Selfies, Policies, or Votes? Political Party Use of Instagram in the 2015 and 2016 Spanish General Elections

Abstract

Do parties in Spain use Instagram and for what purpose? What characterizes posts that are effective at engaging the electorate? This article examines the use of Instagram during the Spanish general elections of 2015 and 2016. Content analysis of party publications on Instagram was carried out to test whether parties use the application to broadcast their policy positions, mobilize voters, or to promote their main party candidate. Regression estimation models are then used to explain the varying levels of user engagement with party posts. The findings illustrate that the new challenger parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos, use the social media app in a systematic way that is distinct from the traditional mainstream parties in Spain. Moreover, party newness, attempts at mobilization, and the promotion of the main party candidate are found to be important explanations for party success on Instagram.

The Baskerville's dog suddenly started barking: voting for VOX in the 2019 Spanish general elections

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Explaining the end of Spanish exceptionalism and electoral support for Vox

“…The popularity of Vox and the electoral potential of the party was first made apparent after it gathered a crowd in surplus of 9000 people to an arena in Madrid (Lambertucci, 2018) in October 2018. Like the other recent partisan entrepreneurs in Spain (Anduiza et al, 2014; Turnbull-Dugarte, 2019), Vox had been able to garner much of its initial support through a grassroots-based communication strategy carried out over social media (Viejo and Alonso, 2018) where the party has been able to expand its support base without relying on the traditional mainstream media outlets.…”

Building a political image on Instagram: A study of the personal profile of Santiago Abascal (Vox) in 2018

“…The content posted on Abascal's Instagram account from 1 st January to 31 st December 2018 1 was collected using a Python program. The study of this year allowed for the analysis of nonelection (the first quarter of 2018) and election periods (the Andalusian elections held in December), insofar as during election campaigns politicians and their parties predominantly post messages aimed at mobilising voters and encouraging them to cast their ballot (Enli & Skogerbø, 2013;Turnbull-Dugarte, 2019b). Moreover, during election campaigns, the same content is often posted on different social media (Bossetta, 2018), for which reason it was believed that also focusing on a non-election period would offer a broader overview of account activity.…”