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.
Introduction
On the evening of February 24, 2022, the day Russia began its military offensive on Ukraine, 1 Volodymyr Zelensky posted to social media a “selfie” (i.e., self-recorded) video, 2 the first of many to follow over the ensuing weeks and months. The very first videos, in which Zelensky filmed himself speaking and standing in the streets of Kiev, were published on various social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram), and were subsequently relayed by the world media. By June 2022, the Instagram account “zelenskyy_official” had more than 17 million subscribers. At the time of writing the present article, 3 it included 6796 publications, many of which follow the “reel” video format (see following section). Commentators around the world have underlined the communication war waged by the president of Ukraine in order to harness international support and maintain the morale of his fellow citizens. However, Zelensky was not the first political leader to take to the virtual stage of social media in order to address an audience directly. 4 This said, Zelensky’s online addresses - just like politicians’ use of selfie photographs (Lalancette and Raynauld 2020) - have thrown into sharp focus a number of new stakes and trends in political communication as we move into the second quarter of the digital century.
“Social media oratory” (Rossette-Crake 2022) constitutes a new discursive practice and exemplifies the new formats of public speaking brought about by the digital revolution. In the political context, it features among the “new forms of discourse” that are being adopted by political actors and point to a new political reality in a context of crisis and conflict (Butler 2024: 1-2). As this study will exemplify, social media oratory is typically exploited by politicians to discuss different types of content compared to what they address in traditional forms of podium oratory. This format also provides an instance of “new writing” (van Leeuwen 2008) in that it is conditioned by semiotic software, which engenders new configurations of multimodal resources. Social media platforms are inherently multimodal (Herring 2015), making the interplay of the various modes of meaning-making a necessary part of any analysis of social media content. This can, however, prove a “cacophonous endeavour” (Plantin et al., 2016, quoted in Moschini 2018). In the ever-growing body of work on social media and multimodality, attention has notably been given to issues of methodology (Pearce et al., 2020; Samofalova 2024), to the impact of multimodal content on engagement (Li and Xie 2020), and to the role of multimodality in the expression of political content and activism (Bouko 2024; Hautea et al., 2021). However, there has been relatively little interest in content in which speakers engage in a speaking practice that shares a similar role to that of oratory, where they speak directly to viewers – perhaps because this type of content corresponds to a relatively small portion of the mass of video content that abounds on social media.
Importantly, these new formats have typically been forged by “Generation Z” (born between 1997 and 2012), and considered “digital natives”. 5 If, traditionally, oratory was reserved for public figures, notably politicians, these new, digital formats have led to the democratisation of public address in that a far wider range of social actors are making their voices heard. These discourses are challenging traditional voices of authority. For a key question is indeed that of “who produces what knowledge for whom?” (van Dijk 2011: 33), as well as what constitutes a reliable source, and how authority is discursively construed - or deconstrued and/or renegotiated. More generally, if authority refers typically to “a conferred right or title to speak or act on behalf of others” (Birch 2015: 92), where does this leave oratory that espouses social media platforms?
Social media are creating new opportunities and challenges for recognising or establishing speaker authority, and while issues relating to reliability and authority are frequently addressed in relation to social media content, oratory provides a specific case in point. As spoken discourse, it has received less attention than written discourse when it comes to the digital medium (Koester 2022). Unlike writing, speech is an “embodied” form of communication in that, in its prototypical form (i.e., casual conversation), the addressee hears the voice of the speaker and can see him/her. Saussure speaks of the “the only true bond, the bond of sound” compared to “the superficial bond of writing”. 6 Similarly, speech is inherently “empathetic and participatory”, plays on the vocal resonance of meaning and the “interiority of sound”, and has an intrinsic link to human experience (Ong 1982). These characteristics can be seen to have a direct impact on the degree of reliability associated with an instance of discourse. For example, discourse that is produced by a speaker whom we can physically see and hear is more easily traceable to a specific source, and may therefore be perceived as more reliable. Within the mass of social media video content, it can be argued that social media oratory stands out as relatively authoritative, by virtue of the fact that it plays on the reliability associated with spoken communication and constitutes embodied discourse, endorsed by a recognisable speaker. In this sense, the choice to engage in such a format can be seen as a quest towards more authoritative discourse within the social media landscape. 7 At the same time, by moving online, social media oratory does not duplicate the authority and power intrinsic to the orator who speaks to a physically-present audience, from a stage that places him/her in an elevated position with respect to the audience.
Moreover, due to social media’s participative, user-generated content model (cf. “democratisation” of public address), speakers no longer necessarily benefit from the authority of the elected leader in whom institutional authority is vested and whose discourse is thus considered legitimate by “authorisation” (van Leeuwen 2007). When any speaker can take to the virtual floor, who is doing the conferring? Can authority, which is indissociable from the question of legitimacy, be, as it were, “self-conferred”? And what type of legitimacy is relevant within the logic of the digital economy, where reputation is all-important but is constantly challenged, where identity, particularly on social networks, is “not static” and “must be constantly updated” (Jones and Hafner 2021: 215). A growing body of scholarship examines the tension that arises when authority is examined in relation to social media, including online video content (e.g. Marins Flores and Muniz De Medeiros 2019; Riboni 2020; Vicari 2023). In a special volume (Vicari 2021), the theme “Authority and Web 2.0” is examined, and is taken up again by Vicari (2023) in a study of French micro-influencers, where he draws on Oger’s (2021: 37) definition of authority, which “is founded on a supplement of credibility (…) and on the position of a subject who symbolically overlooks other subjects (and is sometimes superior in hierarchy), organising a dissymmetrical relationship of places”. 8 This traditional, vertical conception of authority has also been called into question by social media, which nurtures a horizontal type of interpersonal relation between users – together with a specific type of speaker legitimacy associated with “authenticity”.
Authenticity has received considerable attention in discourse studies and sociolinguistics (e.g., Bucholtz 2003; van Leeuwen 2001), and has been revisited in relation to the digital context (e.g., Androutsopoulos 2015; Gunthert 2015; Hower 2018), including video content (Riboni 2020; Tolson 2010; ). Authenticity underscores “constantly negotiated social practices” (Bucholtz 2003: 408); it is construed dynamically and is “the result of an ongoing performance of identity” (Hower 2018). Authenticity goes hand in hand with the specific type of content that is favoured by social media video, where the main focus is placed on the person of the speaker, in keeping with the “exaltation of the self” (Rossette-Crake 2022: 187) that typifies social media generally. In addition, authenticity has to do with speakers “projecting the impression that they are ‘ordinary people’ doing the things that they would ordinarily do” (Jones and Hafner 2021: 220). 9 Such a stance is typically fostered by social media influencers. However, it is also a strategy adopted by political leaders. For instance, if we return to the example of Zelensky’s social media posts during the early days of the war in Ukraine, they foreground ordinariness – and with it, authenticity, allowing him to embody the “everyman-turned-war hero”, which serves to create an immediate connection with the audience and “humanise” the conflict (Susarla 2022). Importantly, Zelensky construes ordinariness via the visual resource of dress code (kaki or military-coloured t-shirt, as opposed to a suit and tie).
This contribution proposes an exploratory, qualitative study of some of the semiotic resources which confer speaker authority in the embodied reel format of social media oratory. Drawing on the conception of authority as it equates notably with the symbolic positioning between participants (Oger (2021), quoted supra), such positioning can be traced to choices relating for instance to dress code, camera angle and framing, setting, use of movement, as well as built-in editing tools. For the analysis, which is based mainly on the theoretical frameworks of social semiotics and systemic functional linguistics (e.g. Kress and van Leeuwen 2006; Zhao and Zappavigna 2018), as well as digital discourse analysis (e.g. Jones and Hafner 2021), I have chosen to compare speakers belonging to two different categories of social actors, namely: (i) Generation-Z influencers (see below for definition), who are forging new communication norms; (ii) political leaders, who are also engaging in social media oratory, and are required to negotiate these new norms. In the sections below, I first define social media oratory compared to other forms of oratory, and discuss their typical multimodal resources. After introducing both categories of speaker (influencer, political leader) and explaining the corpus and method, I compare each category’s use of the aforementioned resources, notably linking these and the type(s) of authority they construe with the specific, personalised type of content that sets political social media oratory apart from other types of political oratory.
Social media oratory and multimodality
Social media oratory provides an example of contemporary multimodal discourse, extending the already rich multimodal repertoire present in more traditional forms of oratory as a mode of performance, as highlighted by one of the canons of classical rhetoric, “actio” (Corbett 1990: 28). Oratory begs defining as a category within the “spoken and monologic” semiotic identified by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014: 39). Indeed, it is realised via speech (phonic material) as opposed to writing (graphic material), as well as multimodal resources (e.g., body language, facial expressions, etc.). However, unlike prototypical speech, that is, conversation, which is dialogic (based on turn-taking structures), it is monologic in that only one speaker takes the floor, and is therefore synoptic in structure. In addition, unlike conversation (e.g., casual conversation), where language accompanies some other social process, it constitutes the main social process, and reflects “language as reflection” (Eggins 2004: 91), where “language is being used to reflect on experience rather than to enact it” (ibid. p. 92).
Oratory, or public speaking, has benefitted from a renewed global interest, notably due to the various new formats engendered by the digital interface. Traditional forms of “podium” oratory, that is, oratory delivered from a podium/stage to a physically-present audience, can be compared with the electronically-mediated oratory of the 20th century (speeches broadcast on radio and television) and with the 21st century digital formats. The latter can be divided into two categories: “New Oratory” and “social media oratory” (Rossette-Crake 2022). New Oratory corresponds to the first generation of digitally-mediated formats which developed simultaneously thanks to online video; it underscores a setup where the speaker addresses a physically-present audience in a performance that is filmed and uploaded to the Internet. These formats correspond to new forms of dissemination of knowledge, as showcased by TED talks and their catchphrase “ideas worth spreading” – where, instead of producing knowledge, knowledge is “shared” or recycled – and are indicative of a “new knowledge economy” (McElhinny 2012), or an “information economy” (Lanham 1993: xi), in which knowledge is no longer the property of experts to be transmitted vertically. New Oratory formats also mark a paradigm change in terms of multimodal resources: they contrast with more traditional forms of oratory in that there is no longer a lectern: the speaker’s body is in full view of the audience and s/he is free to move about the stage; the whole body becomes a meaning-making resource, harking back to the classical rhetoric of “actio”. The New Oratory formats also share a number of other characteristic multimodal features, such as informal dress code and the inclusion of a slideshow.
In contrast, social media oratory takes the form of videos – “reels”, typically in the form of “selfie” or self-filmed videos – that are uploaded to social media and in which speakers deliver their message uniquely to an online audience. A notable difference with respect to the New Oratory formats is that, typically, viewers no longer see the speaker’s whole body; instead, like much social media video, three-dimensional bodies have been “shrunk” to two-dimensional faces (Jones and Hafner 2021), reminiscent of the “talking heads” associated with the television era. Social media oratory constitutes only a small portion of social media video content. The videos we are interested in here play on the embodied dimension of spoken communication and correspond to what can be labelled “embodied reels”. These are characterised by the following criteria: (i) they fulfil a similar social role to that of traditional oratory, in that they present serious discussion and/or debate, where language constitutes the main (if not the unique) social process, and enacts “language as reflection” (Eggins 2004); (ii) the speaker speaks directly to the viewer; we can hear the speaker’s own voice (in contrast to the lip-syncing that has developed on TikTok) for the entire length of the video, and we can physically see the speaker, either during all the video, or for the greater part of the video or at critical moments (i.e., beginning and end);
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in this sense, we can talk about an embodied performance by the speaker; (iii) they are relatively unedited, and cannot be compared with “edits” or the “multimodal collages” (that, again, particularly abound on TikTok) (Han and Zappavigna 2024).
As already noted, multimodal choices are largely conditioned by the technological affordances of social media platforms. In social semiotic theory, these affordances are analysed in terms of “semiotic technology” (Poulsen and Kvåle 2018; van Leeuwen 2008). Just like the affordances of (earlier) types of software such as Powerpoint (Djonov and van Leeuwen 2012; Zhao et al., 2014), social media platforms play host to “complex multimodal events”, where the technologies “are constantly evolving and co-evolving with user practices” (Zhao and Zappavigna 2018: 667), and require a critical appraisal (Djonov and Van Leeuwen 2018) in terms of what is actually the object of real choices or not on the part of the sender/speaker.
One of the most striking technological affordances of social media oratory is the possibility for speakers to film themselves with the “selfie” video format. The selfie video shares many of the characteristics of its sister format, the selfie photograph, a new social media genre that constitutes a key component of a new “global discourse” (Veum and Undrum 2018). Selfies engender an intersubjective relation between the photographer, the represented self and the viewer, according to a self-reflexive process whereby the roles of sender and represented participant coincide (Zhao and Zappavigna 2018). This mode of self-representation is conditioned by three interacting layers of technology: The selfie is a relatively simple visual artefact yet interconnects three different types of technologies that shape social media genres and practices: hardware (camera phones), software (social media and photo-editing apps), and platform technologies (social media). (Zhao and Zappavigna 2018: 667)
For instance, multimodal choices within selfie photographs and videos include affordances dependent on the hardware, such as the adoption of the vertical (“portrait viewing”) as opposed to the horizontal (“widescreen”) frame in order to better accommodate viewing (and filming) on smartphones. Specific to videos are a number of constantly evolving options of the reel video format which depend on the platform technologies and the software/editing apps they provide. These include the use of captions, filters, a music library, editing tools, as well as the length of videos, determined by a preference for concision and “micro-content” (the length of reels on Instagram was originally 15 seconds, and, over time, gradually increased). Another example concerns a recent development whereby a video will start auto-playing when users scroll down their feed; the first few seconds of the video are therefore designed to attract users’ attention so that they click on the video. These different technological affordances that condition the mode of self-representation beg analysis in regard to the degree of authority associated with the resulting discourse.
Two subsets of speakers on social media: Influencers and political leaders
Influencers
As underlined by Garcés-Conejos Blitvich and Georgakapoulou (2024), influencers correspond to “a multi-faceted notion”. Vicari (2023: §15) refers to a category that is “as vague as it is undefined” and, if synonymous with that of “opinion leader”, “covers a (too) disparate range of figures who have built their credibility mainly on digital platforms” (ibid. § 11). Because they serve as leverage in brand marketing, influencers have received much attention in organisational studies (e.g. Charest et al., 2017; Gräve 2019), but they have also been the object of an increasing body of scholarship in discourse analysis and communication studies, as indicated by a recently edited volume on “influencer discourse” (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich and Georgakapoulou 2024), which follows two special volumes of Social Media and Society concerned with social media activism (Murthy 2018) and political influencers (Riedl et al., 2023). According to legislation that was recently adopted in France in order to regulate influencers’ promotional and marketing activities, the “commercial influencer” is defined as someone “who uses his or her reputation to communicate content to the public by electronic means with the aim of directly or indirectly promoting goods, services or any cause whatsoever, in return for economic benefit or an advantage in kind (…)”. 11 Importantly, influencers themselves often prefer to call themselves “content creators” – another concept intimately linked to the digital interface and the new knowledge economy, where emphasis seems to have shifted from the production of knowledge to the creation of content.
Unlike political leaders, whose legitimacy is based on “authorization” (cf. Introduction), influencers gain legitimacy from within the social media space. Social media users obtain “influencer” status depending on the number of subscribers to their account(s), according to different levels of influence, such as the categories developed in brand marketing. 12
In order to align most closely with the content produced by the other subset of speakers examined here (political leaders), I have chosen in this study to examine examples of influencers who address political content. In recent times, an increasing number of influencers (e.g. “social media activists”, “green activists”) are partaking in social media activism (Casero-Ripollés and Pepe-Oliva 2022; Hautea et al., 2021; Potts et al., 2014). An article from The Guardian in 2021 entitled “The ‘green influencers’ targeting the TikTok generation”, quotes British climate activist Jack Harries, who asserts that “[s]ocial media platforms are no longer just for selfies and blogs but a place ‘to organise and educate’ people about the climate crisis”. At the same time, it can be posited that the discourse of such influencers are challenging (traditional) forms of legitimacy and authority of politicians – which may explain why some political leaders are deciding to invest the same media space.
Political leaders
Political leaders have turned to social media accounts over and above the politically-oriented platform X (formerly Twitter), endorsing platforms that are more closely associated with generation Z (e.g., Instagram, TikTok). For instance, at the beginning of 2022 (the year President Zelensky turned to social media at the outbreak of the war), the political figure with the most subscribers on social media was Michelle Obama (48.7 million subscribers on Instagram). At the time of the present study, the political figure with the most following is the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi (91.7 million subscribers on Instagram).
Some leaders have opened accounts in their own names – as opposed to, for instance, accounts in the name of their political party, or associated with a particular function (e.g., the Instagram account “Downing Street”). This was the case of former British prime minister Rishi Sunak, who attracted attention in 2021 when he hired a social media strategist to prepare his bid for the Conservative party leadership (Le Conte, 2021), leading some public relations experts to refer to “brand Rishi”. 13 Before that, Justin Trudeau received attention for posting selfie photographs to his social media accounts (Lalancette and Raynauld 2020). In France, President Emmanuel Macron espoused social media from the beginning of his first term in office (2017), together with certain ministers of his cabinet, including his minister for transport, who made headlines for his posts on TikTok (Geny 2022). And, at the time of writing this contribution, the 2024 American Presidential election made headlines, notably for the decision made by Kamala Harris’s strategists to open an account on TikTok (Grondin-Robillard 2024; Harwell 2024), specifically in order to cater to the electorate of under 30-year-olds.
This social media presence is indicative of the greater freedom in the production and dissemination of content from which political actors now benefit (Chankova 2024) and reflects for instance an effort to respond, in the face of a crisis of legitimacy, to “growing and pressing challenges such as climate crisis discourse” (Augé 2023). Much of the content posted to these accounts, including the short video edits set to music that attracted attention on Kamala Harris’s TikTok account, correspond to multimodal collages (cf. Section 1). However, the embodied reel that informs social media oratory is a format being adopted by more and more political leaders. 14 Amid the other content, the presence of social media oratory as an embodied, physically endorsed form of communication (cf. Introduction) can be interpreted as a desire to adopt a more authoritative voice on social media.
Corpus and method
As argued by Bateman (2022), multimodal studies on social media corpora pose numerous challenges. These are due particularly to the increasing complexity of the multimodal repertoires that are being forged on social media, and the fact that new technological affordances are constantly being introduced by platform developers. In addition, compared to text or visuals, social media video enacts a far greater number of levels of resources which cannot be treated simultaneously by any software analysis program, making it almost impossible to carry out an exhaustive multimodal analysis over a big corpus. The present study is necessarily explorative, qualitative and small-scale. I have chosen to concentrate here on content disseminated on Instagram, the first platform to develop short video content.
In addition, in terms of the selection of the specific speakers/accounts to include in the study, challenges arise when the content accessed by the researcher (who necessarily needs to open an account in order to view content on most platforms, including Instagram) is conditioned by what is proposed by the algorithms on his/her personal “feed”. All content analysed here (on political leaders’ and influencers’ accounts) has been posted on “public” as opposed to “private” accounts; in other words, access is not restricted to a private circle of people whose request to join needs to be accepted; rather, any social media user can view the content without needing to subscribe to the account. Regarding the political leaders, I included the accounts of current leaders at the time of this study of several countries where English is the official language (or one of the official languages): Keir Starmer, prime minister of the United Kingdom; Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada; Anthony Albanese, prime minister of Australia; Joe Biden (current) President of the United States. The study also includes former U.K. prime minister Rishi Sunak, as well as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, both presidential candidates at the time of writing, due to the attention received by their social media activity.
Number of examples of social media oratory posted on political leaders’ accounts (period: Jan. 1 to Oct. 31 2024).
Within the subset of influencer posts used for sake of comparison here, I decided to select activists who all advocate within the field of climate change and/or sustainability and publish content in English. I began with the criterion of notoriety, and included two influencers who received attention in the press: Jack Harries, a British climate activist (mentioned in the article from The Guardian, quoted supra), and Jerome Foster II, an American climate social media activist who was selected in 2020 under the Biden administration to become a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. For representativity, I then included two female social media activists, one from Britain and one from Australia, whom I discovered during searches conducted directly on the Instagram platform. Here are the details of these influencers’ accounts: - Jack Harries, British climate activist, 31 years: Instagram account launched 2011; 1.8 million subscribers (he hence qualifies as a “mega” influencer – cf. footnote 11); - Jerome Foster II, American climate activist, 22 years: account launched 2016; 90.5 k subscribers (“macro” influencer); - Immy Lucas (account name: “Sustainably Vegan”), British vegan/sustainability activist, 33 years: account launched 2014, 153k subscribers (“macro” influencer); - Tara Bellerose, Australian farmer and climate activist, 25 years: account launched 2016; 11.6 subscribers (“micro” influencer).
Once the embodied reels from the accounts belonging to both subsets were identified, indexed, and viewed, the most striking and recurrent multimodal features were manually identified. A group of these pertained to choices relating to their filming, and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) analytical categories (frame, angle, etc.) constituted the point of departure of the study. A classification was then made of different categories that exploited specific semiotic resources, such as choice of setting, use of movement, use of built-in editing tools, or the hybrid setups which included elements of podium oratory. The discussion presented in the following section aims to give an overview of these different resources, and is structured thematically. Because of limited space, video screenshots reproduced here have been selected to represent the highest number of speakers/accounts.
Multimodal construal of authority by the two subsets of speakers: some observations
The embodied reel and the move towards personal content
Before moving to the semiotic resources themselves, a word needs to be said about the content of the reels under study. Compared to traditional podium oratory, political leaders are taking to social media oratory to perform different types of content, in line with the personal voice adopted by influencers to present content where the main focus is placed on themselves. This type of content is illustrated by the subset of examples of influencers. For instance, in the first example referred to in the screenshots that follow below (cf. Figure 1), the Vegan influencer Immy Lucas recommends books she has just read; the personal focus is highlighted by the text of the video description (“As part of my reading challenge, I wanted to dedicate a certain amount of space to books on climate change, and incredible activists doing amazing work”) and by linguistic choices within the video itself (e.g. “I’m going to share three books with you that I’ve just picked up”). Similarly, the post of the climate activist Jerome Forster II (cf. post represented in Figure 2) centres around his personal action, with predominance of the first-person singular pronoun (“I”) as he reaches out to his audience (“you”/”we”): For the next five days, I’ll be a part of nine hours of meetings with agencies and individuals talking about what we should be doing within these next few years of the Biden administration. Being the only GenZ advisor as a part of this council is really important (…) I want to lean on you guys to start a conversation and to reach out to me to talk about what you think should be included in the discussion. Eye-level, close angle – from reel posted Nov. 20, 2019 by Immy Lucas. Eye-level, close angle from reel posted June 23, 2023 by Jerome Forster II.
Alternatively, British climate activist Jack Harries (cf. Figure 5) discusses a report, but does so through the filter of numerous self-reference (“These are my five key takeaways from the Impact Progress Report 2023 (…) Ok, so the first thing that caught my eye about the report was the North Star statement (…)”). Such a focus is indicative of the “exaltation of the self” (Rossette-Crake 2022: 187) that conditions social media, particularly the discourse of influencers/content creators: according to a Unesco report (2024), “personal experience/encounter” constitutes the most common source of information given by content creators, ahead of third-party sources, which appear in third position.
In the case of politicians, sharing personal experiences are among the new types of strategies they are adopting to legitimise their discourses (Butler and Augé 2024). This is particularly the case of social media content – where, interestingly, personal experience is perhaps replacing the traditional category of “argument from authority” (argument based on an external, third-person, source – Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969). This is illustrated in a number of the reels cited below. For instance, in the reel of Rishi Sunak (Figure 7), he shares the experience of his day on the election trail (“This morning I’m in Yorkshire, chatting to a group of veterans over breakfast, keen to hear about their experiences defending our country and keeping us safe”). Similarly, in his reel, Keir Starmer (Figure 10) outlines “my first steps to change Britain” (my emphasis).
In some cases, this staging of the person of the speaker is accompanied by a direct, personal appeal to the audience/viewer. 16 For instance, Justin Trudeau’s reels, which serve to promote the actions of his government, include direct appeals to the audience that stage the type of one-on-one exchange that have no place in traditional podium oratory. This is achieved via various linguistic means, including imperative clauses or repeated second-person reference, for instance: “Check your bank account. If you live in one of these provinces and you file your taxes, you received the Canada carbon rebate today” – post represented in Figure 8; “if you live near public transit like the ION, you get to spend less money on parking”; “you guessed it” - Figure 11. Similarly, during the U.S. presidential election, Kamala Harris (cf. Figure 9) discusses the issue of abortion and ends by making a direct appeal to the audience, followed by a show of concern for them – as if they were close friends (cf. “Take care”): “So please sign up today to volunteer at Joe Biden.com/freedom. Let’s get this done. Thank you. Take care”.
These various choices relating to content and the lexico-grammar realise a first layer of construal of the positioning of the speaker with respect to the audience/viewer. According to a positioning which can be described as horizontal as opposed to vertical, and that, in some cases, nurtures closeness and intimacy (cf. “Take care”), speaker authority is typically interpreted in terms of authenticity – as will now be examined in relation to a number of visual resources.
Camera angle and framing
A first set of choices which realise a symbolic positioning of participants concerns camera angle and framing, which are analysed here based on the framework developed by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006). These choices depend directly on the new technological affordances of the selfie video, which is self-filmed with a smartphone. Speakers may or may not hold the smartphone while they are speaking. Speakers adopt the vertical (“portrait”) format, which corresponds to the way the smartphone is held for general use (outside filming or photography). As opposed to the horizontal (or wide frame) shot, the vertical frame increases interpersonal focus. Similarly, the speaker looks directly at the camera, which construes a “demand” (i.e., a direct appeal which “demands” something from the viewer); this is enhanced by the speaker’s body, which is positioned frontally as opposed to obliquely, and connotes a direct engagement by the speaker. These dimensions of the interpersonal relation are also identified by Veum and Undrum (2018) in their analysis of the relation between the photographer/represented self and the viewer in selfie photographs.
Other choices pertain more specifically to the video format. Typically, the video is filmed at eye-level: the speaker and the device are located on the same plane, the speaker is not looking up or down at the viewer. This contrasts with podium oratory (and many forms of New Oratory), where the speaker stands on a stage and looks down on the audience. In the case of social media oratory, the eye-level angle symbolically places the speaker and the viewer on the same level and construes a “horizontal” relation. At the same time, the speaker occupies a central position within the frame, a position that confers authority (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006).
All these choices are illustrated in Figures 1–3, which correspond to screenshots from the subset of influencer reels. A final element in terms of camera angle concerns how close or far the camera is positioned, and hence how much we can see of the body of the speaker. Due to the fact that the filming device is often hand-held, social media video favours a close angle, where the speaker’s face and some of the upper part of the body are represented (Figures 1 and 2), or a very close angle, where the speaker’s face takes up most of the screen (Figure 3 – in this case, it is likely that the speaker is holding the filming device as she speaks). This again contrasts with podium oratory, where the orator occupies a space that is separate from the audience (the stage). The adoption of close and very close angles performs a contraction of social space (Hall 1966); it reduces the symbolic distance between participants and, rather than pointing to a traditional type of authority, construes proximity, even intimacy. Very close angle shot – reel posted March 23, 2023 by Tara Bellerose.
The same choices in camera angle and framing can be found in the subset of examples of the political leaders. For instance, the reels featured in Figures 4 and 5 resemble those discussed above in that we recognise the vertical (portrait) format, the speaker looks directly at the viewer, his/her body is positioned frontally, and the shot adopts an eye-level, close angle, in which we see the speaker’s face and upper body. The speakers appear to be holding their phone/filming device as they speak. Such proximity marks a move away from the types of political oratory to which we are accustomed, and these reels do not enact traditional, hierarchical authority but instead the authenticity i.e. typically sought in social media content. Close shot and hand-held filming device – reel posted May 25, 2024 by Rishi Sunak. Close shot, hand-held filming device and pointing gesture – screenshot from reel posted July 15, 2024 by Justin Trudeau.
Intimate settings and dress code
Proximity is also construed by the choice of setting. Speakers do not invest an official, institutional, public space (e.g., meeting hall, theatre) but instead speak from a private space, typically a room in their home (e.g., sitting room, kitchen, bedroom). While a very close angle does not allow the viewer to gauge elements of context, when the angle is wider, we can ascertain specific elements of a speaker’s interior. For instance, in Figure 6, the speaker rests the upper part of her body on a bed and is visibly speaking from her bedroom. This reel exemplifies “backstaging” (Rossette-Crake 2022), when speakers do not speak from the “frontstage” but instead exploit the meaning-making potential of private spaces, or the Goffmanian “back regions”. Investment of private spaces has been discussed in relation to YouTubers, who “most of the time (are) sitting in a private space at home. Bedrooms, offices and living rooms are the most common backdrops for this type of video” (Araüna et al., 2021). This author notes that adopting private settings creates an “apparent proximity and trust between the performer and the public”. The proximity that is enacted by the adoption of private spaces – in conjunction with the close and very close angle shots identified above – connote trust, as well as ordinariness and a horizontal interpersonal relationship between speaker and audience – components associated with the online construal of intimacy and authenticity (cf. Introduction). By these visual means, the reels construe authenticity as underscored by “a sense of sincerity and openness” (Jones and Hafner 2021: 221). Another visual rendering of ordinariness is achieved by dress code: speakers are not dressed formally (e.g. a suit and tie); instead, they wear items such as jumpers, t-shirts, tracksuit tops – the types of clothes that are generally worn at home, in private spaces and/or during (personal) leisure time. Private setting (bedroom) – from reel posted Sept. 12, 2021 by Immy Lucas.
In the reels produced by political leaders, settings also include private or semi-private spaces. Justin Trudeau and Kamala Harris (Figures 5 and 7) appear to be speaking from their office, where personal attributes are represented by the framed photographs in the cabinet or on the wall behind them. Figure 7 depicts a recurrent choice of scenography in the posts by Kamala Harris, in which she sits in front of a desk with her hands clasped in front of her, resting on the desk, connoting sincerity, particularly when combined with the direct gaze and the eye-level shot. Behind Keir Starmer (Figure 8), a window frame and a plant suggest what could be a part of a personal office or a sitting room. Choice of setting often goes hand in hand with that of a more informal, relaxed dress code, particularly in the case of male speakers: Rishi Sunak, Justin Trudeau and Keir Starmer are wearing a shirt without a jacket or tie. Personal office setting, speaker sitting at desk – from reel posted May 2, 2024 by Kamala Harris Personal office setting /sitting room – from reel posted May 16, 2024 by Keir Starmer.
Movement
Other resources do not visually position the speaker with respect to the viewer but nevertheless mark a move away from the typical scenography of podium oratory and the vertical speaker/audience positioning it promotes. For instance, intimacy and authenticity are intensified when the speaker moves around intimate spaces. Changes in setting feature in the reel represented in Figure 6: the reel seems to have been filmed in various rooms of the speaker’s house; it cuts from one space to another while the speaker appears to be seamlessly pursuing what she is saying. The speaker is never portrayed moving entirely from one setting to another, but several shots depict her in movement, intimating the embodied delivery of a speaker free to move about a stage. 17 At one point, the speaker falls backwards onto her bed as she continues to speak; this coincides with a high-angle shot, which places the viewer in a position of symbolic dominance that reverses the traditional speaker-audience relation.
According to another common scenography, speakers film themselves talking as they walk outdoors, for instance in a busy city street. Movement is amplified in the reel portrayed in Figure 9, where the speaker is not walking but running – moreover, he is dressed for the part, wearing a sport singlet and a cap. Content creators exploit changes in setting and movement as strategies to avoid monotony and keep the viewer watching until the end of the reel. At the same time, the fast pace and the outdoor setting construct the image of a speaker “on-the-go”, in phase with the fast pace of current digital working culture, and also provide a visual portrayal of certain attributes of digital culture, namely nomadism and freedom of expression (Doueihi 2011). In Figure 9, the speaker appears as a representative of current digital culture, a type of “digital nomad”, which serves to legitimise his discourse as that of a native digital speaker. Exterior setting for a speaker “on the go” – screenshot from reel posted Sept. 18, 2024 by Jack Harries.
A similar strategy is exploited by Rishi Sunak (Figure 4), who speaks from an outdoor setting, on a street. This reel was posted during the 2024 election campaign and portrays the candidate on the campaign trail. The speaker appears “on-the-go”, a meaning also created by the extremely concise format (the reel is 12 seconds in length), and the fact that the speaker is standing - just like Justin Trudeau (Figure 8), who films himself standing in his office with his desk in the background. The sense of a speaker on-the-go is enhanced by movement in another post by Justin Trudeau (Figure 10), where he speaks directly to the camera as he walks outdoors, in a middle-angle shot that shows an embodied delivery via intensive hand gestures. Interestingly, Justin Trudeau is dressed particularly informally here (jeans, with sleeves rolled up). Exterior setting for a speaker “on the go” – from reel posted May 16, 2024 by Justin Trudeau.
Built-in editing tools
Other specific modalities pertain to the editing tools that are built into the reel video format. While these resources do not play a direct role in the positioning of the speaker with respect to the viewer, they are extremely striking visually; they create other focuses of attention and take the attention off the person of the speaker, increasing the sense of a technologically-mediated discourse which may appear at odds with the construal of authenticity. For instance, with the exception of the reels represented in Figures 1, 4 and 14, the reels of all the influencers and political leaders exploit “captions”, a term that, when associated with social media, refers to subtitling in the source language that provides a textual rendering of what is being said.
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Content creators can edit the captions, choose the font, and decide where the captions appear on the screen. In Figure 2, the captions are particularly emphatic: they appear at the top of the screen, in black, are highlighted in bold word by word as each word is pronounced by the speaker, and produce a “busy” visual effect. Other visual elements can be superimposed on the screen, as illustrated in Figure 11 – which, moreover, coincides with a wider shot in which the speaker is standing and uses emphatic hand gestures, according to a “vigorous” intensity of movement (Han and Zappavigna 2024). The overall effect is extremely busy, with several visual modes vying for the viewer’s attention, leading to what could almost be described as a multimodal “overload” – or, to borrow the expression used by Plantin et al. (2016) (quoted supra), as rather cacophonous. The deployment of quasi competing modes can also be identified in terms of sound. The addition of music is another built-in function of reels. For instance, in the reel featured in Figures 6 and 11 music plays in the background while the speaker speaks. Text segments superimposed on the screen – reel posted Sept. 12, 2021 by Immy Lucas.
As already noted, most of the reels of the political leader subset exploit captions. Particularly busy effects can be noted in Figures 5 and 8. In Figure 5, images are superimposed over the body of the speaker, Justin Trudeau, who uses hand gestures to point at these images. 19 In regard to the captions that can be seen in Figure 8, instead of reproducing what is being said word-for-word, they perform the role of headings, fulfilling textual and emphatic functions that play on repetition and use different fonts and colour. In addition, they are particularly imposing as they are placed at certain moments of the reel over the face of the speaker. This reel also exploits music, which plays simultaneously as the speaker speaks.
All these built-in functions are designed to gain the viewer’s attention. It can be argued that they confer a level of technical sophistication and artifice which is at odds with authenticity if the latter conflates with such notions as informality, simplicity or ordinariness which typically underscore sincerity, intimacy, etc. It is therefore important to note that the authenticity of such videos is very much contrived and corresponds to a technologically-mediated, renegotiated type of authenticity. At the same time, it can be argued that by engaging with these technological affordances, speakers are conferred a specific type of legitimacy – the legitimacy associated with a digital speaker.
Hybrid scenographies within the subset of political leaders
To sum up thus far, social media oratory, according to the conventions developed by Generation Z, as represented here by the influencer subset, points to a new type of interpersonal relation between the speaker and the audience in comparison to other forms of oratory (e.g., podium oratory, New Oratory). Via various visual means, the embodied reels create a sense of proximity that projects a more horizontal interpersonal relation, in keeping with that found in other forms of social media content, where discursive authority is construed through the lens of authenticity. Moreover, it can be posited that this new type of authority associated with social media oratory rests on a new type of renegotiated, technologically-mediated authenticity, which confirms the speaker’s status as a native digital speaker and as a representative of current digital communication culture.
However, a further subset of political leader videos can be identified in that they present a hybrid format. Hybridity is engendered when elements are imported into the embodied reel that reflect a more traditional representation of authority. A recurrent setup (cf. Figure 12) features the speaker standing against a background containing the national flag. With the exception of Justin Trudeau,
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this setup has been used by all of the political leaders examined here. National flags are iconic of the staging of political leaders’ podium oratory. In this sense, the flag is a prop that has been ‘imported” into the embodied reel to reproduce contextual elements of the live, public speaking stage. A variant of this setup appears in some of the reels of Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, where they speak standing in front of a blue curtain. Another variant appears in Kamala Harris’s reels (Figure 13), which contrasts with that of Figure 7 by the fact that the picture frames in the background have been replaced with flags, which immediately confer a sense of something official. Indeed, the flag marks the institutional, pre-discursive authority associated with the speaker’s status as national leader; it (re)establishes a relation with the viewer that echoes traditional representations of authority as more distant and vertical. Setting with national flag – from reel posted Sept. 30, 2024 by Anthony Albanese Setting with national flag – from reel posted Feb. 28, 2024 by Kamala Harris.
In these reels, the flag designates an official space as opposed to a private space in which the speaker puts on his/her “public” face. It is for instance significant that the male speakers always appear dressed in a suit and a tie. There is not the sense of informality or proximity of the earlier examples. In the same way, speakers do not exploit movement, they remain stationary (as they would on a stage in front of a lectern). With the exception of captions (which appear quite discretely in the bottom half of the screen), these reels do not exploit the sophisticated built-in editing tools and the overall visual effect remains fairly subdued, with the key visual focus remaining on the speaker.
At the same time, this setup retains some elements that are specific to digital as opposed to podium oratory, such as choices relating to camera angle (portrait format, eye-level, close shot). Moreover, when the speaker is standing, he/she does not stand behind a lectern, his/her upper body is in full view and the performance is embodied, with the speaker using many hand gestures (Figure 12). And, perhaps even more importantly, the content of the reels is informed by the personal voice that is characteristic of social media video content. Kamala Harris expresses personal sentiment (“It has been the honour of my life to have been elected the first woman vice president”), addresses a direct appeal to the viewer/audience that appears like a personal, one-on-one call (“We need you. We need you to mobilise your daughters and sisters and friends and neighbours (…)”) and ends with the same expression that confers sincerity identified earlier (“take care”). In discussing his government’s action to combat inflation, Anthony Albanese also addresses the viewer/audience directly (“We’re cracking down on supermarkets to help you get a fair price at the checkout”); he also uses informal language that would rarely be used on a podium (cf. “beef up” (reinforce) in “we’re beefing up the corporate regulator ACC”).
These examples are particularly surprising – and interesting as an artefact for the researcher – in that they bring together contrasting multimodal resources that mark a renegotiation of speaker authority and construct a hybrid type of authority. The combination of such resources seems to mark a compromise between the traditional type of authority inherent to podium oratory and the new type of authority that has developed within social media. These examples suggest that political leaders are currently grappling with the embodied reel format as they search for their own social media voice. In so doing, they carve out new conventions within the overall social media ecosystem. This hybrid format has been appropriated by Volodymyr Zelensky and corresponds to a recurrent setup within the reels posted to his Instagram account (Figure 14). Horizontal framing, low angle – from reel posted Oct. 1, 2024 by Volodymyr Zelensky.
Simply in terms of visual resources, Zelensky makes systematic use of a scenography that symbolically construes the vertical authority (cf. Oger (2021) supra) of a leader, which proves essential from a strategic point of view in times of war. He appears sitting, visibly in his office, behind a desk, upon which his forearms are resting. On the wall behind him there are various picture frames, including an imposing frame on the left which contains medals or items of heraldry that confer an official (and perhaps military) authority. In contrast to all the reels discussed previously, the camera adopts a low angle, which confers power on the represented subject/speaker. Moreover, instead of the interpersonal focus engendered by the vertical (portrait) format, the framing here is horizontal (a format characteristic of traditional media such as television, as well as social media, such as YouTube or Twitter, which are viewed as more professional). These choices contrast with the very close angle, which introduces proximity, and Zelensky’s emblematic t-shirt, which confers informality and ordinariness, but at the same time shows his bare arms, which extend across the frame, and may serve as a reminder of the physical action taking place on the war front.
Some concluding remarks
This study has attempted to highlight the way that speaker authority is being renegotiated in the context of spoken communication performed on social media, and particularly the way that political leaders are negotiating norms developed by another category of social actor, who typically belong to generation Z and are exemplified here by a number of influencers who are engaged in some form of social activism. The demonstration presented here can only be taken as exploratory; it calls for further investigation, one that takes account of a larger corpus, and focuses more thoroughly on certain resources (for instance, linguistic resources and content/argument structure). This said, a number of initial observations can be made.
The embodied reels mark a shift away from the distant, vertical speaker/addressee relation that informs podium oratory, and a move towards a closer, more horizontal relation that is emblematic of the authenticity identified in other types of social media content. Such authenticity is instantiated in the reels by visual and audio resources. Visual resources discussed here include camera angle and framing, choice of setting, dress code, and use of movement. These choices tie in with the personal voice that informs content and linguistic choices, and, together, construct a closer interpersonal relation. This interpersonal relation is far-reaching and corresponds to that of the “digital rhetor” (Rossette-Crake 2022), who adopts the role of a shaman-like mediator (Morey 2016). More generally, it exemplifies the “synthetic personalisation” that Fairclough (1993: 142) identifies as a main trend in most forms of public discourse and specifically ascribes to the technologisation of discourse practices. Interestingly, this trend is associated with the decline of relationships based on authority, which results for instance in the need to constantly negotiate them. It is analysed as a means of strategic manipulation in the context of self-promotion and “the general reconstruction of social life on a market basis”.
Significantly, the participative and interpersonal stakes generally associated with the social media ecosystem are influencing political oratory in its traditional, podium format – such as the parliamentary speeches performed at Westminster, where, due to the subsequent sound-bytes that are disseminated via social media, “being passionate and sincere” and argument by examples experienced “at first-hand” (my emphasis) are considered the “new Gettysburg” or modern-day benchmark for political speeches (Perkins 2019).
Other visual resources discussed here exploit the built-in resources provided by the social media platform. These include the projection onto the screen of captions and visual elements (e.g. maps, logos), as well as the playing of background music. Unlike the aforementioned list of visual resources, these resources do not play a role in construing a closer, more horizontal relationship between the speaker and addressee. However, they can be seen to confer a certain type of legitimacy, the legitimacy associated with a digital speaker.
Finally, within the political leader subset, some hybrid formats have been identified. In these reels, some elements of podium oratory that echo a vertical positioning between speaker and audience are imported into the embodied reel format. For instance, the national flag serves as a visual reminder of “authorisation” (van Leeuwen 2007, quoted supra), or the speaker’s status as elected leader. These hybrid formats reflect the fact that political actors visibly feel the necessity to reappropriate and adapt new discursive formats – particularly digital discourses – but are sometimes grappling to do so. Indeed, the very espousal of this new discursive format may well present a potential risk to speakers who, unlike other groups of social actors (e.g. influencers), benefit from authorisation. In this regard, a study of reception and the way these videos are perceived by social media users would be enlightening – and a step towards ascertaining whether the renegotiation of authority that is taking place within the social media space corresponds to a new instantiation of authority or whether it is emblematic of the crisis of authority in the current political landscape.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data availability statement
This study is a qualitative study; for all the data explicitly discussed, links are provided in footnotes.