#Selfie: Instagram and the United States Congress

Abstract

This article is based on a content analysis of the 17,811 Instagram posts made by all 534 members of the United States Congress who were seated for the duration of the first 6 months of the 115th session. I find that women are significantly more likely than men to have an Instagram account. Senators and women post significantly more times to their accounts. And a member’s personal characteristics, such as their chamber, party, and age, had significant effects on the type of content posted to Instagram. I conclude that members of Congress use Instagram similarly to how they use other social media platforms, that parties in and out of power use Instagram in substantively different ways, and that the more personal accounts of younger members suggest future changes in Congressional representation.

What Makes Politicians’ Instagram Posts Popular? Analyzing Social Media Strategies of Candidates and Office Holders with Computer Vision

“…Nevertheless, politicians on social media platforms rarely use personalized content alone. Consistent with prior research (O’Connell 2018), the results show that personalized content is outweighed by more traditional, “politics-as-usual” posts. It is unlikely that personalized posts on Instagram overshadow politicians’ delivery of policy stances or display of more politically relevant qualities.…”

“…While this study provides valuable insights into Instagram, a popular but less examined platform (Larsson 2019; O’Connell 2018), the choice of examining this particular platform might shape the observations of this research. The majority of Instagram users do not turn to this site for political content.…”

“…In one of the few studies that systematically examined politicians’ Instagram posts, O’Connell (2018) found that among the Instagram posts of members of Congress in the United States during the first six months of 2017, just 8.16 percent were categorized as personal, with the majority of posts (69.37%) classified as professional. Other types of posts also emerged, such as text description of political statements and issue positions (10.17%) and landscape photos featuring natural scenery without people (2.84%) (O’Connell 2018). Larsson (2019) analyzed the top 20 most liked and commented on Instagram posts from Norwegian party leaders and observed many posts reflect politicians’ private lives.…”

“…Lee and Xu 2018;McGregor et al 2017;Metz et al 2020;Rossini et al 2018). Yet, this line of scholarship has so far focused on a limited number of platforms, especially Facebook and Twitter, while political communication is also vibrant on other social media platforms such as Instagram (Larsson 2019;O'Connell 2018). With 37 percent of U.S. adults reporting use of this site, Instagram has become the third most popular social media platform in the United States, following YouTube and Facebook.…”

Communication Technologies for Promoting Political Leaders Online

“…Online activities of politicians have been studied fragmentarily, however, several areas related to this issue have been developed for a long time. Particularly noteworthy are the studies of the activity of American congressmen on Twitter [6], Instagram [7] and personal websites [8], as well as the study of political communication during the elections [9] and activities of protest leaders during digital campaigns [10].…”