Week 13 Post-Class: A (Quick) Note on Celebrity Ambassadors

A (Quick) Note on Celebrity Ambassadors

Useful or Counterproductive? It depends...

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll start things off by putting all my cards on the table: I honestly did not enjoy this topic. It was worth a discussion, I felt, but certainly not as much as it got. I do not believe it contributed substantially to the greater understanding of international relations theory and it recieved far too much of the relatively little class time we have to learn such theory. In part, this is why I forayed into other, and what I felt were more crucial, topics with my classmates. Nevertheless, some important points were made regarding the activities of celebrities in international relations.

For my part, I largely agreed with many of my classmates, namely Erica, on the effects of celebrity ambassadors. Hollywood stars and other well-known, non-politicians around the world can both benefit and harm a cause they are trying to promote depending on their level of knowledge and depth of involvement. First, the good. Our world, when looked at from space may seem tranquil, but on the surface, this tends to be very far from the case. This adds up to one truth: there is no shortage of problems on Earth for mankind to contend with. Additionally, not all of these issues are created equally. Many are initially overshadowed by the relative importance of other, more pressing matters. To this end, celebrity ambassadors often do the most good in bringing attention to these less well known or otherwise more far-removed, or relatively less pressing (to the mainstream public) subjects.

Unfortunately, as mentioned, celebrity ambassadors can also do a reasonable deal of harm. Generally this comes from relatively uninformed individuals attempting to wade into the details of a particular cause or situation. While intentions may be in the right place, if facts are not misinformation will flow and result in either inefficient actions being taken to better the cause or situation, or worse, counter-productive action.

In all, celebrities are not exactly great sources of expert information. While they are certainly entitled to their opinions, and should make efforts to aid in the causes which they hold dear, it must be tempered by the knowledge that their information is limited. When such self-imposed limits are not placed on a speaker of influence, uninformed endorsement of a particular course of action can wind up doing significantly more harm than good. Essentially, bad advice is often times not better than no advice at all.