When Politics and Celebrity Collide

At AudienceNet we like to mix our favourite things when conducting research – two of those things are politics and pop culture! With celebrities seemingly becoming more and more involved in politics in the post-Trump era, we wanted to find out who people really trust to positively impact society; the people they’ve elected to do just that, or celebrities whose talents mainly lie outside of the political arena? The results were very telling. The only politician the Brits trust to positively impact society was ex-US President, Barack Obama. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, on the other hand, were less trusted to positively impact society than the likes of Ed Sheeran and Emma Watson:

One of our core research interests at AudienceNet is how we can engage young people in politics. So the results of this survey made us wonder, should politicians act more like celebrities? If so, what can they learn from celebrities? Or should celebrities get even more involved in politics than they are already? We want to hear from you! Could celebs help increase political engagement or should they stick to what they’re good at and let politicians do their jobs? So please comment below and let us know what you think. We’re looking forward to a great debate!

To give you a little food for thought, here are a few instances of celebrities getting involved in politics we thought were interesting:

Emma Watson: I am a feminist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9SUAcNlVQ4

When JME met Jeremy Corbyn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-rxp_QwjmQ

Childish Gambino: This is America https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY

Oprah Winfrey at the 2018 Golden Globes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN5HV79_8B8

Kanye West on Twitter https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/25/politics/kanye-west-donald-trump-twitter/index.html