Charm Offensive: The Power of Mediated Personal Magnetism in Foreign Affairs

• In Event: Conceptualizing the Friendly Voice: How to Achieve Peace Through Amicable Communication?

Abstract

This paper examines the power of “charm” in international relations with a particular interest in “charm offensives,” when political leaders achieve major goals in foreign affairs through their personal magnetism. As case study, the paper focuses on the 2015 American-Iranian nuclear deal and the elaborate charm offensive of the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, during this historic negotiation process. The paper analyzes the media coverage of the negotiations in the American (New York Times and Wall Street Journal) and the Israeli (Haaretz and Israel Hayom) press from March 1 to March 31, 2015, a crucial month of the Iranian nuclear deal. The paper has a particular focus on the visual representations of Iran’s charm offensive, on how newspapers represented Zarif’s “friendly voice” in photographs in two national contexts. The academic literature of charm is very limited and fragmented; this paper takes a first step towards its systematic analysis.

Author

• Julia Sonnevend, New School for Social Research