A Corpus Analysis of United Nations Goodwill Ambassadors: Are Celebrity Diplomats Relevant Amid the Pandemic?

. When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the world was unprepared for the magnitude of effects that followed. The entire outbreak shook all countries, and governments, world leaders, and health professionals are trying to stop the health crisis. Politicians, celebrities, and especially the United Nations Goodwill Ambassadors have spoken out about issues related to the pandemic. However, studies on this particular subject remain in its infancy. To fill the literature gap, the current paper applies a corpus analysis to examine the patterns in news articles citing celebrities UN Goodwill Ambassadors as they are discussing the Covid-19 pandemic. As this paper is interested in collecting all reports published during the pandemic times, the timeline is set from 2020 up to 2022. The findings suggest that there are at least three main messages reflected in news articles citing celebrities UN Goodwill Ambassadors, namely the impacts of the pandemic, measures to overcome the global health crisis, and the importance of donations. This study sheds light on how celebrity diplomats continue to shape their roles in international communities by leveraging their influence as public figures.


Introduction
The world has changed for the better or the worst as the pandemic spread.The world is being pushed to adjust to this new reality, and the battle to combat the pandemic has intensified.Many people have spoken up about the Covid-19 pandemic (Prihatini and Halimatusa'diyah 2021), giving powerful speeches about hope amid the pandemic, and among those people are the celebrities, known as those with massive power in the entertainment sector who also have enormous influence over public opinion through popular culture movements and imagery (Street 2004).In contemporary, a celebrity can also be defined as someone whose background comes from the sports or entertainment industries and is wellknown in the media, with their personal lives receiving significantly more attention than their professional life (Turner 2012).Hence, this study aims to provide insight on celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors' perspectives on issues related to the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as contribute to celebrity studies using corpus analysis methodologies.
Corresponding Author: anatasya.darmawan@binus.ac.id The UN Goodwill Ambassadors are public figures from the arts, music, science, entertainment, sport, literature, and other fields at national, regional, and global levels (Fall et al. 2006).These UN Goodwill Ambassadors used the media as a platform to promote their campaign and even voice their worries about issues.Several news headlines have appeared about celebrities UN Goodwill Ambassador speaking up on issues relating to Covid-19.However, no in-depth analysis of the news has been published.Thus, the presence and actions of the celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors in the midst of the pandemic are crucial, as they play a role in spreading UN goals as celebrity diplomats.
By examining the word frequencies of celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassador news related to the pandemic, this research aims to discover what these celebrities have to say about the Covid-19 pandemic using corpus analysis.Corpus linguistics, or corpus analysis, is a growing field of linguistics that involves using computer software to rapidly search and analyze databases of 'real language' or electronically recorded texts (Vaughan and O'Keeffe 2015; Baker 2010).Additionally, corpora (plural of Latin corpus) are databases that can comprise any principled collection of written or transcribed spoken language (Vaughan and O'Keeffe 2015).This paper will first explore the previous studies about celebrity diplomacy and UN Goodwill Ambassadors.Second, this paper will analyze the celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassador news related to the Covid-19 pandemic using Voyant Tools, online software to discover the word frequencies.Third, this paper will conduct a thorough examination of the topics raised in all of the celebrities' news related to the Covid-19 pandemic.After analyzing and examining all the celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassador news, this paper will conclude and show the top five frequent words from all the celebrities' news and the topics that these celebrities talk about in their news.

Literature Review
Celebrity diplomacy has become an extension of the current diplomacy activities and a part of the public diplomacy shift (Wheeler 2018).In Wheeler's previous research, he explained that celebrities have used their popularity to promote alternative discourses and construct credible diplomatic interventions in order to impose pressure on diplomats, international policymakers, and national leaders (Wheeler 2016).According to Cooper (2008), celebrity diplomacy creates a new 'space' where celebrities serve as bridges between the public and foreign affairs, and these celebrity diplomats will fill in the 'gaps' created by official diplomats, who are more likely to keep information to themselves rather than sharing it with the public.He further explained that celebrity diplomacy is a new agency capable of shaping the global communications agenda (Cooper 2008).Young (2018) argues that these celebrities' diplomats have relied solely on media outlets and non-governmental organizations, rather than the formal government, to conduct their business.Kelley (2010) sees that celebrity diplomats possess some diplomatic skills, and their representation is a significant factor in their success, as they represent social movements that are not necessarily state-based, but transnational.
One of the celebrities' alternative discourses, according to Street et al. (2012), can be understood through their actions in building a shared identity with the public by connecting themselves with various causes and presenting themselves as speaking for 'the people'.This activity employs emotive rhetoric and audience values, which in today's modern public diplomacy is a powerful bargaining tool (Wheeler 2016;Kellner 2010).Street et al. (2012) believe that the connection between the public and politics is based on a sense of identification and emotion.Hence, celebrities can give points of identification to mobilize public opinion for diplomatic reform (Wheeler 2016), without being able to claim to speak for a constituency, whether defined as a cause or a people (as opposed to a professional diplomat) (Cooper 2008;2016).
New opportunities in public diplomatic involvement have emerged because of the publiccelebrity dialogue, and celebrity activists have shifted from state-directed public diplomacy to cosmopolitan issues such as global citizenship and mutual solidarity (Wheeler 2016).Wilson (2011) contends that cosmopolitan celebrities are both agents and cultural technologies of global governmentality to the degree that they try to align media audiences, mainly those in the Western world, with global governing goals and programs.Cooper (2008) further suggests that celebrities serve as a convenient substitute for and conduit in reaction to society's conventional links, mobilizing, interpreting, and, most importantly, mediating activities that have been deteriorated inside traditional institutions.
The UN has been using celebrity diplomacy to deploy Goodwill Ambassadors since the 1950s, marked by their first-ever UN Goodwill Ambassador, Danny Kaye.The first forms of celebrity activism in the UN were ad hoc partnerships between the movie stars and UN officers.Both politicians and celebrities believe that influencing public opinion through the media is effective (Wheeler 2011), and celebrity diplomacy is a helpful strategy for the UN since it can be utilized without producing a demand for impact research because celebrities' influence is apparent (Alleyne 2005).Based on Young (2018) explanation, celebrity diplomats who advocate UN objectives are fundamentally different from other celebrity diplomats because they were selected for their positions and committed to bringing international attention to UNrelated issues.Other than attracting public and political attention, the UN Goodwill Ambassador also raises funds for UN programs in areas such as peace and security; education and culture; health; development; poverty alleviation; hunger eradication; family planning; drug abuse and trafficking; human rights; and the rights of women, children, and refugees (Fall et al. 2006).
Wheeler (2011) stated that when celebrity activities increased in the 1980s and 1990s, the UN's deployment of politically involved celebrities proved to be problematic.It all started in 1966 when UNICEF and Marlon Brando formed partnerships, and the agencies believe that Brando was a double-edged sword because, despite his commitment to global notions of justice, he has utilized his celebrity status to acquire political prominence.Although celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and George Clooney have been successful as Goodwill Ambassadors, the UN has been criticized for its lack of credibility in the selection of several Goodwill Ambassadors and the influence of celebrities in providing an emotive response to the complexity of state-centric power (Wheeler 2011).
A study by Huliaras and Tzifakis (2010) suggests that by identifying additional individual levels of variables that explain celebrity activism, it can be understood that celebrities' interests may motivate their involvement in global causes.Since stardom is reliant on constant exposure, the image of a celebrity in a war-torn African country surrounded by starving black children attracts immediate attention.However, other self-interests of celebrities may motivate this activity, such as attempting to restore their tarnished image or deflecting public attention away from previous controversies.Even though some celebrities appear to be incredibly sincere, Huliaras and Tzifakis (2010) believe that detecting their objectives is extremely difficult.Similar to the previous arguments, Dieter and Kumar (2008) believe that celebrities lack a mandate to become involved in global politics because most celebrities are self-appointed and their legitimacy comes from their own credibility.The two researchers went on to say that people should pay greater attention to these celebrities' activities away from the campaign trail (Dieter and Kumar 2008).In contrast to the previous two arguments, Cooper (2016) believes that celebrity alone is insufficient to make a person a credible activist or mobilizer, because of the desire for celebrities to associate themselves with serious issues, even when they do not have a track record of doing so, is matched by advisors' willingness to push them in that direction.He also stated that there are celebrities who refuse to conform to the dominant diplomatic culture because they either stigmatize the performance of hegemonic governments or strive to change the policy agenda (Cooper 2016).Street et al (2012), describe that the public will evaluate these celebrities based on their veracity, authority, and authenticity.In Street's earlier research, he explained that there are two categories of celebrities in international politics, each with its own take on their authenticity or credibility.First is CP1 or known as a legitimately elected representative who engages with popular culture to enhance their pre-established political functions and goals.Second is CP2 or known as celebrities (or entertainers) who make political pronouncements and claim the right to represent peoples and causes without seeking or achieving elected office (Street 2004).For this paper, the author will be focusing on CP2.In CP2, their ability to claim to speak as a celebrity is determined by several criteria, structures, and the affective attachments generated by the relationship between the celebrity and their fans.These celebrity voices to those who follow them are based on current events and art (Street 2004).
To summarize, celebrity diplomacy has become an effective strategy for diplomacy, especially for the UN.Despite its criticism, celebrity diplomacy has helped to bridge the gap between the public and international affairs, making it much easier to promote and influence the public to be interested in UN goals or any other subject.

Methods
This paper applied qualitative methods by using corpus analysis software called Voyant Tools (https://voyant-tools.org/).Voyant Tools is a webbased text reading and analysis environment created for digital humanities students, scholars, and the general public to make reading and interpretive practices easier (Sampsel 2018;Miller, 2018).This paper used two of the software tools which are corpus terms and summary to see the word frequencies in the 24 news (See Table 2) from the celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassador.The corpus terms tool provides term frequencies over the whole corpus in a table format, whereas the summary tool displays a textual summary of the current corpus (including the number of words, number of unique words, document length, vocabulary density, average words per sentence, readability index, most frequent words, and distinctive words).By default, the corpus terms have three data columns (Terms, Count, and Trends) (Miller, 2018) and this paper uses all the data columns by default (see Table 1).
To begin analyzing the data, the author first separates every celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors' quotation from each news article (see Table 3) into a Microsoft Office (MS) Word document.Then, the author uploaded all 24 file documents into the Voyant Tools software.After the documents have been uploaded, the author can begin analyzing the data by using the corpus terms and summary tools to check how frequently certain words appear in all and each document.As the frequent words have been analyzed, the author will look into the narration given by celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors to understand what they are saying in regard to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Name Meaning Terms
The term is found in the corpus.

Count
The frequency of the term in the corpus

Trends
A line graph showing the relative frequency distribution among documents in the corpus.

Data Collection
In collecting the data, this paper uses the online news database, Factiva (https://www.dowjones.com/professional/factiva/)to gather all of the news, using 'Goodwill Ambassador AND Pandemic' as keywords.The major media for this paper come from Europe, the United States of America, and Asia/Pacific.This paper only focuses on the news articles that use English as the language.The data that this paper used are dated since the year 2020 (two years ago).At first, the author discovered out of 338 news articles there are only 69 news articles covered by the UN Goodwill Ambassador.However, most of these UN Goodwill Ambassadors come from a variety of backgrounds, not just celebrities and Thus, following the scope of this paper which is celebrities and athletes UN Goodwill Ambassador, the author decided only to use UN Goodwill Ambassadors who are celebrities and athletes.
After sorting through the UN Goodwill Ambassadors, the author found there are 23 celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors with a total of 53 news articles.The author noted that there is one celebrity whose name was not listed on their individual UN Bodies while looking through the celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors.Hence, the writer chose only to use the news stories that are covered by the celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassador whose names are recorded on the UN Website at https://www.un.org/en/isotopearticles/9189 (see Table 3).The reason for this is because the list of names on the previous link is synchronized with their UN Bodies website.As a result, this paper only uses 24 news stories covered by ten celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors.

Numerical Results
Table 2 shows that most of these celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors are actors (60%), followed by athletes (30%), and musicians (10%).The majority of celebrity diplomats represent UNICEF (see Table 3).David Beckham, a former footballer, was found to have the most news articles with 41.7% share in all corpus observed, followed by Priyanka Chopra, an Indian actor with 12.5%.Reports citing David Beckham's are coming from multiple news sources, whereas articles citing Priyanka Chopra are coming from one news outlet.Total articles 24

Graphical Results
Figure 1 displays the total corpus observed in this study.There are 3,334 total words with almost 1,000 unique word forms across 24 documents.As the author is interested in how the celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors are talking about Covid-19 pandemicrelated issues, this paper gauge the frequency of most used words.The result is presented in Figure 2. In the first spot, the term "world" is used 25 times, followed by "vaccines" being used 21 times.Presented by Figure 3, the term "world" and "vaccines" were dominated by David Beckham to talk about Soccer Aid for UNICEF, surplus coronavirus vaccines, and World Vaccination Day.As well as, the term "year" and "UNICEF".Out of the Top five frequent terms that this paper discovered, only the term "covid" is not dominated by David Beckham.The person who dominates the term "covid" is Yuna Kim and it is due to her discussion about her Covid-19 pandemic donations.From Figure 2 and Figure 3, this paper can argue that these terms are mostly being used to show these celebrities' strong interest in advocating the importance of world effort in ensuring that everybody will get vaccinated.In each quotation document, the celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors talk about various things related to the Covid-19 pandemic.For example, Angelique Kidjo, a Beninese singer-songwriter, was cited in two reports.In the first article, she talks about the pandemic impacts and how the pandemic is a selfreflection time for all of us.The article reports how Kidjo discusses the remake of "Pata Pata" to help spread health advice during the pandemic through song lyrics, such as encouraging people to stay at home, wash their hands, and keep a safe distance from other people.
Next is Cate Blanchett, an Australian who was cited discussing refugees afflicted by the pandemic.She further argues that the pandemic is the ideal time to contemplate refugees: "We've been forced to confront what uncertainty feels like and of course, that is the situation the majority of refugees live with, year in, year out…There's a chance to think about how we have dealt with uncertainty and place ourselves in the shoes of mothers and fathers, doctors and lawyers who have been, through no fault of their own, displaced and have been living, for often for upwards of 18, 19 years, in the state we have been dealing with for 18 months." In contrast to the two previous celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors, a former athlete David Beckham was cited in 10 articles from different media companies that only covered three topics.The first topic, he spoke about the Soccer Aid for UNICEF and how the donation from this event will support the health and nutrition of kids around the world, especially during the pandemic.It is found that this topic was covered by two different media companies, while the second topic was also covered by two different media companies.In the second news, he spoke about himself and other celebrities creating an open letter to world leaders for surplus coronavirus vaccines to be shared with poorer countries.Whereas the last topic, which was covered by six different media companies, he encourages parents to vaccinate themselves and their children, especially in the midst of the pandemic, during World Immunization Week.This paper argues that the popularity of David Beckham in the eyes of the media and the public is the reason why news about him was widely reported by various news networks.In 2013, BBC reported that he is a benchmark for athlete marketability because of his never-ending brand extension, and he has also maintained a remarkable standard of public behaviour in the face of relentless media attention, maintaining the nation's goodwill (Fordyce 2013).
Moving on, Idris Elba, a British actor, was discovered to have one piece of news concerning the effort to assist rural farmers affected by the Covid-19.As a UN Goodwill Ambassador who advocates on topics such as food security, climate change, and environmental conservation (IFAD 2022), Idris Elba has discussed and underlined the significance of having additional support to keep the food system running in rural areas in his news piece (see Table 5).He explained that "..

.needs more assistance to carry on the work that is desperately needed to keep food systems operating in rural areas if we are to come out of this crisis together and avoid needless hunger and suffering."
Kim Yuna, a former South Korean figure skater, was another athlete whose news was relevant to the topic.She was an Olympic gold medallist who has long advocated for UNICEF on behalf of the world's children (UN News 2010).In her news piece, she was talking about her donation to Covid-19 treatment initiatives, and she also expressed her sadness that children in many parts of the world lack access to basic health care services due to medical systems that are paralyzed, and she hopes that her donation will aid in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccinations and end the global pandemic.
On the other hand, Nicole Kidman, an Academy Award-winning Australian-American actor, was discovered to have two articles, each from a different news source.Both of her news reports were centered on topics about violence against women and it is in line with her efforts as a UN Goodwill Ambassador, which is raising awareness of the violation of women's human rights around the world (UNWomen 2022).In her first piece of news, she discusses her role as an abused wife in the Big Little Lies television series.She discussed how her role gave her insight into the lives of women who have experienced domestic abuse, as well as how it strengthened her resolve to use her platform to raise awareness about violence against women, particularly during the pandemic.While in her second news piece, she emphasized the need to end violence against women, specifically during pandemics (see Table 4)."One of the lessons we've learned from the pandemic is that the home is not a safe place for so many women and so many girls", she stated in her second news.
An Indian actor, Priyanka Chopra, was cited in three articles published by one media platform.Priyanka Chopra is a UN Goodwill Ambassador who has worked to protect children's rights and promote girls' education in India (UNICEF 2022).In the first article, she asked her followers to read an essay about the impact of the pandemic on girls' education written by Michelle Obama and Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.She emphasized that many girls may remain out of school as a result of the pandemic's rippling effects and that this should not be allowed to happen.Throughout her second article, she talked about the difficulties that refugees are facing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.Lastly, she provided a hopeful message for World Refugee Day, highlighting that there is hope and that these refugees require our continued help in order to obtain access to better healthcare and education, as well as to build a safer future.
Sabrina Dhowre-Elba, a Canadian actor, and Idris Elba's wife, spoke on farming and agriculture in two news stories that came from two different media sources.In her first news, she, like her husband, described how small farms contribute to global food security, particularly during pandemics.The majority of African countries, in particular, face considerable issues, one of which is a danger to food supplies.She emphasized the urgency of addressing climate emergency concerns, as well as the need for governments to act now and scale up their climate finance and food security commitments, with a focus on small-scale farmers as these countries invest in future farms and food.During her second news, she spoke about agricultural efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic, emphasizing the need to transition to more sustainable land use, as the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates the importance of addressing climate change challenges, assisting natural recovery, and alleviating poverty.
Another actor, Yalitza Aparicio, from Mexico, was discovered to have only one report, in which she highlighted pandemic impacts.Yalitza Aparicio is a UN Goodwill Ambassador for Indigenous Peoples who strives to ensure indigenous peoples' integration and rights around the world (UNESCO 2019).In her news piece, she underlined how the pandemic has taught the world to be unified with each other.She stated, "It's teaching us to be united and not just physically... It's teaching us to stand together, to think of others, and to not be so self-centered.I think that's the most beautiful thing to come of all this, that we are supporting each other".She also talked about how the pandemic is enabling the world to breathe, as we (people) are indeed shown to be destroying the environment.She asked everyone to give it their all while also taking necessary health precautions (See Table 4).
Finally, Yusra Mardini, a Syrian-German swimmer and refugee, gives the final piece of news from the 24 documents.Yusra Mardini was recognized as the UNHCR's youngest Goodwill Ambassador at the age of 19 (UNHCR 2022).As a refugee herself, she advocates for refugees around the world by sharing her own inspiring story, which corresponds to the topics covered in the news stories.In her article, she talks about her experiences as a refugee and the difficulties she experienced, as well as the refugee Olympic team and the Covid-19 pandemic.She pointed out how the Covid-19 and her previous struggles, particularly when she was trying to come to Germany and almost died, are both a part of her and who she is becoming.
From the analysis above, this paper can argue that most of these topics consist of discussing about the Covid-19 impacts, effort in tackling issues (including violence against women, agriculture, refugee, Covid-19 vaccines, and girl's education) that are happening in the midst of pandemic, inspiring messages about the pandemic, and donation.It is important to note that these topics that the celebrities discuss are aligned with the UN Bodies' goals and each of their interests (see Table 5).Hence, this paper argues that these celebrities' discussions about issues related to the pandemic relate to their respective UN Bodies' goals and main interests.

Conclusion
This paper has demonstrated how celebrity diplomats continue to be relevant during pandemic times.By conducting a corpus analysis, this paper has found the top five most frequently used terms in the 24 news reports by celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors, which are 'world', 'vaccines', 'year', 'UNICEF', and 'Covid'.Moreover, this paper has illustrated that celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors have been actively participating in voicing issues which are strongly reflecting their UN Bodies goals (Young 2018) and interests in the midst of pandemics.The topics that most of these celebrities discuss in each of their news articles highlighted the pandemic impacts (including to themself, the refugees, the small farmers, and, most importantly, to the rest of the world), efforts in addressing issues that are worsen (such as violence against women), powerful messages about the pandemic, and the importance of giving donations.
The contribution of this paper to the celebrity studies is using corpus analysis methods in providing insight on how celebrity diplomats continue to be relevant during the current global health crisis.However, due to the limited news that this paper was able to find, the author was only able to cover celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors' news relating to the Covid-19 pandemic that was written in English, and all of the news articles used in this paper came from major media outlets in Europe, the United States, and Asia/Pacific.Further study is needed to expand this research and create a thorough analysis of the celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors' publications linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, as there may be additional news about these celebrities talking about concerns related to the pandemic in languages other than English.

Table 2 .
Celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors and occupation

Table 3 .
Distribution of celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors

Table 4 .
Distribution of celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors and topicsYusra Mardini journey: finding refuge challenges, refugee Olympic team, and Covid-19

Table 5 .
UN bodies goals and celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors interest