MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE Celebritization in the Political Campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Bachelor Thesis Natálie Chlustinová Supervisor: Mgr. Miloš Gregor, Ph.D. Student ID: 439670 Study program: Political Science Matriculation Year: 2014/2015 Brno; May 15, 2017 Declaration of authorship work I declare that I have developed a bachelor thesis on Celebritization in the Political Campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump independently and have only used the resources listed in the literature. In Brno, May 15, 2017 Signature................................... 2 I would like to thank Mgr. Miloš Gregor, Ph.D. for supervising my thesis. He gave me advices and remarks, which were crucial for the thesis. He also brought the idea about writing in English, which made working with sources easier for me. I would like to thank Mgr. et Mgr. Jan Beneš, who was always here for me when I needed English proofreading. And the biggest thanks to my family. You has supported me all three years at Masaryk University and I am aware that I couldn´t be at this point without your support. I love you. 3 Annotation The bachelor thesis focuses on the phenomenon celebritization, particularly in the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Emphasizing the U.S. presidential election in 2016, the main objective of the thesis is comparison of these two campaigns. According to the main types of celebritization, I compare how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump behaved like celebrities and also if they received support from celebrities. Anotace Bakalářská práce pojednává o fenoménu celebritizace, konkrétně v kampaních Hillary Clintonové a Donalda Trumpa. Převážná část práce se zabývá obdobím prezidentských voleb ve Spojených státech amerických v roce 2016, přičemž cílem práce je komparace dvou zmíněných kampaní. Vycházím z dvou základních typů celebritizace, což znamená, že porovnávám, jak se Hillary Clintonová a Donald Trump chovali jako celebrity, ale také to, jakou získali podporu od známých osobností. Key words Celebritization, celebrity, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, political campaign, presidential election, comparison Klíčová slova Celebritizace, celebrita, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, politická kampaň, prezidentské volby, komparace 4 Table of content 1. Introduction 6 2. Theoretical Part 7 2.1 Who Is The Celebrity 8 2.2 Past and Present of the Phenomenon 9 2.3 Discussion about Celebritization 10 2.4 Typology of Celebritization 10 2.5 Presidential Elections in the United States 13 2.6 Political Campaigns 15 3. Methodology Part 16 3.1 Questions of the Research 16 3.2 Indicators 17 3.3 Design of the Research 17 4. Analytical Part 19 4.1 Hillary Clinton 20 4.1.1 I´m With Her – Political Campaign of Hillary Clinton 21 4.1.2 Hillary Clinton like a celebrity 22 4.1.3 Celebrities in Clinton´s campaign 24 4.1.4 Some of the most visible supporters of Hillary Clinton 26 4.2 Donald Trump 29 4.2.1 Make America Great Again – Political Campaign of Donald Trump 30 4.2.2 Donald Trump like a celebrity 31 4.2.3 Celebrities in Trump´s campaign 33 4.2.4 Some of the most visible supporters of Donald Trump 34 5. Comparison 37 6. Conclusion 40 7. Sources 41 7.1 Literature 41 7.2 Articles 42 7.3 Websites 42 7.4 Social networks 46 5 1. Introduction The bachelor thesis focuses on the phenomenon celebritization, particularly in the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The thesis is divided into four main parts. At the beginning, I define who is the celebrity and then I focuses on Street´s typology of the celebritization, which is crucial for this work. Theoretical part also includes basic information about presidential election and political campaigns in the U.S., because my analysis applies celebritization into political campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. In the second part, called methodology, I describe indicators which will help me to answer my main question of the research: “How has celebritization been reflected in the presidential political campaign of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton?”. There are written also secondary questions of the research and these will find the information about celebrity supporters from Hollywood, but also different arenas, in the campaigns. On the other hand, there is an issue about celebrity politicians. It means, how the candidates behaved like celebrities. In my design of the research, there is described that my interest is before the announcement of candidacy (if Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were celebrities that time) and also during the campaigning. The analytical part begins with short biography of candidates and description of their campaigns. Then, I separately analyze the celebritization in their campaigns. In analytical part I mention, that Hollywood is well known as liberal place and it can be one of the indicators, why Hillary Clinton got bigger support from celebrities. It was seen by many events made for her, e.g. concerts of famous singers, such as Jennifer Lopez. When I move to the part about Donald Trump, he didn’t receive as big support as Clinton and celebrity endorsement was often unclear. Because even though some celebrity showed support for him, the same person changed mind about him later. Last part of the thesis and the result of the research is written in my comparison. As I said, Hillary Clinton was supported by many famous people. On the other hand, Donald Trump was celebrity by himself. The extent of this thesis is limited, but comparison of celebritization in the political campaings of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could serve to make other researches about the influence of celebritization on voter´s decisions. 6 2. Theoretical Part In this bachelor thesis I will analyze and compare presidential political campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, in which I target to the term celebritization. Therefore, I find necessary to define this phenomenon and determine one author with specific typology of celebritization, which will be crucial for the thesis. The classification will help me to design indicators, which I will use to write the comparation of the campaigns. The number of books about this issue is still increasing, but the range of the text is limited. For this reason it is not possible to deal with the issue in general. The second integral part, which could not be missing in the theory section will mention presidential elections in the United States. Briefly I will explain how is the president, of the most successfully working presidential political system, elected. Then I find very important to describe political campaigns in the United States, because it is inherent part. When the country has meaningful elections, it must also encourage competitive campaigns (Medvic 2010: 2). 7 2.1 Who Is The Celebrity Even though there is not one universal definition explaining who is a celebrity, there is a lot of authors writing about the topic and trying to describe the term. Some characteristics of ,,the celebrity” are being repeated in different academic works, these may be used as the indicators for this thesis. A number of authors coincides that celebrities are people who are famous. But there is a question – what they are famous for? Boorstin says, that celebrities are known for their well-knownness. His idea is concentrated on pseudo-events, which are liken to the celebrities. These people draw attention to themselves for the purpose of being seen (Boorstin 1972: 57). This definition is accepted by other experts, but it is incomplete and inadequate for this thesis. West and Orman write, that celebrities are central players from the political, television, news, film, comedy, rock, sports, entertainment, business, and newsmakers arenas. Audience follows them, because they have the job of building fame (West and Orman 2003: 17). While defining the term, many authors do not forget about the mass media. In time they had not been that much expanded, the term celebrity used to have different meaning. Boorstin speaks about the United States, where he compares the current celebrities with the former heroes. The difference is in the creation. Formation of the hero does not depend on anything, but the celebrity is formed by the media. “The hero is a big man; the celebrity is a big name” (Boorstin 1972: 61). Street describes, that mass media pay attention about celebrities, show them more than the rest of population. In other words these people “are allowed to move on the public stage while the rest of us watch” (Street 2004: 437). How famous celebrities are, depends on how much they appear in newspapers, television and other media. Therefore the best method for the research correlates with the content analysis of media (Jirák and Köpplová 2003: 45). Schmid agrees with a big influence of media. According to him people who are seen in mass media are famous, but they do not have to be talented. Although it is not possible to use the terms ´fame´ and ´celebrity´ equivalently, these two words are more similar today than they even have been before. Media play a central role in understanding what fame is, because it really depends on how they promote and publicize celebrities (Schmid 2005: 10-11). There is also discussion about the area, where the celebrities act. Some stars have extremely high levels of broadcast media visibility and the audience knows them all around the world. However, other celebrities are known at national or local levels, or transnationally and 8 translocally through ethnic communities and some dedicated networks (Jeffreys and Allatson 2015: Chapter 1). In this thesis the celebrity is understood as a famous person, who operates in political, entertainment, business or mass media arenas.