How Charm Shapes Politics - Julia Sonnevend on Personal Magnetism and Its Growing Impact in Our Age of Social Media

RevDem Podcast

In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Julia Sonnevend – author of the new book Charm. How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics – analyzes the main techniques politicians use to appear charming; compares the uses of such techniques by liberal and illiberal political leaders; discusses how gendered the perception of charm has remained; and considers whether politicians are likely to become even more like social media influencers in the coming years.

Julia Sonnevend is an associate professor of Sociology and Communications at the New School for Social Research. She is a sociologist of global culture whose research focuses on the events, icons, symbols and charismatic personalities of public life and media. Charm is her second monograph.

Charm. How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics has been published by Princeton University Press.