Cosmopolitan Stars, Interactive Audience Labor, and the Digital Economy of Global Care

Abstract

Cosmopolitan stars like Angelina Jolie not only urge charity and care; increasingly, they link Western media audiences to international aid and development agencies, enjoining them to become empowered, socially entrepreneurial world citizens through online participation in global civil society. These developments are indicative of significant shifts in the cultural life of both media celebrity and citizenship, as charitable stars and the small acts of digital caring they solicit from their media audiences have emerged as central linchpins in global governmentality. Tracing the social, cultural, and political-economic productivity of celebrity branding and media interactivity for global regimes of governing, this essay shows how caring stars and audience labor are mobilized to fuel a digital economy of global care that sustains the social welfare work of the international community.