(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.”
In her recent book Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics (Princeton University Press, August 2024), Sonnevend explains how politicians like Ardern woo voters by deploying an array of techniques, which are often turbo-charged by social media.
Ardern, for instance, is an expert in “demasking” — a deliberate removing of the performer’s mask that reveals an appealing vulnerability, or strength. Sonnevend describes how, in early 2021 during the global pandemic, the prime minister opened a video inviting her Facebook followers to a press conference on climate change with a casual, “Hi there, just thought you might wanna join us.” Ardern’s press secretary recorded the prime minister hurrying through drab office corridors to the event where she spoke without a proper microphone.
“The backstage became the frontstage, and charm and expertise shone through technical difficulties,” Sonnevend writes.
Another technique is “restaging” — moving an event from an expected venue, like a conference room, to somewhere surprising that offers an insight into the politician’s desired persona. Sonnevend cites the performance of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in 2018, crossing the demilitarized zone while holding hands with then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in. This highly televisual moment was undoubtedly part of a well-rehearsed “charm offensive,” but it also surprised audiences and “highlighted Kim Jong Un and his team’s personable aspects, supporting North Korea’s goal to transform its international image.”
Some of this hardly seems new. Think of family photos of the Kennedys holidaying on Cape Cod or Mao Zedong swimming in the Yangtze — each designed to show a more human side to political icons. But Sonnevend says there are different forces at work today.
In the past, political leaders exerted their influence through the magic of charisma — an early 20th century invention of the German sociologist Max Weber that explained how some rulers won the devotion and loyalty of the masses by appearing as extraordinary, almost superhuman figures. The performance of a larger-than-life commanding kind of authority — think Churchill or de Gaulle — was entirely appropriate for an era of mass rallies, speechmaking, cinema newsreels and television.
These days, political power is expressed on a more intimate scale, via the backlit scroll of smartphone screens, on TikTok, Instagram et al. Gen Z coined the word rizz from charisma, but what they actually described is charm. Compared to charisma, charm is more personal, more ordinary, more intimate, and more familiar, and because of social media, it can now be achieved at scale. We can imagine we are friends with our political leaders.
This is not to suggest we are on the cusp of a friendlier politics. Charm can be disarming, which comes with dangers. “Charm is two-faced,” writes Sonnevend. “It embodies both the positive features of seduction and the negative features of deception.”
In other words, what appears to be a casual social media post can carry a strong, potentially divisive political message. Sonnevend points to the right-wing populist leader of Hungary, Viktor Orban, as an example of “illiberal charm.” Orban often “opens his private sphere — his home and his family” to social media — another example of restaging. “In one of Orban’s popular Facebook photographs, he sits on a pink couch with his wife and grandchildren,” writes Sonnevend. “The image is captioned, ‘Grandpa is a man, grandma is a woman, and they should leave our grandchildren alone.’” The homespun photograph delivers a hardline, traditional view on gender.
Sonnevend guides the reader through a range of examples that can be jarring. Are Kim and Orban really charming? Is Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif? Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel seems an odd choice too, though Sonnevend argues her success lies in having “authenticity without charm” — a special case, according to Sonnevend, that may exist only in Germany, where the country’s experience of Adolf Hitler means the public tends to push back on politicians with personal magnetism. The fact Merkel seems so uncomfortable in situations requiring charm — dressed in business-formal while petting farm animals or sitting awkwardly with German soccer players ahead of the World Cup — is what made her so appealing to voters.
Perhaps the most interesting case study for the role of personal magnetism in modern politics arrived too late for Sonnevend’s book. When Kamala Harris became the likely Democratic nominee for November’s presidential election, a headline in The Economist said Harris “lacks charisma.” The New Yorker said Harris had “strange charisma,” though The Atlantic was confident she had both “oddball charm” and “specific charisma.”
Harris’s nomination fired charm and similar concepts to the top of the political agenda. Her prominence on the highest political stage highlighted additional complexities around these concepts too.
The first is how “charm” can be fraught for women. Unlike their male counterparts, female politicians too often tread a fine line between perceptions of likeability and competence. Merkel and other notable female leaders have endured by rejecting charm altogether. Second, there is a fine line between charm and cringe — and both are often very subjective. Harris’s distinctive laugh or her whimsical references to her mother’s advice about coconuts might seem charming to some, but they’re seized on by her enemies as weaknesses: as pure cringe.
Speaking from her office in New York, Sonnevend said that “the fascinating component of [Harris’s] rise was how quickly the switch came to focus on her personal magnetism. I don’t think any media scholar predicted the kind of viral enthusiasm that was there.”
Indeed. What is most notable about the Harris campaign is that what was once seen as a flaw — Harris’s quirky persona — now seems to be among her greatest political strengths. In an era of ubiquitous social media, reduced loyalty to political parties, and a growing distrust of facts, personalities might gain a stronger traction in politics than ever before, writes Sonnevend. “Let’s face it,” she writes. “We live in an age of stardust and charm.”
Tom F. Wright teaches rhetoric and the history of ideas at the University of Sussex in the UK.
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