Documentarian, Witness, and Organizer: Exploring Celebrity Roles in Human Rights Media Advocacy

Recent years have seen a growth industry for celebrity engagement in human rights work, broadly construed. For example, the website Look to the Stars has calculated that over two thousand charities have some form of celebrity support (Look to the Stars, nd). Hollywood stars Jennifer Garner and Julianne Moore promote the work of Save the Children as Artist Ambassadors; Gwyneth Paltrow and Rashida Jones designed t-shirts to support the ONE Campaign to alleviate poverty; meanwhile, George Clooney and Don Cheadle have formed their own organization Not On Our Watch to promote mass atrocities prevention. Celebrities raise money, speak to the media, pay visits to victim populations, and address US Congress and the United Nations. This expanding continuum of celebrity activity is linked to broad political, technological, and social trends in the human rights landscape.