The Visual Strategies of European Far-Right Parties on Instagram

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Remzie Shahini-Hoxhaj, whose interest is in visual affective polarisation on Instagram, focussing on political parties that promote extreme or radical right-wing views. Social media algorithms might in fact actively promote and amplify such content, but fostering in-group favouritism and out-group hostility.

This study examined the distinct visual framing strategies of far-right political parties in Europe. Such parties tend to emphasise their own distinct identities; use euphoric language for in-group identification and dysphoric language for out-groups; and include nationalist and historical symbols to appeal to their audiences. The study focussed on France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Spain, and gathered some 260 images posted by these parties from January to March 2023.

These were coded manually for engagement, content, format, persuasion, and affective polarisation aspects. Polish and Italian images often showed the party leader alone; Hungarian and Polish posts also showed the leader with small groups; Spanish posts often showed party members; German and Spanish posts often showed citizens. Most parties used medium shots cropped at the waist or knees; Spanish posts also used full shots. Predominant rhetorical strategies included emotional appeals in Germany and Spain; credibility in Hungary; and law and order in Poland.

Ideological symbols like flags were prominent here (e.g. in Spain and France); aggressive language (e.g. in Germany and France); and references to struggle (e.g. in Italy and France) also featured. The German AfD differed most from the other parties, scoring very high on the affective polarisation index. There was no common pattern in the visuals used across all of these far-right European parties. A further analysis of the party leaders’ rather than parties’ accounts might show greater similarities, perhaps.