Image and political communication on Instagram. Celebrification of the candidates to the presidency of the Government

Abstract

This proposal emerges from Sartori´s postulate about the primacy of the image. On the basis of this initial idea, the transcendence of the visual image is acknowledged in the perception of the political scene. The objective is to apply this idea to the social network Instagram. We study the conjunction between visual and verbal framing in the content published by five candidates for the presidency of the Government of Spain; data retrieval began with the call for elections in 2015 and continued until the final inauguration session in October 2016. Our study aims to verify a hypothesis centered on the fact that leaders share videos and photographs to humanize their figure. Furthermore, the content analysis of 885 images reveals a growing process of celebrification of politicians active in Instagram, allowing for the discovery of dichotomies that operate in such a process.