Populist communication and thematic strategy in the official Instagram accounts of Spanish candidates during the electoral campaigns of 28 August and 10 November 2019

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the study of populist messaging on Instagram, a social network that is well-established as a digital tool for political communication during electoral periods. Using content analysis that combines both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, we analysed the posts (N=386) uploaded to the official Instagram accounts of the main candidates for president of the Spanish government during the electoral campaigns for the two general elections held in 2019. This enabled us to meet the main objective of the study, which was to verify whether the Instagram platform is prone to hosting political messages and discussions of a populist nature. Likewise, in order to obtain a wider perspective of both campaigns on the same social network, the issues forming the subject of each candidates’ agendas in the same period were studied. The main results show that Instagram, like Twitter and Facebook, enables political leaders to spread messages that in essence carry a populist narrative; to use the social network as a means of electoral propaganda; and largely to avoid discussing the proposals of their political agendas.