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.