| dc.description.abstract | Over the past decades, there has been a frontier open up in international development with the entrance of pop-up actors or new actors such as celebrity aid initiatives. Celebrities have been constantly involved in humanitarian and development work giving attention to humanitarian crises, poverty, human rights, diseases, and other emerging disasters in the world. Conflict-prone areas, particularly in Africa, caught celebrities' attention, bringing in divergent development strategies and complimenting or replacing traditional developmental actors. Against this background, my dissertation critically explores the role of a celebrity aid initiative in Somaliland by embarking on empirical research of the work of Jerome Jarre on the Love Army for Somalia to understand how this activity was conducted and how their beneficiaries view it. My research questions are: What is the impact of CAI on development in Somaliland? To what extent can celebrity aid projects enhance development in Somaliland? What is the level of local participation in celebrity aid projects in Somaliland? To what extent can CAI be considered a resource mobilization community development tool in Somaliland? And how can social media and ICTs be used in CAI resource mobilization? The literature on celebrity aid initiatives has focused on the debate on celebrities as ambassadors, celebrity humanitarianism, and some on how they are the legitimizing function of elite engagement between the North and South. Nevertheless, few are based on empirical research on how celebrity aid initiatives operate, how their beneficiaries view them, how celebrities have revolutionized ICTs, social media, and crowdfunding in resource mobilization, and the critical motivations of celebrities to start such initiatives. Hence my research addresses this gap. The findings show that the sustainability of celebrity aid relay on continuous donor engagement through social media and constant content creation. There is evidence that crowdfunding platforms are critical in resource mobilization for celebrity aid initiatives. The finding also shows that the success of celebrity aid initiatives relies on local participation in implementation and decision-making. Employing literature on celebrity humanitarianism as a theoretical lens, l believe that what motivates celebrities to start their initiatives to help people in humanitarian crises are the acts of global solidarity and the ability to show competence and relatedness. | |
