Charm, Not Charisma, Is Key to Wooing Voters in a Social Media Age
How magnetic personalities became a seductive and disarming force in politics.
Illustration: Derek Abella for Bloomberg
In June 2018, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern paused as she left hospital with her newborn baby and posted a video on Facebook. Ardern looked into the camera and spoke as though she was sending a private message to a group of close family and friends: “Hi everyone, this will be a super quick one as we are just loading up the car and getting ready to leave Oakland Hospital.”
The video was neither a family update nor, in a traditional sense, a professional one. It “did not have a particular political content in the strict sense, with no policy decisions or announcements to share,” writes media sociologist Julia Sonnevend. “It was truly a community ‘check-in’ at a major turning point of her life, which also directly addressed some people’s gendered concerns about whether she would manage it all.”