warning Hi, we've moved to USCANNENBERGMEDIA.COM. Visit us there!

Neon Tommy - Annenberg digital news

Celebs Digitally Die To Raise $1 Million

Jessica Zech |
November 29, 2010 | 9:16 p.m. PST

Staff Reporter

Alicia Keys for Keep a Child Alive (keepachildalive.org)
Alicia Keys for Keep a Child Alive (keepachildalive.org)
Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and other tweet-happy celebrities will sign off social media sites Wednesday in an effort to raise money for Alicia Keys' HIV/AIDS charity.

The campaign Digital Life Sacrifice will benefit Keys' charity Keep a Child Alive, which helps families affected by HIV/AIDS.

The celebrities will log off sites like Facebook and Twitter on World AIDS Day and will not sign back in until Keep a Child Alive raises $1 million.

In addition to Gaga and Timberlake, Usher, Jennifer Hudson, Ryan Seacrest, Kim and Khloe Kardashian and Serena Williams are part of the campaign, according to hollywoodreporter.com.

"This is such a direct and instantly emotional way and a little sarcastic, you know, of a way to get people to pay attention," said Keys, who has 2.6 million followers on Twitter.

Gaga has 7.2 million Twitter followers and almost 24 million fans on Facebook, while Timberlake has 3.5 million followers.

Participating celebrities filmed "last tweet and testament" videos and will appear in ads showing them lying in coffins to represent their digital deaths, according to the Associated Press.

"We're trying to sort of make the remark: Why do we care so much about the death of one celebrity as opposed to millions and millions of people dying in the place that we're all from?" said Leigh Blake, the president and co-founder of Keep a Child Alive.

Keep a Child Alive, founded in 2003, will accept donations through text messages and bar-code technology, said hollywoodreporter.com.

To donate and buy back celebrities' digital lives visit buylife.org. Donations will go to families in Africa and India affected by HIV/AIDS.

No celebrity turned down the opportunity to be part of the campaign, according to Keys.  

14.2 million children are orphaned because of AIDS in Africa, according to keepachildalive.org.

Reach Jessica here.
Join our mailing list.



 

Buzz

Craig Gillespie directed this true story about "the most daring rescue mission in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard.”

Watch USC Annenberg Media's live State of the Union recap and analysis here.

 
ntrandomness