Sorry, don't have a parsimonious definition to offer. I do think Diana, Princess of Wales, was perhaps somewhere in between "movie star" and "statesperson," but closer to a celebrity in the entertainment sense than a political figure. Ditto, arguably, for much of the British royal family. For example, Princes William and Harry are not political figures; they are celebrities in more or less the same way their mother was.
To create a definition of celebrity, you might create a typology of media institutions by their primary subject matter (general news, politics, entertainment, etc.). By these typologies, you might define a celebrity on two legs: the appearance of aspects of their personal lives in general news and entertainment publications, and their appearance other than personal life details in entertainment publications. After taking this as a definition, it becomes more difficult to measure effect, as that would require ruling out all sorts of causal factors, unless you want to say it's epiphenomenal (which still requires explaining multiple effects and ruling some out).
This book, published in Canada via CIGI might be of particular interest:
http://
www.paradigmpublishers.co...roductID=167997
Believe it or not, someone at the Lear Center has written "Toward a New Definition of Celebrity." The short answer for him is narrative. http://www.learcenter.org/pdf/Gabler.pdf
Dr. Eric Schulman often writes about this topic in the Annals of Improbable Research, which is a satirical science journal. He calculates celebrity as a function of google hits compared to google hits for B-list (base) celebrity Monica Lewinsky.
I guess one of the problems is that you look for a definition of celebrity independent of, or prior to, their involvement in such campaigns. But more often than not, that 'celebrity' is at least co-constituted in those campaigns. Where would Bob Geldorf be without LiveAid...
Second, the concept is by now tainted, as some of the other comments already suggest. Here in Britain, 'celebrity' is a deprecating term, to say the least. Again, the attempt to condense this concept into something rigourous outside any social context seems fraught with difficulties.
Oh, and the Video is 'no longer available'. Perhaps Sheryl Crow's God bless this Mess instead?
http://www.timeout.com/london/mu...ndon-14-02-
2008
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