‘Friending’ Jet Li on Facebook: the celebrity-philanthropist persona in online social networks

Abstract

This chapter investigates Jet Li’s celebrity-philanthropist personality in online social networks. The discussion emphasises on a Facebook fan page named under Jet Li, presumably is run by the actor to promote not only his movie but, more noticeably, his charity The One Foundation. It argues that his charity has a slogan, ‘One Foundation, One Family,’ evoking a world community in which human compassion and decency should extend to everyone, undermining the ‘Chinese’ element and bespeak a kind of ‘world’ awareness. As this chapter pursues to explain, the star presence in the cyber-network becomes a venue for the possible philanthropic mobilisation, displaying ambivalence of the notion of Chineseness.