Tag: reputation

Taylor Swift is not, necessarily, about to swing the midterm elections. Nor is she exactly finding her political voice: Though her silence during the 2016 presidential election fueled intense speculation about whom she was voting for, she has commented on issues like gun violence and sexual harassment before. What the pop star has done, with a viral Instagram post on Tennessee’s upcoming election, is encourage political action in its most basic form—calling not for protest or explicitly for a takedown of the mighty, but for the modest yet incrementally powerful act of casting a ballot. And on Tuesday night, at the American Music Awards: “You know what else is voted on by the people? Get out and vote. I love you guys.” That’s not to say Swift didn’t take a clear stand with her post (she condemned racial and gender discrimination, and endorsed specific Democratic candidates in Tennessee) or that she can’t prompt civic engagement (though there’s no way to verify the causes of the spike, Vote.org counted 102,000 new registrations by people under 30 within the first 48 hours after Swift directed fans there). Still, the statement the musician has made is strikingly simple for all the hubbub around it. These responses—the breathless, the skeptical, the exasperated—are perhaps best understood as responses to Swift herself: a star whose public image has always been as fraught as it is polished. “In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions,” she explained, “but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now.” Yet this very statement is a deployment of her image—of the woman fans adore and want to emulate; of her own past silence, which amplifies her current message. She has opinions, just like you, and she’s asking you to vote.

Were you ready for it? It seems nobody expected Taylor Swift to ever get political, and her Sunday night post on the upcoming Tennessee Senate race sent shock waves through social media. She endorsed Bredesen and offered a harsh rebuke of Blackburn, saying "her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me." Even President Donald Trump weighed in Monday, telling reporters on the White House lawn as he was returning from a trip to Orlando: "Let’s say that I like Taylor’s music about 25 percent less now, OK?" Some believe she should have stayed silent: @taylorswift13 Respectfully, be quiet and sing! I guess you’re more pop than country now anyway. You’re country fans are gonna be disappointed. Now you’re on the level of Katie Perry. Taylor Swift gets political? Many praised the singer for finally voicing her opinion and encouraging people to vote.

Younger told us that character plays a much larger role than capability when it comes to politics. He believes that this reputational importance was the reason for Hillary Clinton's defeat in the recent United States Elections. Read the full transcript below: Rupert Younger: Hi I'm Rupert younger, I'm director of Oxford University's Centre for Corporate Reputation and I'm also co-author of The Reputation Game. We're struggling with this idea of "what exactly is a capable politician? The research is pretty clear that says that it's character that matters much more than capability when it comes to politics. How you orient yourself, the type of transparency you're prepared to engage with, certainly in the west. The way in which you develop your narratives, you comport yourself when it comes to the Q&A. The recent American elections are a very interesting frame to think about reputations. The first is I think a question of, actually most of them are perceptions of character as opposed to capability. Politics and politicians character is an incredibly important feature of reputation formation and destruction in political circumstances.

Sarah Chayes, author of "Thieves of State," talks with Richard Engel about how Donald Trump's tolerance of corruption in other countries reflects back on the reputation of the United States, and why Donald Trump is in violation of the Foreign…