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Northouse, Leadership 8e
SAGE Publications, 2019
Follow the Follower (C, H)
This is an extension of Internet activity Option #3 in Week 12. Ask students to identify an
influential thought leader whom they admire (or not) and to follow that person on social
media over the term (Twitter, Facebook, blog, etc.). While keeping up-to-date on what their
leader is thinking and sharing publicly, students should mainly track how followers are
responding to the leader’s posts or tweets. What messages are they retweeting? What is the
public feedback to the leader’s posts? How many likes? Dislikes? How are followers
promoting, defending, or criticizing the leader on social media? Ask students to create a
typology of responses (e.g., favorable/unfavorable of leader; favorable/unfavorable of a
particular issue, etc.) Can students identify different follower styles from social media posts?
For example, who is a die-hard? Who seems to be alienated? Who is a pragmatist? How does
the leader respond to follower feedback, if at all? How much influence do followers’
comments seem to have on the leader’s expressed attitudes or behavior?
At the end of the term, ask students to write a 5-page paper describing: (a) their typology of
follower responses; (b) the functions of followers’ social media posts; and (c) any influence
the followers’ posts had on public opinion of the leader or on the leader’s expressed ideas
