. Optimistic fans see the trend of enlargement of fans' philanthropy.

“Fans are doing this more and more like a routine. We take this as part of our responsibility, just like our idol take charity as his responsibility. Also, when the 43 public and fans are tired of simple and meaningless propaganda, various charity projects provide more choices for us to support him.” (Minnie, 24, fan of Roy)

“I am currently proposing to add one more philanthropy support project this year for Jackson’s birthday. Last year we did one, and I think this year we will do two, because people are paying more attention to charity and personally I think it makes more sense…In fact, now (April) my teammates and I in the PFG have already started to prepare for birthday celebration for Jackson in November, and I am trying to increase the proportion of philanthropy work.” (Zoe, 19, fan of Jackson)

However, it is obvious that there is limitation of professionalism, time issues, good wishes of fans etc. The ideal developed fans' philanthropy should be with skilled participants with good wishes, mature procedures of projects, stable cooperation with charity organisations, and completed feedback mechanism. Like Shufen mentioned, she thinks fans groups of TFBOYS are not doing a good enough job as Jingting's ofﬁcial fans group in terms of the donation transparency. Clearly, this is applicable to be improved since there are other fans groups setting good examples.

When celebrating idol’s birthday, there are many different PFGs of same idol doing supporting activities, and each group often does at least one charity project. Individual fans always volunteer to collect and integrate all the information from fans groups’ online posts and give out a form of propaganda projects and philanthropy projects in total. Table 4.3.1 shows the incomplete statistics of Karry’s 18th birthday celebration, sorted out by individual fan @AntChuding, including 51 propaganda projects and 36 philanthropy ones. Similarly, statistics from Roy’s ofﬁcial fans group posted his 17th birthday celebration includes 32 propaganda projects, 45 philanthropy ones, and 13 others. Jackson’s fans posted a table of over 100 birthday celebration projects including 57 philanthropy ones. Fans feel proud when there is more charity work, especially when it is more charity compared to the supporting activities of their idol’s teammates. “Roy’s fans are doing most philanthropy projects among TFBOYS’ fans, I think more than 70% of them are charity work.” Minnie said conﬁdently, while Zoe, Jackson’s fan, gives out completely different point: “I would say 50% (of charity) now is good enough. We are trying to do more. Jackson’s fans are focusing most (among boys’ fans) on philanthropy.” 44 FSAs For Birthday Celebration of Karry Wang (Propaganda)

No. Location Project PFG

1 The US SKY-TYPING by airplanes in the sky above 37 PFGs together Hollywood: Happy Birthday Karry 18 2 Space Named 18 stars with Karry’s name + MEADE BOSS LX200/A CF Telescope 3 Guangzhou: Canton Tower Letter “K” was spliced by 18 drones; drones shown for 30 mins; romantic ﬁrework

4 Space Launched Karry’s Photo to Space with certain KARRYFOCUS aircrafts 5 Taipei Karry’s photo and birthday wish on billboards of 240 coaches in 40 MTR trains, 4 MTR lines 6 Shanghai Lansheng Building 30mX16m LED screen

7 Milan, Italy 66 advertisement of Karry on buses WildEyes0921

8 Milan, Italy A 18 meter tram with Karry as theme CatFoodClub

9 Milan, Italy 60 LED Screens in Malpensa Airpot

10 London, UK LED on Leicester Square KMoms&KarryUK

11 Toronto, Canada Advertisements on buses around the city Swirl0921

12 London, UK 72 LED of Undergrounds Three British PFGs 13 Greece Santorini Airport Advertising Wall Local PFGs all over the country 14 Xiamen 50 meter Advertising Wall + Welcoming Image together of Karry in 500 KTV Private Rooms 15 Beijing Sanlitun LED

16 Hanoi, Vietnam Buses Advertising Vietnam KarryHome 17 Vietnam Named one star with Karry KarryVietFans

18 China Photos and wishes on 60,000 pick-up boxes of KarryNews express delivery in over 70 cities

19 China 5,000 LED screens in 63 cities and 500 DarK_StaR cinemas 20 China&International Magazines to airplanes of Shenzhen Air; 30s birthday celebration VCR on TVs of Shenzhen Air; One airplane with Karry’s birthday as theme 21 Hong Kong 120 bus LED Karry’s Papaya

22 Chongqing 27.2X115.6M LED Screen of Sheraton Tower

23 Hangzhou 170X18M LED (Largest in Asia)

24 Turkey Hot Air Balloon with photo(1000m high); Turkish Main Media Reporting Karry’s Birthday

45 FSAs For Birthday Celebration of Karry Wang (Propaganda)

No. Location Project PFG

25 Online Birthday Concert Live in cinemas of three cities

26 Media Fan-made Karry’s albums sent to other celebrities’ ofﬁces and media company as gifts 27 Macau 9A and 25X Bus Advertising Apple of Karry

28 Beijing Xidan La Fayette LED Patronus

29 Nanjing Xinjiekou 672 square meter LED Doctor of Karry

30 Shenzhen 240 square meter LED at Huaqiangbei Road DemonKarry

31 Beijing Xidan La Fayette LED(2) Big Sisters

32 Shanghai Advertisement in 30 Cafés

33 Online Exclusive MYOTee Image for Karry

34 Chongqing New York Building, Floor 1-4 LED Hometown Hotpot

35 Chongqing LEDs in main four shopping districts Chaser_0921

36 Chongqing 18 Screens in Jiangbei International Airport SUNLIGHT

37 Chongqing CBD Chongbai Buiding LED CLEARSKY

38 Beijing Chongwenmen LED

39 Online Establishment of Karry’s Fashion Karry- FashionBook

40 Shanghai Bazar Magazines about Karry sent to 70 Banks SecretLake0921 and 30 Senior Clubs 41 Beijing 363 screens in Beijing Capital International Airport T1, T2, T3 42 Shanghai LED in Longyanglu Underground Station Eight PFGs

43 Media Gifts for 100 Media company and Celebrities Weiba Ofﬁce 44 Chongqing Bus stop advertising nearby Karry's high BelovedGlory school 45 Beijing Bus stop advertising nearby Karry’s University (Beijing Film Academy)

46 Taiwan Ximenting LED Ofﬁcial Supporting Fans Group for 47 Taiwan 10 Trams Advertising Karry 48 Online KARRY-NIAP X QQMusic MV Purify Group

49 Online iQiyi (Video site) Advertising Crabs Ofﬁce

50 Jiangxi Line 1 Bus Advertising in Jingdezhen Kaise Scenery

51 Online Mofansheng APP Pop-up Advertising Karry Time

46 FSAs For Birthday Celebration of Karry Wang (Philanthropy)

No. Location Project PFG

1 International Adopted 18 marine endangered wild animals in BOSS Karry’s name 2 UN Adopted 18 orphan elephants in Karry’s name OnePiece

3 UN Help with raising a Siberian tiger named CLEARSKY UPORNY 4 UN Help with raising 5 endangered wild animals KARRY-BIS

5 Africa Donated a Karry’s music classroom and CatFoodClub; instruments in Malawi KARRYFOCUS; Papaya 6 Vietnam Vietnamese fans made a branch of Australian TFBOYS-Karry- charity organization in Vietnam VN

7 China Donated 10,000 Yuan for 3333 nutritious BlessedCorbie_09 breakfast for poor children 21 8 Sanya Donated an activity room for trade school Karry’s Apple

9 Shandong Donated small library for Xiajin middle school Crabs Ofﬁce

10 Shandong Donated small library for Wanlong school Crabs Ofﬁce& Swirl0921 11 Gansu Donated over 400 sports equipment for Duipo school 12 Chongqing Donated a bamboo forest for Karry’s primary KARRYFOCUS school 13 Sichuan Set “Karry Scholarship” in Santai Middle YourHeart & School and Xianggang Middle School Karry-rabbit

14 Hunan Visited and donated for left behind children Karry-Mandarin

15 Qinghai Financially help with a child from 8 to 18 years DawnLight old

16 Gansu Donated Multi-media classrooms 14 PFGs

17 Jiangxi Jingdezhan charity volunteer work Kaise Scenery

18 Shenzhen Donated breakfast for street sanitation workers Smile of Karry

19 Guizhou Donated daily necessities for empty nesters Guizhou PFG

20 Guangxi Donated supplies for minority primary school AllForKarry students 21 Shandong Visited elders in Yiyang Nursing Home Shandong PFG

22 Shandong Trilogy for public welfare

23 Shanxi Initiate donation and provided supplies for Shanxi PFG children with autism 24 Ningxia Visited disabled elders, donated supplies Ningxia PFG

47 FSAs For Birthday Celebration of Karry Wang (Philanthropy)

No. Location Project PFG

25 China Initiate “Social River Chief” project for river Lighthouse protection 26 Sichuan Donated 16 “Karry’s Reading Rooms” in Chongqing PFG & Qiangongcun Primary School KGU-Volunteer 27 Shanxi Donated 17 “Karry’s Reading Rooms” in KGU-Volunteer Tianshuangwan Primary School 28 Gansu, Jiangxi, Zhejiang Raised 28,858.17 Yuan (over 3,000 GBP) for remote alpine mountains

29 China Raised 122,679.75 Yuan (over 13,5000 GBP) 8 PFGs for charity lunch 30 China Raised 5,2000 Yuan (around 6,000 GBP) for Doctor of Karry ALS Foundation 31 China Raised donations for poor students EternalLove

32 China Donated massage chairs, Sunlight sphygmomanometers etc. for nursing home 33 China Provided ﬁnancial supports for poor and Karry King outstanding college students

34 Sichuan Provided ﬁnancial supports for girls’ classes in BelovedGlory Daliang Mountain 35 Yunnan Donation for poor students

36 International Donated to help with raising blue whale and Blaue_Meer arctic hare

Table 4.3.1 Incomplete Statistic of Karry’s 18th Birthday Supporting Projects

ҁData source: www.weibo.com, see appendix for original table in Chinese)

Fans point out that except for those PFGs who focus only on philanthropy, most charity projects are promoted during the “birthday period”, for which Table 4.3.1 has shown a persuasive evidence. Through the analysis of interviews and online texture, the study summarises fans' philanthropy as two main components: daily philanthropy, and birthday celebration philanthropy, while the celebration can also refers to a wider range.

“Also there are other anniversaries for which some fans may initiate some projects for celebration and commemoration, like August 6th when they debuted. April 15th when they won their first big reward. It is not as big as birthday, because fans of individual member are a much larger group. Plus, they make ‘invisible’ competition with each other for birthday celebration.” (Shaw, 22, fan of TFBOYS) 48 Suggestions for scaling up are made firstly to focus on the development of existing activities. Since the study has found out that daily work and anniversary celebration are the two components of fans' philanthropy, the results tend to propose two aspects for scaling up: enlargement of professional fans group for daily philanthropy, and improvement of big anniversary (birthday) celebration fans' philanthropy. The first one refers to a number growth of fans' philanthropy groups, and the scale expansion of existing philanthropy groups. Each member of TFBOYS has more than 20 professional fans groups now, but Karry has no fans group who does daily charity work, while Roy has only one , so does Jackson. Other fans groups only do philanthropy when there is big even, mostly when it is around idol’s birthday. This leads to the second aspect of scaling up. Fans should and are already trying to improve both the quantity and the quality of philanthropy projects for birthday and other anniversary celebrations. In terms of the quantity, which are considered by fans as “data” and “facade issue”, feedback from interviews have shown that there is a wish and a tendency of increasing the proportion of philanthropy projects. This actually means the transfer of funds for idol birthday celebration.

“It is impossible to not to do propaganda because our ultimate goal is to promote our idol, but it is possible to cut some of the budget for the usage of philanthropy projects. Money is a big issue no matter what you are doing. If you want to support us, please buy our Gift Packages. We do not accept simple donation from other fans.” (Zoe, 19, fan of Jackson)

Secondly, the study suggests PFGs to improve fans' philanthropy regarding the money issue. As Zoe mentioned previously, the only source of income of fans groups are Gift Packages, and other expansion is covered by members of the group. With limited funds, it is more important to improve the quality of philanthropy projects. For instance, for where the donation goes to, fans should select programmes more carefully and focus not only on a certiﬁcate or propaganda, but also more on the real feedback of the inﬂuence that has been made. Professional philanthropy organisations have the routine of reporting to donators where the money goes and the evaluation of project effects, and fans need to be more aware of that. As for practical philanthropy actions, the study suggests that fans should accept trainings for volunteers before actually going, provided the organisations they cooperate with. Of course this is mutual responsibility of fans groups and charity 49 organisations. Meanwhile, when calling for applicants as charity volunteers, fans selected for practical actions should be screened as well. This requires a long term development of fandom philanthropy, but should be the target that fans navigated to.

As stressed repeatedly in this chapter, fans find their idols “full of positive energy”. Another significant reason is celebrity cooperating with the government. With the censorship of Chinese government, celebrity art works and behaviours in front of public are much influenced and restricted. An interesting phenomenon is that fans are very proud of idols’ good relationship with government.

“They are very good representatives of Communist Youth League (CYL).They have been invited to many important occasions including the Gala of Youth on CCTV, the Outstanding Youth Talk of CYL, the Spring Festival Gala etc. They have a positive image and have inﬂuenced many people especially youth and children.” (Amber, 24, fan of TFBOYS)

TFBOYS have two patriotic songs for celebrating October 1st, National Day of PRC. The fact that they are cooperating with government does not bother fans but makes them proud. Whenever there is nasty argument online, fans shout out things like “How can you question the boy picked by CYL? How dare you?”, although sometimes with a tone of joke. Findings through online textual analysis show that ofﬁcial Weibo accounts of government have posted many cooperation with TFBOYS, which ﬁts the phenomena Amber mentioned above. An example is that the account of CYL has 56 posts when searching keyword “TFBOYS”. In the comments fans are expressing their pride out loud.

Figure 4.3.2 Results of Searching TFBOYS in CYL’s Weibo &Latest Relevant Post

50 Literatures show that China has state-led mechanic regarding many issues, including GONGOs and philanthropy (Frolic, 1997; Jeffreys, 2015). It is no surprise that government is playing a role everywhere in China, even with the most popular band. Interviewee Anna believes that government promotion is actually a key reason why TFBOYS went famous. Of course, most of the fans do not think so. They consider the cooperation with government as “positive image” and are motivated by it to be good students or workers in real life, although they do admit that China is very special in terms of this. Vivian, who has over ten year experience of being fan of different celebrity, believes the government has the intention to dominate and has been manipulating the entertainment industry. She also calls TFBOYS the “chosen ones” of government and give other examples of celebrities being suppressed.

“We all know that there are celebrities frozen because their inappropriate talking about political issue, like Taiwan issues etc. In addition, there are new regulations regarding the image of them as well. People even can not be on TV show with certain coloured hair. Zhang Wei, one of the hosts of a famous talking show, changed his hair from green back to black because of this regulation. I think it is good to promote positive inﬂuence of celebrity. The problem is, who has the say what is positive or not? Is it a good thing to avoid something by eliminating and suppressing something? Issues like hair colour is too much. Does it really matter? Perhaps things will get better when our generation is in charge. I am not sure, but you have to be optimistic with future.” (Vivian, 25, fan of TVXQ)

Apparently, “state-led” civil society (Frolic, 1997) still shows strong state inﬂuence nowadays. Philanthropy, as behaviour normally taken by business and civil society, is also shaped in a new public culture under the lead of government in China (Jeffreys, 2015). It is highly complimented by party media that celebrities and fans are doing philanthropy and they are pleased to take the compliments as sort of “proof” that they are doing good jobs. Celebrity with good and positive images can avoid not only the dissenting voice of society and risks of losing fans, but also the huge risk of being suppressed by government. This intensiﬁes the phenomenon that every newcomer to this fair is prepared to build a “healthy and positive image full of sunshine” by posting nice messages, proposing heartwarming behaviours, and mostly, doing philanthropy. Fans' philanthropy shows the particularity in 51 China as well. Anna, fan of both Korean stars, Japanese stars and Chinese stars, compared the difference of fans from three country and put up with a point.

“Chinese public reckons celebrity worship stupid and repellent. There is a stereotype of fans. I do not know about western countries, but being fans is very normal in Korea and Japan. There has been a mature industry in Korea and Japan, and accurate definition of IDOL as a career. In China, it is extremely irregular… I think the reason why fans' philanthropy was generated is a bit pathetic. It is because that fans wanted to reverse their image of being stupid lunatics. This can be complicated. Long story short, due to the rapidly developing economy and the increasing needs of entertainment, in the Chinese market, ‘idols’ are not sufficient for public needs. It leads to the over-supports from fans, namely over propaganda payed by fans on LED screens around the country, and then leads to bad image they leave to public, and finally the fans' philanthropy as a ‘correcting tool’. You don’t see this in Korea or Japan. More ‘idols’ are produced, less population, also smaller territory and balance developed cities. There is less needs for fans to promote their idol all over the country. In a word, the typical Chinese features that we are familiar with also shaped a particular entertainment industry.” (Anna, 23, fan of Jackson etc.)

Anna explains thoroughly based on her experience, from a much more macro perspective about the typical Chinese fandom culture, fans supporting activities, and even the entertainment industry. However, the literature shows a silence regarding what Anna addressed, which is understandable since it is regional and new phenomenon. While doing online analysis, voices similar to part of Anna’s idea can be found online about Korean and Japanese fandom culture. Figure 4.3.3 shows two examples.

The fact is that fans now do not think anymore about why people invented fans' philanthropy initially, especially from a more comprehensive and macro perspective like Anna does. Fans consider philanthropy as a positive way to make difference to the society, to improve public’s impression of both idols and themselves. A strong intension is shown among fans to enlarge the scale of fans' philanthropy, no matter to celebrate the birthday of idols, or to do regular daily charity work. People, including fans and others, from interviews and online, show a general attitude that “keep doing philanthropy is not harmful and can be good”. Newly established business who focus on fans' philanthropy and the 52 existing charity organizations who start to pay more attention to fans activities both provide an optimistic environment for the scaling up as well. What need to be careful with includes the fact that fans need to be more caring and professional to be volunteers, fans donation need to be more transparent and that fans should do philanthropy within their capability.

Figure 4.3.3 Netizen Comments on Difference between Fandom Culture in China, Japan and Korea

4.4 Conclusion

Combining the findings from 4.1 and 4.2, the interactions between celebrity, fans and public is drawn more clearly. That explains why the model established in literature review is adjusted as it is now in the beginning of this Chapter. Figure 4.4.1 shows the comparison of initial and adjusted model. According to the information provided by fans in interviews and the analysis of online texts, it is convincingly addressed that the influence of celebrity directly on public in Chinese modern society is fading, while the supervision on celebrity by public is strengthened. The new model in fact stresses out the significant role of fans as a bridge between celebrity and public. The meaning and influence of celebrity has partly shifted from public to targeted fans. Without fans, public will focus more on gossiping or judging celebrity behaviours, in contrast, the influence of celebrity on their behaviours will be greatly weakened. The research is not saying that fans are absolutely a good existence but that fans are keeping a balance of the interaction between celebrity 53 and public. This has, to a large extent, shaped the unique phenomenon of fans' philanthropy in China.

Interviewees in this research are from different background in terms of age, education, career etc. They have shown many different perspectives from micro to macro, with the consideration of individual behaviour and social development. Most young fans, especially undergraduate students, pay more attention to the personal emotion and motivation of themselves. The others who are elder with a career, showed more concerns about the relationship between celebrity and fans, the effect of fan behaviours on society, and even the pros and cons of whole Chinese entertainment industry. This is not only subject to age, but also the “age as a fan”. With longer age, fans deﬁne themselves as more “professional” and “old people who have seen through everything”. Meanwhile, fans have also shown surprisingly consistent answers regarding many questions, including the core meaning of being a fan, the regulation of fandom fair, and the in general positive effect of fans' philanthropy. These points are also proved by online texts from Weibo. Apparently a set of unspoken rules has been “universally” agreed within the fandom culture.

Figure 4.4.1 Comparison of Initial (Left) and Adjusted (Right) Model of Interactions between Celebrity, Fans and Public

The research agrees with the points put forward by Anna, which refers that fans' philanthropy is conceived and generated in particular background of Chinese society, including the censorship, the state-led civil society, the inner imbalance of development, the large territory and population, as well as the rapidly increasing economy etc. As a phenomenon only appeared around three years ago, it still has a long way to go. However, 54 through the ﬁndings and analysis, the study holds a relatively positive attitude of the development of fans' philanthropy. Given the fact that this is a new and particular phenomenon in China, though there are limitations and inadequacies that need to be amended in forthcoming furture, the differences made by fans can not be ignored. Keep enlarging the scale and leading more fans to the road where supporting idols can be done by doing philanthropy, it is both good for the society and for the fans. Of course, improvements need to be made in terms of the professional and transparency issues, which should be studied more in future further research.

55 5 Conclusions

The research focuses on the motivation and impact of celebrities and fans' philanthropy, through the inquiry of parasocial relationship between celebrities and fans. According to the three research questions, the study reviews current literatures regarding celebrity impact and philanthropy, fandom culture, fan activism, and civil society of China. Based on literature review, a model is drawn as the theoretical framework to illustrate the interactions between celebrity, fans and public. On the basis of research questions and theoretical framework, the research conducts 20 interviews among fans of TFBOYS and accomplishes online textual analysis through Weibo, Google and relevant links. In accordance with the data acquired, ﬁndings and deep analysis are addressed to show the motivation of fans' philanthropy, the changing impact of celebrity on public, and the possible scaling up measures in the future. The study complements the existing research and developed a new model to explain fans' philanthropy in China.

Section 5.1 makes a brief summary of the final findings in respondent to each research question. Section 5.2 reflects on the contribution of this research to existing literature and potential enhancement that could have been made. Section 5.3 recommends future direction of the research in terms of further questions to be solved, as well as future data that can be collected.

5.1 Celebrities and Fans' Philanthropy: A Parasocial Relationship?

My research highlights the relationship between celebrity and fans, which have shown an increasingly closer bonding through the study. The relationship of them is mostly a parasocial one, which refers to fans' one-side interaction with celebrity. Built on strong empathy, fans feel the joy and pain of their idol. They wish to keep idol accompany during his or her growth. The way fans take to encourage their idol to keep working and growing up is ‘supporting’, referring to professional Fans Supporting Activities (FSAs), including but not limited to on-site board light, LED screen branding, fans' philanthropy etc. The purpose of FSAs is to let celebrity know that fans are supporting him or her, and to let the public know the power of inﬂuence of the idol.

56 In parasocial relationship, fans care little about getting response like a real ‘relationship’, but they can be really motivated to keep worshiping and doing FSAs once they get pieces of words from their idol. In the era of new media, this has become easier. Celebrity posts photos or video as a treat to fans, answers fans questions online now and then, and thus gives the fans a continuous incentive to be supportive. The inﬂuence of idol on fans is getting more powerful through this interaction, thus the strengthened two-way relationship replaced the total parasocial one, and partly explains the appearance of fans' philanthropy.

Many fans are aware of the truth of celebrity building images. A large amount of fans are familiar with the “idol industrial” and somehow still have a need to be motivated by external power. In their words, it is the key factor for them “to be better persons”. The motivation of fans' philanthropy is studied thoroughly through the research. Based on existing researches, it is not new that celebrity getting involved more in philanthropy. No matter why celebrity is doing so, fans are motivated to be alike their idol. Founded on the Meaning Transfer Model put forward by Pornpitakpan (2003) to explain celebrity endorsement, this research evolved the model to show the meaning transfer between celebrity and fans. It refers to the current phenomenon that in terms of philanthropy, fans are taking the meaning of celebrity behaviour and take their own actions and then deliver the inﬂuence and meaning to public.

All fans from the interview and online have shown this concern to follow idol’s steps. In addition, three key factors emphasized by Kligler et. al (2012) appear to be very important as well: shared media experience, a sense of community, and a wish to help. Fans gather through the social media Weibo, and enjoy doing activities together with other fans because they are bonded by their mutual and unique love for idol. They also encourage each other to insist when some of them have the thoughts of giving up to do FSAs anymore. Meanwhile, the wish to help is signiﬁcant factor for the effect of fans' philanthropy. Fans with good wishes tend to choose projects they personally care more about and invest more efforts in them.

Another factor refers to image build, both for celebrity and for fans. The ﬁndings of this research show that fans are doing everything to earn good reputation and resources for their idol. Doing philanthropy is one of the ways fans are using to help with improving the image of their idol. Besides, fans also admit that they are trying to do good and powerful philanthropy to change the public stereotype of ‘fans being crazy’. The study shows that 57 fans' philanthropy actually works and to some extent changes the impression of public for celebrity and fans. However, there are still problems and limitations in terms of fans professional skills, time issues, transparency of donation etc.

The research ﬁnds out that fans' philanthropy has emerged only for around 3 years, and has its particular background in China due to population, land area, rapid development etc. According to the results and analysis of interviews and online resources, it is still going through the process of expansion. Fans are now improving the proportion of fans' philanthropy among all birthday celebration activities for idol, and this has been complimented by public, celebrity, and media.

For future development, I highly suggest PFGs to promote fans' philanthropy from different aspects. Apart from the quantity of philanthropy activities, the quality of each activity should be improved as well. The quality here refers reasonable chose charity projects, stable cooperation with professional organisations, training for volunteer fans etc. Meanwhile, since most fans do donations more than on-site volunteer work, it is very important for PFGs to keep the donation transparent. Individual fans need to know where their money goes and to supervise PFGs for proper execution.

Celebrity philanthropy has become a routine as social responsibility is expected to be taken by people with more inﬂuence. However, fans' philanthropy is now expanding and is feasible to be scaled up with the improvements mentioned above, in order to change the traditional situation where fans are enthusiastic but do not know where to put their efforts. Celebrity and fans' philanthropy is a process of mutual growth of idol and fans to take more social responsibility. With proper improvements, it can truly make differences to the society, and can play the role as a positive leader to individual fans and newly attracted young fans.

5.2 The Overall Theory Contribution

The research makes a major contribution to theories regarding impact of celebrity, fandom culture and civil society, by ﬁlling missing blocks of fan activism, celebrity-fans relationship and new social characters with strong potential. The existing literature shows analysis regarding celebrity endorsement, celebrity philanthropy, celebrity worship, fandom culture and fan activism. There are also studies focusing on Chinese civil society from various 58 perspectives, which provides references for the study to explain fans' philanthropy in China. However, as a newly emerged phenomenon, fans' philanthropy has not been studied despite its huge inﬂuence now. Meanwhile, the existing literatures regarding celebrity endorsement and philanthropy focus more on the history and are missing the development of this phenomenon.

My research points out that social impact of celebrity has largely shifted and now depends on fans, through the partly double way interaction between them which is more than traditional 'parasocial' relationship. It is a big step of fandom culture theory, in which fans play a more significant role, making more impact, and taking more social responsibility. In this research, the voice of fans is heard. The research studies fans' philanthropy in details, shows how fans are motivated to do charity work. It also provides a model of the relationships between celebrity, fans and public, pointing out that the appearance of idol and professional fans has changed the traditional way of celebrity influence on public. The study takes large scale of fans' philanthropy in China as a case, complements existing research of fans activism, and explains how are celebrity and fans, as a powerful part of civil society, are taking social responsibilities. It finally considers fans' philanthropy of positive effect and gives out suggestions for scaling up in the future.

The study of fans' philanthropy provides a foundation for future research to focus on the social impact of fandom culture, the interaction within civil society and its inﬂuence, as well as the impact of the gradually entertaining society and how to improve the positiveness of it. There are much more information that can be collected in the future, as both the limitation of this research and the recommendations for further research.

5.3 Recommendations

Due to the lacunae of existing literature regarding fans' philanthropy and other activities from fans perspective, the research conducts a deep analysis through the voice of fans, including leaders of fans groups and individual fans. It helps with more comprehensive understanding of fandom culture and the shifting patterns of fans behaviour. The social impact of entertainment industry and celebrity is addressed through the study and suggestions are made to promote more positive effect of fans’ celebrity worship.

59 However, the celebrity or relevant principals are not included as participants of interviews. The study could only collect information from online texts, mostly ofﬁcial public announcement of celebrity or their agency. For researchers with more resources, ﬁrst- hand data directly from celebrity would make huge contributions. The motivation of celebrity getting involved in social responsibility can be analysed to a deeper level through face-to-face conversations with them, thus the research will be able to promote the increase of positive social impact of celebrity by making proper suggestions.

Moreover, further research can also be done by listening to the voice of public. A survey for public to answer questions regarding celebrity and fans' philanthropy can help with deeper analysis of this phenomenon. How are people’s awareness of environmental and social issues improved? In terms of fans activities, what would repel public and what would encourage them to change their individual actions? Answer of these questions will help with the emendation of fans' philanthropy and maximizing its positive effect. Meanwhile, since fans have mentioned the cooperation with NGOs and the involvement of government, both stakeholders can provide valuable data for further research as well. If NGOs and fans can cooperate more with quality activities, a win-win situation can be formed to improve the quantity and quality of volunteers, and to raise awareness of public as well. While the government can be the hardest character to reach, data from them can be studied to understand the positive and negative effect of state-led civil society, as well as entertaining market with censorship.

From institutional perspective, celebrity is partly business and partly civil society; fans, public and the NGOs fans cooperate with belong to civil society; government is playing the role of guidance in this case. An in-depth comprehensive research would analyse the phenomenon from all stakeholders and that is what needs to be done in future studies.

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60 Appendix I: List of Interview Participants

Name (Alias) Age Education Job/Profession Idol

Anna 23 Master Headhunting Jackson Yi; Jackson Wang Amber 24 Bachelor PR TFBOYS

Bei 20 Senior Student Environmental Issues Jackson Yi

Feng 24 First Year Master Social Work TFBOYS

Fo 34 Bachelor Designer Jackson Yi

Jade 23 Master NGO worker TFBOYS

Jin 24 Bachelor Celebrity Promotion Karry & Roy

Kong 20 Freshman Bigbang, Karry, Jingting Bai etc. Minnie 24 Bachelor New Media Worker Roy Wang

Mount 23 Bachelor Doctor Jackson Yi

Nin 25 Bachelor Teacher Karry & Roy; Jackson Wang & Mark Tuan(Korean) Penny 27 Master Designer TFBOYS

Sarah

Shaw 22 First year Master Engineering TFBOYS

Shufen 22 Junior Student Arts TFBOYS҈ Jingting Bai Tracey 23 Senior Student Medicine Karry & Roy

Vivian 25 Bachelor Advertising TVXQ

Xin 24 First year Master Environmental Issues TFBOYS/ Yang Yang Yi 19 Freshman Business TFBOYS

Zoe 19 Sophomore Student Designing Jackson Yi

61 Appendix II: Terminology and Abbreviations

Terminology Abbreviation Original in Chinese Explanation

ᆽᨗ The deﬁnition of “Idol” has became a certain҈؟؍ / Idol career which is distinct from “singer” or “actor”. Idol refers to those who have good look and may not have good enough skills at ﬁrst but sell the process of “growth” and “achieving dreams” to fans.

Fan Supporting FSA ᔇӴଫൔၚۖ Activities that are organised and payed by fans Activity to support idols’ career, including but not limited to: board light; LED propaganda; preparing gifts, fans' philanthropy etc.

Professional PFG ᔇӴᒊ Fans group with ﬁxed name and members, Fans Group doing “professional” supporting activities regularly according to the schedule of idol, providing photos and videos to other individual fans online

Head Fan ҈ य़ᔇ҈ᔇ१ A fan who becomes “famous” among other fans because of his/her impressive behaviour for supporting idol, normally has many followers on Social Media.

62 Appendix III: Table 4.3.1 Original in Chinese

63 64 Appendix IV: Interview Guidance (English & Chinese)

Age/ Education ଙἻ҈රᙙ݊ૡ֢ᙧว .1

2. Which celebrity do you like? ఍ጱᆽᨗฎҘ

ᬦग़੝ེၚۖҘےHow many activities have you been in for him? ఍ԅ՜ጱଫൔ݇ .3

ᔮฎՋԍىጱ؟؍How do you consider your relationship with your idol? ఍ᦊԅᛔ૩Ө .4

໏ጱҘ

5. When and how did you fall for this celebrity (name)? ఍౮ԅᔇӴग़ԋԧҘ 6. When and how did you join the fans group? Does the group recruit people ofﬁcially?

ᒊৼ҈ᔇӴࢫᴚጱҘᒊৼฎই֜ԅٌ๜᫝҈ԅٌفےAny threshold for joining? ఍ฎই֜

ᇙਧၚۖ೗۩݇ӨᘏጱҘ݇ӨᘏํߺԶᳪདҘ

क़ᬮํٌܗSpeciﬁc social media? (Weibo; WeChat; BBS…?) ೗۩ಅአጱᐒԻড়֛ᴻங .7

՜ހҘ

8. How do you communicate with other fans? Do on-line chatting gets to be off-line? ఍ই

տӞ᩸ᬰᤈᕚӥጱտᶎٌ݊ਙၚۖҘވӨٌਙᔇӴᬰᤈԻၞҘᕚӤᕮᦩጱᔇӴฎ֜ 9. What activities do you usually take part in for supporting idols?

఍ಅ݇Өጱଫൔၚۖय़ग़හԅՋԍᐿᔄҘ 10. How does it change your fan’s life after joining the group, compared to when you were ‘on your own’? Өݸ҅఍֢ԅᔇӴጱኞၚԾኞԧߺԶݒ۸Ҙҁ۱ೡᤈԅڹᒊৼ҈ӨٌਙᔇӴӞ᩸ၚۖفےࣁ

݊ஞாᒵ҂ 11. What are most activities about? How often is charity/philanthropy activity organized? ই֜Ҙྲړጯܛፅၚۖጱ᷇ሲই֜Ҙಅل఍ಅᎣ᭲ጱଫൔၚۖय़ग़හฎՋԍᐿᔄጱҘ 12. What makes you want to do activities? especially charity?

ฎՋԍҘێፅጱԆᥝۖلฎՋԍҘ఍݇Өێ఍݇Өଫൔၚۖጱۖ 13. How do you organize an activity? ፅၚۖҘل఍ই֜ᕟᕢӞٍེํӞਧᥢཛྷጱଫൔၚۖ҅੦ٌฎ 14. How do you choose philanthropy direction? Related to idol or randomly?

ᔮํग़य़Ҙᵋ๢ጱଫىፅلፅၚۖጱᦾ᷌҈ොݻҘӨᆽᨗᬪ๗դ᥺ጱل఍ই֜ᭌೠಅᬰᤈጱ

ൔၚۖԆ᷌ฎই֜ᭌೠጱҘ

65 15. How do you see the inﬂuence of philanthropy you did? Any follow-up or feedback?

Ҙګḇ๢ݍݸᖅጱපຎ᪙ᬰ޾ํވፅᶱፓฎلፅၚۖጱ୽ߥই֜Ҙل఍ᦊԅ

ፅၚۖጱՈහय़༷ํلHow many people are involved? Where are they from? ྯེ݇Ө .16

ᇙ஄Ҙ਍ኞ҈ૡ֢ՈާҘ܄ग़੝Ҙࣈ 17. Did you participate any activities for public good before? 1. If yes, what topics did you focus on? 2. Have you used your experience for fans group activities? 3. Does celebrity inﬂuence the area you care about? ፅၚۖҘلᬦٌਙےԞ݇ވฎ҅ڹ఍ࣁ౮ԅᔇӴ

ইຎฎ҅᧗఍ᖀᖅࢧᒼғ

ፅၚۖҘل఍้ᕪԆᥝ݇ӨጱฎߺӞොᶎጱ

ፅၚۖӾҘلᔇӴکፅጱᕪḵ޾ᩒრଫአلےਖ਼้ᕪ݇ވ఍ฎ

᪁Ҙ᧗Ԉֺ᧔กҘيፅᦾ᷌ොᶎጱلදݒԧ఍ࣁވ఍ጱᆽᨗฎ 18. Do you have any preference for projects among all the philanthropy your idol is endorsing?

ᦾ᷌ํᛔ૩ጱ؇অҘ᧗ԈӻֺৼҘڦ੒ӻވፅᶱፓӾ҅఍ฎلࣁᆽ֢ᨗԅय़ֵਯփጱಅํ 19. Does the fans group have speciﬁc sources of doing charity? (specialist/ organizations) ፅᩒრҘҁӫਹ҅ᕟᕢᒵ҂لᇙਧ੒ളጱํވᒊৼ҈ᔇӴᗭฎ 20. Do you cooperate with other organizations, like NGOs?

տӨٌਙᕟᕢݳ֢҅ইӫӱጱNGO҅ࣈො඲଱҅ࠟӱ๢຅ᒵҘވժฎ֦ 21. Any professional skills or knowledge you learned from fans group? ፅلࣁဋ᭗҅զ݊ӞԶၿ݊ވԧߺԶӫӱದૣ౲ᎣᦩҘᴻᗦૡ෈ໜक़҅ฎک఍ࣁᒊৼӾ਍ԟ

Ҙ܋౲ٌਙٖ਻ጱӫӱᎣᦩӤํಅ൉

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