Celebrities and public communication

Youth engagement for electoral enrollment

Abstract

After a significant drop in the participation of young people in Brazilian elections, the Superior Electoral Court launched a campaign to encourage them to vote. Unexpectedly, progressist celebrities also joined the campaign. Thus, this article aims to understand the role of celebrities in engaging youth to vote in the 2022 elections. It is understood that public communication is a complex process involving different social actors, while celebrities have the potential to provoke a change through the idealization of their fans. The following exploratory study used content analysis to observe posts by five celebrities on Twitter. Anitta, Felipe Neto, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Hamill, and Mark Ruffalo reached together more than one million likes, interacting with social movements and with their followers. This shows the relevance of these artists' discourse to the public debate.