Mediating authority: media technologies and the generation of charismatic appeal in southern Mali

This article offers a close analysis of the media performances of a particularly successful preacher in Mali, Sheikh Cherif Haidara, to study how authority is generated in the interaction between a leader and his followers, and to examine the role of mass mediation in this process. Informed by Weber's reflections on the nature of charismatic authority, the article takes charisma as a form of appeal that is mediated through aesthetic forms, and remediated and ‘channelled’ by virtue of particular media strategies and formats. By raising questions about the nature of charismatic attraction and by illustrating under what conditions it becomes effective, the article contributes to recent scholarship that addresses the role of the aesthetic in the validation or ‘authentication’ of religious experience.