When politicians follow in the steps of influencers: social media oratory on Instagram and the issue of authority

Abstract

The question of authority is taken up here with respect to digital spoken communication, specifically social media oratory, disseminated via videos (reels) that are uploaded to social media. Social media oratory stands out amid social media video content as a rare example of embodied communication that confers a general, inherent type of authority. Two subsets of speakers are compared: (i) influencers, notably members of Generation Z, who forged the conventions of this format; (ii) political leaders, who have subsequently adopted the format. These videos can be compared with other forms of oratory, and beg analysis according to a number of multimodal resources, particularly visual resources (camera angle and framing, choice of setting, movement, use of built-in editing tools), which play a direct role in the discursive construal of speaker authority. Two setups are distinguished: (i) that of the native digital speaker, where authority is construed through the lens of authenticity; (ii) hybrid setups, where attributes of traditional, horizontal-type authority are imported into the reel format. Both setups are exploited by political leaders, highlighting the way political actors are (re)appropriating new (digital) discourses.