Celebrity Politics Essay

In the United States celebrities hold a great deal of influence on the lives of everyday citizens. Athletes, Movie stars, TV Stars, and other television personalities have into larger than life figures. With this much power and influence what would happen if more celebrities used their platform to influence the outcome of presidential elections. This brings me to my question "Do celebrity endorsements of major party candidates have an affect on U.S. Presidential elections"? I feel that this is an important question because celebrities have the opportunity to use their platform to influence major elections. My dependent variable is whether or not their endorsements have an effect of the outcome of an election. The article "An Experimental investigation of the effects of celebrity support for political parties in the United States Written by Anthony J Nownes. In the article Nownes talks about how celebrity endorsements have always had an effect on the way people view candidates and their parties. One of The 8 Hypotheses that Nownes tested states that for respondents who view Peyton

‘, & Tindall, K. (2010). Celebrity Politics: The Politics of the Late Modernity? Political Studies Review. doi:10.1111/j.1478-9302.2010.00215.x. This article speaks about the different types of literature in celebrity politics. Stating that, most of the literature focuses either upon classifying different types/categories of celebrity politician and their roles in politics or upon the question of whether the growth of celebrity politics undermines or enhances democracy. They talked about people like Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger who are considered to be celebrity politicians, celeberity politicans are those who go beyond one-issue politics and run for public office. On the other hand you also have celebrities that are just endorsers, primarily campaigning for a major party candidate like Oprah did for Barack Obama in