ABSTRACT
Social media and the growth of online learning communities, networks, new technologies and apps for getting messages out and across virtual spaces have changed the way people view, cultivate, and understand leadership. This chapter explores ideologies relevant to social media-based leadership, such as neuroscience, complexity, creativity, critical theory, and aesthetic theory. Personality theory, creativity theory, neuroscience, and aesthetic thinking can inform how thought leaders process, gather and share data, and influence others. Thought leadership has been advanced through social media where one's expertise and knowledge is shared, tweeted and liked through the offering of insights into the latest trends or advances in a particular industry. To better understand thought leadership within the digital environment of social media, this chapter examines several relevant ideologies that look to the individual and the collective. Success as a thought leader in the age of the Internet has been dependent upon first having access to a network, such as the one the Internet provides.
