Research in Progress: Activating fan activism among the Millennial and Gen Z generations

By Baobao Song and Minhee Choi, Virginia Commonwealth University

If you do not know who BTS (or Bangtan Boys) are, you may have been living underground or without internet connection for a while. BTS is the seven-member K-pop boy band who helped the White House condemn the anti-Asian hate crimes currently plaguing the United States and taught President Biden how to make finger hearts in the Oval Office at the end of May.

Well, the White House is not the first government agency or nonprofit organization (NPO) to hop on the fashionable BTS subculture in an effort to address serious social issues.

On September 20, 2021, the United Nations garnered special attention because of BTS’ presence at its 76th General Assembly in New York. More than one million fans (a.k.a. ARMYs) around the world joined the live online event while BTS gave a seven-minute speech at the U.N. headquarters on climate change, digital community, and other sustainable development goals, and they shared how the goals are related to the young generation.

The event recording accumulated almost 7 million views on the U.N.’s YouTube channel in three months. Considering the couple thousands of average YouTube views that the U.N. usually receives, this huge leap in the scope of publicity can be largely attributed to its partnership with the world’s most loved boy group.

With a total of 43.1 million followers on Twitter, 62.7 million subscribers on YouTube, and more than 20 million followers for each member on Instagram, BTS undoubtedly has one of the largest and most powerful fandoms around the world. Fans not only support the band’s musical career, but also advocate for the social causes that the band stands for.

During the past three years, ARMYs have donated $3.6 million to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and generated over 50 million social media engagement to support BTS’ “LOVE MYSELF” campaign to end violence and neglect among and toward children. This is only the tip of the fandom power iceberg.

Partnerships between celebrities and NPOs are not new social marketing strategies in the public sector. Plenty of examples can be found, such as the partnerships between Jennifer Aniston and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and Angelina Jolie and the USA for UNHCR. NPOs hope to take advantage of celebrities’ influence among fans. Celebrities enjoy giving back to society while enriching their prosocial profiles.

And, what about fans? How do they feel about their idols’ collaboration with NPOs? What makes fans believe or question celebrity endorsement in NPO communications? How will fans respond (online and offline) to celebrity endorsed NPO campaigns? How do non-fans perceive and respond to NPO celebrity endorsement? In addition, how should NPOs and celebrities choose the right partners and causes? What kind of communicative actions could best mobilize fandoms and make the most out of the partnerships? These critical questions are rarely answered in the existing literature.

BTS’ advocacy for climate change action and their engagement with the U.N. SDGs present an unprecedented opportunity for us to empirically observe the role of celebrity influence on socially oriented communications.

This project aims to untangle the complexity in celebrity/NPO partnerships by examining the four-way relationships among the celebrity, the NPO, the social cause, and the fandom individuals and quantifying the partnership outcomes in terms of individual beliefs and attitudes towards the causes, as well as the resulting online and offline activism behaviors.

Through this project, we hope to help NPOs understand how to achieve their sustainability communication goals by effectively partnering with celebrities and engaging celebrity fandoms. This project connects with the Page Center Sustainability Grant calls by highlighting engagement with specific audiences regarding sustainability communication (i.e., celebrity fans), contextualized sustainability communication (i.e., the nonprofit sector), and measurement of sustainability communication impact (i.e., fan activism behaviors et al.).

This project also furthers the Page Center’s mission by exploring effective partnership strategies to elevate the social impact of NPO sustainability communication.

For more information about this study, email Song at bsong@vcu.edu or Choi at choim10@vcu.edu. Findings of this study will be shared next year. This study is a part of the Center’s 2022 Page/Johnson Legacy Scholar Grant call for research proposals focusing on sustainability communication.