Effect of charismatic signaling in social media settings: Evidence from TED and Twitter

Informal leaders in social media currently characterize a large part of political and economic communication on var-ious challenges societies face, whether localized or transborder (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic, global warming). Scholars have theorized that charismatic signaling is effective in informal leadership settings; yet empirical evidence remains scarce in understanding a ubiquitous phenomenon that marks our times and plays an important role in shaping public opinion. In this article, we used two unique data sets extracted from social media to investigate the success of charisma for informal leaders, leaders who signal their beliefs and preferences to others but having no formal authority over them. Social media offers us a standardized medium as well as a natural environment to test our predictions. Using a sample of TED talks and tweets, we coded for objective markers of charisma and found that using more verbal char-ismatic signals predicted (a) higher views for TED talks as well as higher ratings for the extent to which the talk was found to be inspiring-beyond attractiveness and nonverbal behavior-and (b) more retweets. We discuss the impli-cations of such results for both theory and practice in the media age.

Automated summary

Informal leaders play a crucial role in political and economic communication on social media, and their success is influenced by their personal charisma. This article reveals that using more verbal charismatic signals can increase the views of TED talks and the number of retweets.