Visualizing political communication on Spanish social media: an analysis of Andalusian political parties’ communication on Instagram

Visualizing political communication on Spanish social media: an analysis of Andalusian political parties’ communication on Instagram. Antonio Pineda Alberto Hermida Elena Bellido-Pérez (University of Sevilla, Spain) Introduction and context We humans are visual beings. From a gesture on a politician’s face to a meme or advertisement on television, visual communication plays an important role in our political behaviour and voting decisions (Lilleker, 2019; Lilleker, Veneti, and Jackson, 2019). Thus, the literature has pointed out that the electorate’s political decisions could be based more on non-verbal signals issued by leaders rather than on considerations regarding the stance these politicians take on issues (Grabe and Bucy, 2009), or that the facial expressions of a candidate have an important effect on the choice of a leader, and can even predict election outcomes (Little et al., 2021). According to Schill, visual symbols have several important purposes in political communication: “They serve as arguments, have an agenda-setting role, dramatise policy, aid in emotional appeals, build the candidate’s image, create identification, connect to societal symbols, transport the audience, and add ambiguity” (2012: 122). While visual imagery has long been a key component of political communication, digital technology has influenced the way whereby it is created and disseminated (Seo, 2020). With the development of technology and the expansion of social networking sites or social media (hereafter SNS), visual political communication has become especially relevant, and SNSs have become an essential instrument in the arsenal of political communication worldwide, which includes the use of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter for sharing visual content (Seo, 2020), as well as image-oriented platforms such as Instagram, the advantages of which have been embraced by politicians: “Instagram is about capturing content ‘on the go’, such as a top candidate talking to people on the streets, or sharing a specific moment of the campaign, an example of which is people at a rally”, as noted by Russmann, Svensson and Larsson (2019: 140). Regarding Instagram, its extraordinary popularity must be taken into account: with 2 billion active monthly users in 2021 (Statista, 2021), it provides an enticing audience for politicians. Another factor that makes Instagram a relevant site is its semiotic nature, characterised by the predominance of image over text, which broadens its ability to personalise politics, depict symbols, and give more space to the emotional side of communication. In this context, Spain is among the countries in which visual SNSs like Instagram are being used by parties and candidates (Oliva, Pérez-Latorre and Besalú, 2015; Marcos García and Alonso Muñoz, 2017; Turnbull-Dugarte, 2019; Aladro Vico and Requeijo Rey, 2020). This SNS has experienced the highest level of growth in Spanish political communication, ranked as the second most consulted site (AIMC, 2019). According to The Social Media Family (2020a), Instagram was the only SNS that gained users in Spain in 2019, while the figures for Twitter and Facebook decreased. This SNS is also preferred by young people: 61% of its Spanish users are between 18 and 39 years old (The Social Media Family, 2020a). Since Spanish politicians have been courting young voters through SNSs for years, using Instagram is just one step forward in that regard. Moreover, such use has been carried out in times of upheaval. Characterised traditionally by a two-party system—the social-democratic Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, henceforth PSOE), and the conservative Partido Popular (Popular Party, henceforth PP)—which have alternated in power since 1982 in the national government and most regional governments, the first breaches began to appear after the 2014 European elections, when mainstream parties lost a large number of votes while new, emerging factions such as the leftist Podemos (We Can) burst onto the political scene. Podemos was soon followed by Ciudadanos (Citizens), a right-leaning libertarian party originally confined to Catalonia. As a consequence of the reaction against the Catalonian independence movement, radical right-wing party VOX (Ferreira, 2019) won a number of seats first in Andalusia in 2018 and then in Spanish parliament in 2019, and has strongly influenced the political agenda. VOX is today the third largest political force in the country, and one of the main opponents of the current left-wing government led by the PSOE. Being one of the most important Spanish regions, national and international media focused on Andalusia after the 2018 election, since as a result of VOX’s rise, the Spanish far right had officially entered the European political agenda (Jones, 2018; Minder, 2018; Badcock, 2018). Moreover, Andalusia has demographical and political characteristics that make the region worth studying: it is one of the most important territories of Spain, and in 2020 it had a population of 8,464,411 inhabitants of a total of 47,450,795 people in the entire country—nearly a fifth of the national population (INE, 2020). Politically dominated by the PSOE de Andalucía (PSOE of Andalusia, hereafter PSOE-A), which had governed the region for 36 years, the results of the 2 December 2018 election brought about an historical change: the PSOE-A obtained the most votes, but not enough to govern, so for the first time since the Francoist dictatorship, Andalusia was governed by a right-wing coalition comprised of the Partido Popular Andaluz (Andalusian Popular Party, hereafter PP-A) and Ciudadanos Andalucía (Citizens Andalusia, hereafter Cs-A), and politically supported by VOX until May 2021 in the regional parliament (RTVE.es, 2021). This makes Andalusia a unique regional context, and the reason why it has been chosen as research object. Alongside a diverse multi-party system permeated by ideological extremism and polarisation, SNS use must be added to the list of reasons, since social media use is quite widespread in Andalusia: 64.6% of the population are digital users, hence being above the national average (63.2%) (INE, 2022). In this context, Instagram is a key platform in Andalusia; in fact, Málaga and Seville are among the five Spanish cities with more Instagram profiles (The Social Media Family, 2020b)—a practice which is especially popular among young people. Moreover, in Seville (the region’s capital) 90% of citizens below 35 years old regard Instagram as their favorite SNS (S.V., 2022). This tendency seems to be continued by next generations of voters: Andalusians below 18 use Instagram (65.8%) more that any other social platform, such as TikTok (29.7%), YouTube (16.8%) or Facebook (10.5%) (CAA, 2020). The fact that parties are interested in reaching both current and future voters may explain why it is important to study Instagram in Andalusia from the viewpoint of visual political communication. In a scenario of technological change, expansion of ideological options, and political upheaval—which, by the way, is not exclusive to Spain, but instead affects the international scene—this article analyses the practices of Andalusian political parties on the image-oriented site Instagram—more specifically, the analysis focuses on Instagram posts published during 2020—with a special focus on visual communication, and aims to shed light on dimensions of Instagram political usage that are not often studied, such as visual corporate elements, in a context of political change and growth of digital communication strategies. Theoretical framework: Instagram and visual political communication. As part of Facebook Inc., Instagram is an SNS that involves the posting of photographs and videos that allow users to make comments regarding content, and to use hashtags as well. From the viewpoint of visual communication, it is strongly image-focused, with the content modality being a defining feature. Instagram also differs as a medium from other popular platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (now X), since it places greater restrictions than Facebook on the manner in which communication takes place; it is more useful than X for establishing reciprocal relationships, and it is overwhelmingly preferred by college students, especially women 1 , in comparison to other sites (Shane-Simpson et al., 2018; Towner and Lego Muñoz, 2018; Waterloo et al., 2018; Pelletier et al., 2020). Thus, as a result of its visual nature (Benedek, 2018; Pelletier et al., 2020), Instagram is consumed primarily as a visual medium. In the context of “social photography”, Instagram has become a platform where a user’s image flow “is an unfolding construal of identity in which the particular phenomena photographed is a presentation of personal style” (Zappavigna, 2016: 273). Visual messages are fundamental in the construction of identity, “as they provide cues about a politician’s personality and background” (Bast, 2021: 3). Moreover, Instagram’s emphasis on visuals and aesthetics leads users to focus on self-promotional content (Waterloo et al., 2018), a feature that fits the aims of political communicators. Thus, through photographs, collages, infographics, videos, and other content (Highfield and Leaver, 2016), in addition to the possibility of incorporating text and tags, this site offers an increasingly wide range of resources. All of this has encouraged research on the visual language and political content shared on Instagram. Some studies have addressed the topic of Instagram activity by candidates and parties. In the Swedish context, Filimonov et al. (2016) have highlighted candidates’ visual presence; in a study of the 2014 Swedish election, Russmann and Svensson (2017) observed that parties made little use of Instagram to interact with the citizenry, except for Feminist Initiative and, to a lesser extent, the Liberals. In the United States, Bosseta’s study (2018) indicates that some Republican ultra-right candidates—including Donald Trump—have been active in sites like Instagram and Snapchat. Instagram political activity has also been compared with that one in Facebook by Farkas and Bene (2021) in the Hungarian context. Additionally, high levels of Instagram activity have been found in Malaysian political communication (Manan, Mohamad and Yakim, 2020). Haßler, Kümpel and Keller (2023) conducted a quantitative content analysis of all 581 Instagram posts published on party and candidate profiles during the four weeks before the 2017 German federal election; results suggest that “parties and candidates used complementary communication strategies instead of relying on a single tactic” (2023: 546). Hence, the 1 As documented by the IAB Spain study (2024), 53% of SNS users are women. Differences in SNS use between men and women have been diluted, with no significant differences in the average number of sites used. However, there are specific preferences regarding gender: WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat and BeReal are more popular among women, while X/Twitter, Telegram, Twitch, Discord and Reddit have a greater presence among men. In terms of age, users between 18 and 34 are the most active, utilising almost 6 different SNSs on average. Pertaining to Instagram (IAB Spain, 2023), 58% of users are women. According to The Social Media Family data (2023) regarding Instagram usage statistics in Spain, women are more represented than men—53.4% say that they are women, compared to men (45.5%). authors indicate that personalisation is more frequent on candidates profiles than on parties’, as well as that parties are prone to use text-integrated images, while candidates focus only in images; besides, candidates tend to publish about campaign events, and parties about policy issues. Larsson et al. (2024) carry out a comparative analysis on how parties used Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in the 2021 Norwegian election for calling to mobilization, and conclude that “Facebook is losing grounds to Instagram, particularly when it comes to both calls to vote and other mobilizing varieties” (2024: 16). The authors also find an explanation to that change in younger voters, who need to be mobilised by parties. Regarding types of content and visual formats, the literature has analyzed the use of text within images (Muñoz and Towner, 2017), as well as the type of content represented (Manan, Mohamad and Yakim, 2020) in a study of the Malaysian 2018 general election. As to the use of text in Instagram posts, Peng’s analysis (2020) of American politics indicates that texts added to images could provoke more cognitive efforts among viewers. Farkas and Bene (2021) have addressed types of content and visual formats in their study of the 2018 Hungarian election—from photos to only-text messages to montages—and found that the general patterns of visual communication are similar in Instagram and Facebook. The portrayal of leaders is a relevant variable in the literature. What is more, this variable could be considered the main foundation of our theoretical framework, since the literature review on visual political communication indicates that visuals are often applied to the personalisation of Instagram political communication—a personalisation which adopts different forms (professional / private contexts), and is linked to celebritisation (Farkas, 2023). Studies point to the growing importance of the candidate’s figure, which is in line with their “becoming a celebrity” (Oliva, Pérez-Latorre and Besalú, 2015). Thus, several empirical studies have addressed this issue: in Sweden, candidates and political profiles have been explored (Filimonov et al., 2016; Ekman and Widholm, 2017); in Austria, the figure of Alexander Van der Bellen has been examined (Liebhart and Bernhardt, 2017); in Canada, the personalisation and engagement campaign of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been addressed (Lalancette and Raynauld, 2017; Boulianne and Larsson, 2021); and in Hungary, the 2018 election has been researched (Farkas and Bene, 2021). The literature also reveals that candidates use Instagram to portray themselves as political professionals, while trying to associate their ideal candidate image with family and personal traits, as evidenced in an analysis of US primary elections (Muñoz and Towner, 2017). This private/political duality also guides the work of Poulakidakos and Giannouli (2019) regarding Greece, or that of Manan, Mohamad and Yakim (2020) in relation to Malaysia. Moreover, the preeminence of the individual politician above the party in Instagram is also evidenced by the fact that the literature is scarcer pertaining to the use of visual corporate elements; nevertheless, in this respect Farkas and Bene’s study (2021) includes among its variables logos, party colours, and the Hungarian flag, and finds that national symbols are frequently featured in pictures. Additionally, Bast (2021) has used the sequential decomposition and coding model of Geise and Rössler (2013) to research the visual communication of extreme right-wing European populist politicians on Instagram. Specifically, this model delves into the images published through the surface structure (presentation level, object level and configurational level), the internal structure (symbolic level, type level and tendency level) and the in-depth structure (latent level of meaning), without leaving behind the multimodal nature of the SNS and, consequently, the specific variables in which the textual dimension of the publications are considered. The relationship between visual communication and Instagram political communication is also assessed by Russmann, Svensson and Larsson (2019), who inscribe their work in the “visual methodologies” framework proposed by Rose (2016)—according to the author, visual material can be approached from “four sites where the meanings of an image are elaborated” (2016: 24): the site or sites of the production of an image, the image itself, the site or sites of its audiencing, and the site of its circulation—the latter was added in the fourth edition of the text, with SNSs acquiring a relevant role. The mention of populist politicians on Instagram enables us to address a theoretical concept that might be useful for the study of visual political communication on Instagram: populism. Engesser, Fawzi and Larsson refer to populist communication logic as “the sum of norms, routines, and procedures shaping populist communication” (2017: 1280), and point out that there are online opportunity structures which foster populist communication. Among other opportunities, populism is ideologically well-suited to be communicated through the web; the Internet homophile filter bubbles and echo chambers are fertile grounds for the populist exclusion of ‘others’; and personalised online communication channels provides populist leaders with opportunities for exerting their charisma (Engesser, Fawzi and Larsson, 2017). As noted above, personalisation is a strong point of Instagram visual political communication. Regarding communication content, populism also emphasizes sovereignty to the people, advocates for the people, attacks elites, ostracizes others, and invokes the heartland (Engesser et al., 2017). In Spain, the literature points to certain trends in the abovementioned representation of individual leaders. Quevedo-Redondo and Portalés Oliva (2017) highlight that as the 2016 elections approached, candidates increased the number of posts they published. In their study of Spanish MPs, Selva-Ruiz and Caro-Castaño (2017) indicate that parties of the “new politics”, such as Podemos and Ciudadanos, use Instagram in a closer, more human way compared to traditional parties. In a similar vein, a study on Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera a year before the 2016 elections noted that most posts referred to his work as a politician (Verón Lassa and Pallarés Navarro, 2017). Moreover, in the 2016 elections, Marcos García and Alonso Muñoz (2017) found that content in private and personal contexts is practically non-existent in the accounts of the main national parties and their leaders, yet the humanisation of politics is simultaneously a priority. TiradoGarcía and Doménech-Fabregat (2021) found that political current affairs were the main topic of more than 70% of Spanish leaders on Instagram during the 28 April 2019 election, with their private lives comprising only 10% of their posts. The Instagram practices of the new radical right has also raised interest: a study by Castro Martínez and Díaz Morilla (2021) regarding VOX’s digital strategy on Instagram, TikTok, and Gab indicates a kind of “hyper-leadership” of the party’s leader, Santiago Abascal, which is consistent with the results obtained by Aladro Vico and Requeijo Rey (2020) about VOX’s Instagram practices. Focusing specifically on literature regarding Instagram use in Spain from the perspective of visual political communication—that is, not including the usual personalisation strategy—we find less research. As to the use of visual elements, Quevedo-Redondo and Portalés Oliva (2017) indicate that photography is primarily aimed at humanising political personalities. Findings on the scarce appearance of corporate identity elements of Spanish parties on Instagram (Selva-Ruiz and CaroCastaño, 2017) are in line with data from Author (2020) regarding the messages of the main Spanish political leaders on this network, which indicate that the use of symbolism and colour is nearly irrelevant, with the exception of conservative leader Pablo Casado (PP). The construction of Abascal’s image on Instagram has been studied by Del Castillo Aira and Iturbe Tolosa (2021), considering variables structured according to the type of snapshots used, colour, the protagonists and secondary characters appearing, as well as the setting, symbols, leisure activities, and performativity of the scenes. In addition to studies on Spanish national-level political communication on Instagram, there is also literature on the regional use of this SNS. Cartes Barroso (2018) analyses the official profiles of the Parliament of the Autonomous Region of Catalonia, finding that pro-independence groups use Instagram more than anti-independence groups. A study on the 2019 election in the Autonomous Region of Valencia—which quantifies the functions and themes of Instagram and Facebook posts—indicates that posts about political agenda were getting the most likes on both SNSs, that the three main issues were social policy, election results, and campaign organization, that the highest engagement is found in photographic posts to the detriment of other formats (Marcos García, Viounnikoff Benet and Casero Ripollés, 2020), as well as that personal posts did not attract attention. Moreno-Cabanillas and Castillero-Ostio (2023) content-analyse political leaders’ profiles during the 2022 Castilla y León regional election, and observe that Instagram is mainly used to show the political agenda, with professional attributes and scenarios that reinforce the leader’s authority. Author (2023) study the 2021 Catalan election, and point out—through content analysis—that leaders tend to show themselves in a more professional than humanized way—hence working on “the ideal candidate frame” presented by Grabe and Bucy (2009). Regarding the Autonomous Community of Madrid, a study by Bustos Díaz et al. (2023) on the 2021 election concluded that Instagram is the platform that received more user attention, in comparison to Facebook and Twitter. However, and in spite of these studies, Spanish regions are still understudied, which is surprising taking into account that there are 17 regions in Spain, and that regional elections are frequently nationalised in Spain (Cabeza, Gómez and Alonso, 2017). As to studies on Instagram use in the Autonomous Region of Andalusia, which is the subject of this paper, the scarce work we have found is Carrasco-Polanco, Sánchezde-la-Nieta-Hernández and Trelles-Villanueva’s analysis (2020) of Instagram during the 2018 Andalusian election, focusing on the quantity and frequency of publications; and Lava Santos and Ibáñez Cuquerella (2024), who content-analyse the use that Andalusian leaders give to Instagram and Twitter in the 2022 regional election, and conclude that Instagram is more prone to be used to give an emotional, negative, and simple populist discourse. Research aims and questions Based on the literature review, it is clear that Instagram is becoming a relevant space for politics and election campaigns. However, despite existing publications regarding political strategies on Instagram, research focusing on this site is still limited in comparison to the abundant production aimed at networks such as Twitter (Filimonov et al., 2016). This article aims to complement and broaden the literature on the political use of Instagram in three ways. On the one hand, instead of focusing on the comprehensively studied profiles of individual candidates and leaders (Lalancette and Raynauld, 2017; Liebhart and Bernhardt, 2017), we address the profiles of political parties, which have been examined less—although a growing number of studies focusing on party communication must be noted (Haßler, Kümpel and Keller, 2023; Larsson et al., 2024). On the other hand, compared to the studies on Instagram use by national organisations (Quevedo-Redondo and Portalés Oliva, 2017), we focus on regional parties, which have received much less attention. Thirdly, in contrast to the usual analyses focusing on personalisation (Lalancette and Raynauld, 2017), interactivity (Russmann and Svensson, 2017), or engagement (Boulianne and Larsson, 2021), we offer an approach that focuses principally on aspects of visual political communication. This last point is important, because almost none of the studies pertaining to Spanish regional political communication focus on the visual composition of Instagram posts. In this sense, we aim to offer meaningful findings that stem from the visual dimension, rather than the platform itself. Thus, our main research objective is to determine how Andalusian parties use Instagram, paying special attention to visual elements. As specific objectives, and taking into account the literature review, we aim to identify the parties that are most active, the visual content and formats that are most commonly used, and how images are used by these organisations. This use of communication focuses on three variables: representation of party leaders, the appearance of party symbolism, and the use of colour. Our analysis is articulated through the following research questions (RQ): RQ1. Which Andalusian political parties are most active on Instagram? RQ2. What types of content and visual formats are most commonly used in the activity of Andalusian parties on Instagram? RQ3. To what extent is the leader portrayed in the communications of Andalusian parties on Instagram? RQ4. Is the political communication on Instagram in line with the corporate visual elements of Andalusian parties? Data and method Data This paper analyzes a sample of posts collected from the official Instagram profiles of the five political parties who held parliamentary seats in the Autonomous Region of Andalusia in 2020: the Partido Popular de Andalucía (PP-A), the PSOE de Andalucía (PSOE-A), Ciudadanos Andalucía (Cs-A), VOX, and the left-wing electoral coalition of Adelante Andalucía (Andalusia Moving Forward, hereafter Adelante-A), which comprises several organisations, of which we focus on the three most relevant: Podemos Andalucía (We Can Andalusia, henceforth Podemos-A), Izquierda Unida Andalucía (United Left of Andalusia, henceforth IU-A), and Anticapitalistas Andalucía (Anticapitalists Andalusia, henceforth Anticapitalistas-A). This multiparty selection aims to avoid the traditional two-party system, which is no longer hegemonic in Andalusia, by including both new and old parties, and to highlight the sample’s ideological variety, including organisations occupying the anti-capitalist portion of the political spectrum (such as Anticapitalistas-A), traditional conservatives (PP-A), centrist social-democrats (PSOE-A), centre-right libertarians (Cs-A), progressive leftists (Podemos-A), and radical-right national populists (VOX). The sample includes 1,805 posts published during the entire year of 2020 from the Instagram profiles of the eight parties mentioned (@psoedeandalucia, @ppandaluz, @ciudadanosandalucia, @andalucia_Vox, @adelanteandalucia, @podemos, @iuandalucia, and @Anticapi_andalucia), which comprise the whole universe of posts during the study’s time frame, after which a longitudinal exploration was carried out. In this way, sampling periods that go beyond specific electoral contexts are well suited to an object of study like SNSs, which imply a continuous communication effort by parties during non-election periods as well. The Instagram format known as ‘Stories’ was discarded because sampling was performed after the publication of party messages, and the ‘stories’ only last for 24 hours—something stated by Instagram itself (about.instagram.com). Contrarily, posts remain on the site, making them more reliable for sampling. Videos were included in the sample because, although Instagram was originally photography-based, audio-visuals are increasingly used. Regarding the time frame, the year 2020 was analysed because it coincided with the unleashing of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, which gave rise to a crisis scenario at health, social, economic, and even political levels. The people required precise answers from their leaders to know how to cope with a new kind of life, and political profiles on SNSs seemed like a perfect tool for achieving that goal, since they can facilitate citizen participation (Bekafigo and McBride, 2013). Moreover, social media have been key to expressing concerns and doubts about the coronavirus (Abd-Alrazaq et al., 2020; Kouzy et al., 2020), as well as a space for political infighting (Pérez-Dasilva, Meso-Ayerdi and Mendiguren-Galdospín, 2020). In Spain, where more than 3.7 million people had been affected by COVID-19 by the last week of June 2021 (Ministerio de Salud, Consumo y Bienestar Social, 2021), both citizens and politicians have used SNSs (Bustos Díaz and Ruíz del Olmo, 2020; Guerrero-Solé and Philippe, 2020) in a way which may have implications regarding visual political communication—for example, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez implemented a personalistic strategy on Twitter akin to pop culture and cultural celebrities, with constant appeals to emotions like suffering and unity. Method The Instagram posts are analysed on the grounds of the visual aspects of the political images that have been projected. The main data-gathering technique is quantitative content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004), which has already been used to study visual political messages on Instagram (Bast, 2021). What is more, Farkas’ literature review on visual political communication (2023) highlights that the most frequently applied method is content analysis, and points out that there is a shift towards quantitative methods, especially content analysis, regarding applied research methods. Operationalised analytical variables focus on the number of posts made by each party—a variable which relates to the first research question—, the type of content (image, video, text, or a combination of image and text), and the visual format of the content (photograph, collage, illustration, montage, etc.), as well as the presence of the regional party leader. The second and third variables relate to our second RQ, whereas the variable about the leader relates to RQ3. Since parties in Spain continue to play a more important role than individual leaders, the coding sheet includes two variables related to organisations: the presence of symbolism such as flags or logos; and use of the party’s corporate colour—in other words, elements related to the idea of staging (Lalancette and Raynauld, 2017). Variables pertaining to these visual corporate elements relate to the fourth RQ. Flags, logos, and identifying colours have been operationalised as visual propaganda because they can be included amongst the corporate symbols that have been profusely used throughout the history of propaganda (Thomson, 1999). On the other hand, the analytical operationalisation of these visual elements is justified by the importance of parties versus leaders, due to their eminently corporate nature. As it happens with the predominance of parties’ identifying colours, it occurs with their flags and logos— elements intimately linked to the chromatic dimension as well. Incidentally, it should be noted that Spanish parties are traditionally identified with a corporate colour, to the extent that, for instance, Ciudadanos is referred to as “the orange party”, and Podemos is often called “the purple party”. Videos are analysed following the same codebook rules designed for the coding of still images—moreover, all videos have been analysed in its entirety, regardless of their length. Additionally, non-formal variables—representation of regional leaders, colour, and visual symbols—imply purely denotative, non-thematic coding units—for instance, the coding of superimposed party logos—hence no further interpretation instructions were necessary in case of the videos. As a result of the purely visual nature of the variables, image captions accompanying the posts are not analyzed in general, but they can be used if contextualisation of a specific visual item is needed. From a more qualitative viewpoint, we add to these quantitative variables the analysis of three images that we consider to be significant, both to illustrate quantitative trends and to consider aspects that affect both the expression and content of the representation, as well as the “surface structure” and “internal structure” (Geise and Rössler, 2013), with special emphasis on the visual syntax and symbolic-political values exhibited. As to the selection criteria for the images used in the qualitative analysis, convenience sampling was chosen. Specifically, we have resorted to representative examples pertaining to party strategies as reflected in the images. Thus, attention has been paid to the diversity of images, as well as to the main research variables as depicted in visual content, such as the representation of party leaders, the appearance of party symbolism, and the use of corporate colours. Another sampling criterion has been to choose images which illustrate the parties’ distinct traits, e.g. posts that reinforce party ideological positionings and/or idiosyncratic dynamics of their visual communication. After an initial two-coder test was conducted by a postgraduate student and a PhD research assistant, Krippendorff's alpha () was applied to calculate the average reliability index in the following variables: visual formats ( = 1), appearance of the leader ( = 1), visual content of the post ( = 0.46), party symbolism (= 0.44) and predominant colour ( = 0.73). Since the last three variables were below what is usually considered to be a minimum reliability standard in content analysis ( = 0.80), a second two-coder test was conducted after a meeting in which additional instructions were given on the interpretation of problematic variables. As a result, nearly all the variables above obtained an average reliability of 1. Since the visual content variable of the post still presented problems of interpretation ( = 0.45)—the problem relied on the conception and role of the “text” element in the posts, which could be mistaken for the posts’ captions—its categories were simplified considerably. After this simplification, a third reliability test (intra-coder, in this case) has yielded maximum coefficients ( = 1). Coding was performed by a PhD research assistant who had received specific training. Moreover, she manually collected the posts in a process supervised by the authors of this paper. The data were collected and coded between June 22 and December 27, 2021. Results Before presenting the data, it should be noted that the images published by the Andalusian parties are not photographs intended specifically for Instagram. Although they are often high-quality images, they do not fit common size dimensions, and in some cases, they are press covers or advertising posters that do not fit Instagram’s 1x1 size. Another common characteristic is the use of the same visual material on other SNSs, which is especially true in the case of VOX, whose Instagram profile is nearly a replica of its YouTube account. Thus, generally speaking, no special aesthetic care has been observed in the use This variable is illustrated by Image 3, which was shared by Podemos-A on 30 June 2020, and it stands out mainly for its use of the corporate colour purple as the prevailing shade. This is a square-format illustration published on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of equal marriage in Spain. The image represents the union of two women, whose contours are created from the formal interpretation of the number 15. The proximity of their faces and the joining of their hands, both wearing rings, facilitate the visual continuity of the illustration framed by the colours of the LGBT-inclusive flag and decorated with brush strokes of confetti that energise the composition. Amid so much colour, the purple of Podemos envelopes the visual representation as a uniform background and recognisable sign of identity. Finally, as in the VOX image seen above, the name of the party, with its characteristic typography signs the image. Image 3. Podemos post. Beyond frequency analisis, it must be noted that differences between parties are statistically significant in general. Pearson’s chi-squared tests (χ2) indicate significant relations between the party variable and the rest of them, namely, the posts’ visual content (χ2(21) = 804.688; p <0.001), publication formats (χ2(28) = 675.395; p <0.001), the presence of the regional leader (χ2(14) = 618.691; p <0.001), the use of corporate political symbols (χ2(28) = 343.756; p <0.001), and the predominant colour used (χ2(35) = 799.411; p <0.001). Discussion and conclusions In a changing media environment, visual political communication has become more relevant thanks to SNS content (Seo, 2020). This article has analysed the communication behaviour of Andalusian parties on Instagram in a context of technological and political change, with a special focus on visual aspects. This analysis must be set in a context where the official entrance in 2019 of the radical right in the Spanish Parliament expanded the ideological spectrum; however, at the regional level, such a political earthquake had already happened one year before in the Andalusian Parliament (Mount, 2018). At the same time, the growth of image-driven SNSs like Instagram took the personalisation of politics, as well as emotional political appeals, to a new level, with many researchers starting to focus on the use given to Instagram by radical right and populist leaders all over the world (Dobkiewicz, 2019; Mendoça and Caetano, 2021; Bast, 2021), being VOX one of the most frequent research objects in the Spanish context (Sampietro and SánchezCastillo, 2020; Aladro-Vico and Requeijo-Rey, 2020; López-Rabadán and Doménech Fabregat, 2021; Pallarés-Navarro and Zugasti, 2022). Thus, the confluence between a historical regional political change, and the growth of visual communication strategies in the digital realm, makes the study of the use of Instagram by Andalusian parties an enticing research topic. The research questions that have guided this paper help to shed light on the parties’ strategies, to the extent that institutional transformations—and an Andalusian Parliament featuring new ideologies—may be pushing the digital representation of politics in new directions, such as the skyrocketing of the far right’s Instagram activity in comparison to traditional parties, the use of emotional appeals throughout images and videos—which is in line with the notion that the power of images arises from their emotional force, among other factors (Gass and Seiter, 2016)—or the relevance of individual leaders in a context of new organisations and movements with new visual corporate identities. As a matter of fact, by analysing posting frequency, an obvious leading role taken by radical populist right-wingers VOX can be observed, followed by left-wing populist organisation Podemos-A. This suggests that new parties (VOX was formed in 2013, Podemos in 2014) tend to produce more images than traditional parties; and it is in line with the notion that social media “are particularly well-suited to meet the communicative preferences of populist actors and that they provide them with a convenient instrument to spread their messages” (Engesser et al., 2017: 1123). Nevertheless, we find at the same time that VOX is ahead in several respects, while traditional organisations such as the PPA show a presence that is somewhat active—and this is important, since the literature indicates that, regarding the main reasons why users follow politicians’ profiles on Instagram, information and guidance are the most relevant (Parmelee and Roman, 2019). On this point, nevertheless, our data challenge some findings of previous literature. On the one hand, Instagram results in Andalusia coincide with studies that highlight the active use and impact of VOX on SNSs (Castro Martínez and Díaz Morilla, 2021; Aladro Vico and Requeijo Rey, 2020; Cea Esteruelas, 2019). On the other hand, the data contravene a study by Author (2020), which indicates considerable activity by the leaders of both traditional parties, namely, the PP and PSOE—something which is consistent with indications of greater Instagram activity by the leaders of traditional parties in the 2016 elections (Marcos García and Alonso Muñoz, 2017). However, our data indicate that the conservative PP-A is considerably distant from the social democratic PSOE-A. In summary, our data show that new and/or emerging parties use Instagram to a greater extent, thus answering our first RQ. Still, it should be noted that not all new, emerging parties have the same level of activity. Results from Turnbull-Dugarte indicate that the number “of posts made by Ciudadanos and Podemos, when they competed in national elections for the first time, was far greater than the number achieved by either the PSOE or the PP” (2019: 7), a finding which is not replicated in Andalusia. The answer to RQ1 is further enhanced by taking into account the left/right ideological variable. A previous study carried out by Author (2020), indicates that even though there is not much distance in terms of posting frequency between the PP and the PSOE during non-election periods, Instagram activity does in fact depend on ideology, with a clear predominance of the right. This is consistent with the findings of Carrasco- Polanco et al. (2020) regarding the Andalusian elections on Instagram, which indicate that the PP was one of the parties with the highest number of posts, and at the same time contradicts the trend on Twitter, where activity seems to be higher among the left-wing (Vergeer, Hermans, and Sams, 2011; Author, 2018). Our data show that ideology is not a discriminating factor in terms of regional activity: VOX and Podemos-A are the most productive parties on Instagram, and they are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Notwithstanding frequencies, a deeper interpretation of posting behaviour also indicates that the constantly updated image catalog facilitates a continuous portrait and the covering of multiple facets of the candidates’ and leaders’ day-to-day life, thus allowing a rigorous control over the image that is transmitted. Hence images of a more journalistic profile, which document the activities of the leaders, are complemented— mainly in the PP-A’s profile—with very worked images (pertaining to both capturing and edition), resorting to calculated framing and camera angles, colour filters, and other techniques, aiming to a considerable visual aesthetic care. Regarding RQ2, results indicate that most parties post still images to the detriment of video, as well as the irrelevance of text-only messages, which is consistent with the idea that people tend to pay more attention to visual content as opposed to text-only content (Seo, 2020), and recognise pictures more easily than words (Gass and Seiter, 2016)—findings which are in line with the notion that visual (political) communication tends to drive out the verbal (O’Shaughnessy, 2004). In terms of formats, the most frequent category is the photograph, which accounts for more than 60% of all images. The relevance of photographs also indicates that Andalusian visual political communication strongly relies on the indexicality function, whereby images persuade since they are able to document events (Messaris, 1997; Gass and Seiter, 2016)—that is, through indexicality, images function as proof that some event has taken place: indexicality points to what is being referred to, is based on a direct connection, and serves as evidence of an object’s existence (Chandler, 2007). Pertaining to photography, and according to Messaris (1997), the indexicality of photographic images relates to the fact that they are, in some respects, physical imprints of the reality recorded in them, hence playing a relevant role in some forms of visual persuasion. The illustration format is also used by several left-wing parties. Strikingly, the poster, which is among the formats that “have played a large role in election campaigns for the past two centuries” (Seidman, 2008: 1), barely appears in the sample in addition to infographics—which contrasts with the fact that infographics generate high levels of consumer engagement (Seo, 2020). The data also highlight above all the presence of the leaders of the PP-A and CsA, which can be explained by the fact that these were the governing parties and, consequently, they had a vested interest in giving visibility to their respective candidates in the 2022 regional elections, hence answering RQ3. Moreover, the nearly total absence of such messages in VOX’s posts is noteworthy. In all other parties, left or centre-left, the absence of the regional leader is also prevalent. The scarce visibility of the leader in VOX’s posts may be due to the fact that this organisation places more emphasis on the hyper-leadership of the national head of the party, Santiago Abascal (Castro Martínez and Díaz Morilla, 2021; Aladro Vico and Requeijo Rey, 2020). In the case of the left wing, the absence of personalisation may be due to the European progressive tradition of asserting ideas and programmes over individuals. In any case, this involves a relevant discussion regarding the personalisation of politics on SNSs: with the exception of the abovementioned right-wing forces, Andalusian political communication on Instagram seems to differ from the trend toward individualisation, or a form of personalisation that focuses on individual politicians, thereby leaving the party in second place (Van Aelst et al., 2012). More specifically, the scarce presence of individual leaders in the communication of populist parties like VOX and Podemos-A is not coherent with the web’s capacity to provide populist actors with opportunities for personalised communication (Engesser, Fawzi and Larsson, 2017). By contrast, Andalusian parties concentrate on developing an institutional brand, not a personal brand. If visual communication relates to processes of semantic content that use visual phenomena (Geise and Baden, 2015), the semantic content conveyed visually by Andalusian parties is more corporative than personalised. On this point, our data are in line with a study on the 2015 elections in the Autonomous Region of Valencia, which indicates that personal issues were secondary compared to the campaign itself (López García, Cano Orón and Argilés Martínez, 2016). At the same time, this contrasts with other perspectives that affirm the trend toward personalisation, highlighting the growing relevance of the candidate’s persona (Turnbull-Dugarte, 2019), or that the language of Instagram allows for the symbolic and iconographic construction of the politician (Del Castillo Aira and Iturbe Tolosa, 2021). The absence of individualisation in Andalusia also stands in contrast to the use of Instagram in Sweden, where a strategy of personalisation is also used (Filimonov et al., 2016), or even in Spain (Selva-Ruiz and Caro-Castaño, 2017). In any case, from a more theoretical perspective, the lack of personalisation may be detrimental to SNS communication strategies, since generally speaking, the politician’s face is the element that generates the most engagement: “social media users react positively to images of faces primarily because they recognize them and build a kind of social connection” (Peng, 2020: 17-18). Moreover, as Turnbull-Dugarte has pointed out, “posts that seek to mobilize voters or promote the main party leader play more positively with the electorate than posts that seek to promote party policy” (2019: 13), thereby linking personalisation to efficiency. As to RQ4, only Adelante-A, Anticapitalistas-A, and VOX predominantly use their official logos. This indicates that traditional parties and those governing the region do not seem interested in projecting their visual identity; and it is consistent with studies indicating the scarce appearance of features of partisan identity in Spanish political communication on Instagram (Selva-Ruiz and Caro-Castaño, 2017; Author, 2020). The use of colour, however, yields different conclusions, as the colour most commonly used on Instagram always coincides with the official corporate colour of most of the parties. In summary, Andalusian political forces give more priority to some visual elements than others in their Instagram communication. Moreover, and regarding visual elements and symbols, it must be highlighted that the use of the green colour is related to the cultural and historical context of Andalusia, since the Andalusian flag’s colours are green and white. This may explain why green is used as corporate colour by left-wing parties Adelante-A and Anticapitalistas-A, as well as the fact that it is an important colour in the PSOE-A’s output—despite not being its official colour. Such a link between Andalusian progressivism and the regional flag may be put in its historical-political context, since the flag was created by left-nationalist Blas Infante—besides, a reference to “The white-andgreen flag” opens Andalusia’s official anthem, also written by Infante. And this contrasts with the traditional attitude of the Right towards the flag, since, even in the post-Francoist era, some right-wingers regarded the Andalusian flag as a separatist ensign (Ramos Espejo, 2012). In any case, the fact that Andalusian party communication taps into the surrounding culture can be connected with wider trends of visual political communication, whereby visual rethoric uses the imagery around the politician and controls shared visual memory—Reagan’s rhetoric exemplifies this point (O’Shaughnessy, 2004). Results and discussion indicate that Andalusian parties approach Instagram differently. Besides obvious differences regarding ideological content—from Spanish national patriotism (VOX) to Andalusian liberal nationalism (Cs-A) through patriotic progressivism (PSOE-A), anti-capitalism (Adelante-A), or institutional conservatism (PP-A)—our research indicates that new parties like VOX and Podemos-A use Instagram intensively, in order to build their brand outside traditional media. VOX is also innovative regarding the use of videos (alongside the PSOE-A), hence approaching Instagram primarily as an audio-visual site, whereas other parties (PP-A, IU-A, Anticapitalistas-A) approach it as a basically visual site—the PP-A’s strategy is illustrated by the fact that this governing party only uses photographs; that is, still images. While social-democratic PSOE-A tries to merge his image with that of Andalusian patriotism, the PP-A approaches Instagram as a medium for boosting the image of Andalusia’s president, and the political opposition uses the site to build party brand—this is noticeable in the cases of left-wingers Anticapitalistas-A and Adelante-A. Judging by their corporative use of colour, PodemosA also seems to approach Instagram as a way of visually establishing a political brand. Co-governing party Cs-A, however, ignores visual symbolism (just like the PP-A) and employs Instagram to personalise its leadership. To sum up, the distinct contributions of this study to the field of political communication are, principally, the relevance given to social media by regional political parties with a strong interest in communicating through images, the leading role taken by the radical right regarding SNS activity, and (with the exception of governing parties) a party-focused approach to communication. As to contributions to visual communication, and besides indicating that regional parties use images of a varied nature, our analysis provides evidence—from an understudied region like Andalusia—supporting the notion that SNS political messages tend to drive out the verbal, highlight visuals and, therefore, focus on the emotional dimension of communication; an affective focus which is exemplified by the use of colour to tap into culture and forge links with citizens. More generally, the use of colour relates to the conclusion that visual communication is fundamental in SNS strategies, since it helps conveying the symbology through which parties are ideologically framed—through the use of shapes, colours, logos, and other morphological, dynamic, and scalar elements, as well as compositional factors, which enable both identification and emotional appeal. These image-related findings have been highlighted in publications focusing on national contexts; our research confirms them in a regional context, thus mixing general visual political communication trends with the cultural particularities of Andalusia. This study has tried to gain a more precise understanding of the political use of images on Instagram. Nevertheless, it has limitations. One is the regional context of the data, which implies that we should be cautious in making generalisations to other political levels. Another limitation has to do with the results. These reflect the practices of regional Spanish political organisations, and may not be representative of the behaviour of their peers in other countries. Moreover, this study has taken into account parties’ Instagram feeds, which is a limitation considering that Instagram stories are a more spontaneous form. The inclusion of stories could have expanded the results, and drawn new conclusions about the existence of corporative elements, as well as the role of the leader. In this line, the sidelining of post captions has also limited the results in a certain way, since an in-depth analysis of the textual elements, words, or emojis related with the visuals, would have enhanced the results. These limitations open up further lines of research: to analyse Instagram political communication in different contexts, to perform a cross-national study based on the assumption that cultural characteristics play a role in visual propaganda (Seo, 2020), and to fully integrate in the analysis post captions— relating to variables that imply text-image interactions—and Instagram stories as well, thus adding the content of such ephemeral messages. Funding This work was supported by Fundación Pública Andaluza Centro de Estudios Andaluces (11th edition). The research project title is “Communication, Participation, and Dialogue with the Citizenry in the ‘New Politics’ Age: The Use of Social Media by Andalusian Political Parties” [grant number PRY095/19]. References Abd-Alrazaq A, Alhuwail D, Househ M, Hamdi M and Shah Z (2020) Top Concerns of Tweeters During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Infoveillance Study. 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