One of the most popular aspects of 21st Century culture is celebrity culture, where the celebrities are granted power over the culture rest of the culture. It is important to note that celebrity is a condition of broad recognition and fame of a group or an individual, giving them the media’s attention (Sun & Jiang, 2017). Therefore, a celebrity can be a wealthy person, an entertainer or a political figure.
Intercultural communication and understanding become relevant whenever the entity’s recognition goes beyond their local culture to people from other cultural backgrounds. These celebrities get to experience their actions and work being interpreted by people from different cultures, which often leads to a gradual creation of a shared mean and an all-inclusive culture.
I would identify the global leaders of the Catholic Church more, so Pope Francis is a celebrity who has the attention of people from vast cultures around the world. However, the people he influences the most have an overarching culture that contextualizes the Pope’s understanding. Pope Francis had a significant impact on modern-day culture based on the fact that he embraces social justice.
By assuming his spiritual leadership, Pope Francis influenced people who would identify as atheists or irreligious but consider themselves spiritual. Nelson Mandela is another individual who has had a perennial impact on the culture as he championed ending apartheid in South Africa. He also had a chance to depict the intercultural relation by showing that the Black People in South Africa were willing to coexist peacefully with the rest of the culture. Kim Kardashian is another individual who has leveraged her celebrity in the reform of American criminal justice, which has affected people from African American cultures over the years (McCandless & Elias, 2021).
References
- McCandless, S., & Elias, N. M. (2021). Introduction to the Special Issue: Popular Culture, Social Equity, and Public Administration.
- Sun, Y., & Jiang, F. (2017). A study on the effectiveness of We-Media as a platform for intercultural communication. In New Media and Chinese Society (pp. 271-284). Springer, Singapore.
