Activating fan activism: A case study of the partnership between the United Nations and BTS (2022)

Partnerships between celebrities and non-profit organizations (NPOs) are not new social marketing strategies in the public sector. Organizations' hope to take advantage of celebrities’ influence among fans. Celebrities enjoy giving back to society while enriching their prosocial profiles. 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.