This study investigates the ideological composition of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on Instagram, a
popular but little researched platform, and attempts to situate it within his broader campaign. To account for the multimodality
of Instagram posts, an analytical framework combining methods of the discourse-historical approach and visual grammar is proposed.
330 posts were subjected to a semantic analysis, resulting in a network of discourse topics which defined the Instagram campaign.
Trump’s Instagram posts, in contrast to his tweets, are shown to be mostly positive, refraining from nativist attacks on
minorities and limiting personal attacks on Hillary Clinton. Trump methodically constructed the positive, populist ‘Man of the
People’ image, although in-depth analysis of selected posts reveals his populism to be only superficially inclusive. These
findings prompt a reflection on the existence of an internal cordon sanitaire in social media campaigns, a
possibly detrimental phenomenon for right-wing populists.
Bennett, Samuel. 2016. “New ‘Crises,’ Old Habits: Online Interdiscursivity and Intertextuality in UK Migration Policy Discourses.” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 16 (1): 1–21.
Betz, Hans-Georg. 1998. “Introduction.” In The New Politics of the Right: Neo-Populist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies, ed. by Hans-Georg Betz, and Stefan Immerfall, 1–10. London: Macmillan.
Canovan, Margaret. 1999. “Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy.” Political Studies 47 (1): 2–16.
Decker, Frank. 2008. “Germany: Right-wing Populist Failures and Left-wing Successes.” In Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, ed. by Daniele Albertazzi, and Duncan McDonnell, 119–134. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Eisenlauer, Volker, and Christian R. Hoffmann. 2010. “Once Upon a Blog: Storytelling in Weblogs.” In Narrative Revisited: Telling a Story in the Age of New Media, ed. by Christian R. Hoffmann, 79–108. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Filimonov, Kirill, Uta Russmann, and Jakob Svensson. 2016. “Picturing the Party: Instagram and Party Campaigning in the 2014 Swedish Elections.” Social Media + Society 2 (3): 1–11.
Forchtner, Bernhard, and Christoffer Kølvraa. 2012. “Narrating a ‘New Europe’: From ‘Bitter Past’ to Self-Righteousness?” Discourse & Society 23 (4): 377–400.
Fuchs, Christian. 2014. Social Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage.
Hochschild, Arlie R.2016. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning in the American Right. New York: The New Press.
Lalancette, Mireille, and Vincent Raynauld. 2017. “The Power of Political Image: Justin Trudeau, Instagram, and Celebrity Politics.” American Behavioral Scientist 63 (7): 888–924.
Larsson, Anders O.2017. “Top Users and Long Tails: Twitter and Instagram Use During the 2015 Norwegian Elections.” Social Media + Society 3 (2): 1–12.
Montessori, Nicolina Montesanto, and Esperanza Morales López. 2015. “Multimodal Narrative as an Instrument for Social Change: Reinventing Democracy in Spain – The Case of 15 M.” Critical Approaches to Discourse across Disciplines 7 (2): 200–221.
Mudde, Cas. 2004. “The Populist Zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition 39 (4): 541–563.
Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: CUP.
Mudde, Cas. 2017. “Introduction to the Populist Radical Right.” In The Populist Radical Right, ed. by Cas Mudde, 1–10. London: Routledge.
Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2012. “Populism and (Liberal) Democracy: A Framework for Analysis.” In Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or Corrective for Democracy?, ed. by Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, 1–26. Cambridge: CUP.
Nixon, Ron, and Linda Qiu. 2018. “Trump’s Evolving Words on the Wall.” The New York Times, 18January 2018. Accessed 5 March 2019. [URL]
Reisigl, Martin. 2018. “The Discourse-Historical Approach.” In The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, ed. by John Flowerdew, and John E. Richardson, 44–59. London: Routledge.
Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak. 2009. “The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA).” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, 2nd ed., ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 87–121. London: Sage.
Smith, Aaron, and Monica Anderson. “Social Media Use in 2018.” Pew Research Center. [URL]
Somers, Margaret R.1994. “The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach.” Theory and Society 23 (5): 605–649.
Stoegner, Karin, and Ruth Wodak. 2016. “’The man who hated Britain’ – the discursive construction of ‘national unity’ in the Daily Mail.” Critical Discourse Studies 13 (2): 193–209.
Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J.2019. “Selfies, policies, or votes? Political party use of Instagram in the 2015 and 2016 Spanish general elections.” Social Media + Society 5 (2): 1–15.
Wodak, Ruth. 2001. “What CDA is about – a Summary of its History, Important Concepts and its Developments.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. 1. ed., ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 1–13. London: Sage.
Wodak, Ruth. 2015. The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London: Sage.
Wodak, Ruth. 2017. “The ‘Establishment’, the ‘Élites’, and the ‘People’: Who’s who?” Journal of Language and Politics 16(4): 551–565.
Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer. 2009. “Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory and Methodology.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. 2. ed., ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 1–33. London: Sage.
Cited by (16)
Cited by 16 other publications
Bast, Jennifer
2024. Managing the Image. The Visual Communication Strategy of European Right-Wing Populist Politicians on Instagram. Journal of Political Marketing 23:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Bonansinga, Donatella
2024. Legitimacy First: Marine Le Pen’s Visual De‐Demonisation Strategies on Instagram. Politics and Governance 13
Mancosu, Moreno & Gaetano Scaduto
2024. Crowds and Smiles: Visual Opportunity Structures and the Communication of European Political Leaders During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Mass Communication and Society► pp. 1 ff.
Middleton, Alia & Nick Randall
2024. Using social media to communicate competence, ordinariness, and authenticity in political leadership. Parliamentary Affairs
Moffitt, Benjamin
2024. How Do Populists Visually Represent ‘The People’? A Systematic Comparative Visual Content Analysis of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders’ Instagram Accounts. The International Journal of Press/Politics 29:1 ► pp. 74 ff.
Towner, Terri L. & Caroline L. Muñoz
2024. Tell Me an Instagram Story: Ephemeral Communication and the 2018 Gubernatorial Elections. Social Science Computer Review 42:6 ► pp. 1288 ff.
Zararsiz, Ömer Faruk & Emrah Ayaşlioğlu
2024. Populist politicians’ representations of the people: A comparative visual content analysis of candidates’ Instagram posts in 2023 Turkish general elections. Communication and the Public
Cheng, Le & David Machin
2023. The law and critical discourse studies. Critical Discourse Studies 20:3 ► pp. 243 ff.
Divita, David
2023. The gendered semiotics of far-right populism on Instagram: A case from Spain. Discourse & Society 34:1 ► pp. 22 ff.
2023. Source text ideological load modulates ideological shifts in interpreting right-wing and left-wing political discourse, but interpreters’ political orientation does not. Ampersand 11 ► pp. 100151 ff.
García Agustín, Óscar & Paolo Cossarini
2023. The Image of the Urban People: Visual Analysis of the Spatialised Demos of Left-Wing Populism in Madrid. Javnost - The Public 30:4 ► pp. 603 ff.
2022. Successfully Overcoming the “Double Bind”? A Mixed-Method Analysis of the Self-Presentation of Female Right-wing Populists on Instagram and the Impact on Voter Attitudes. Political Communication 39:3 ► pp. 358 ff.
Towner, Terri L. & Caroline Lego Muñoz
2022. A Long Story Short: An Analysis of Instagram Stories during the 2020 Campaigns. Journal of Political Marketing 21:3-4 ► pp. 221 ff.
Kaczmarek-Śliwińska, Monika, Gabriela Piechnik-Czyż, Anna Jupowicz-Ginalska, Iwona Leonowicz-Bukała & Andrzej Adamski
2021. Social Media Marketing in Practice of Polish Nationwide Catholic Opinion-Forming Weeklies: Case of Instagram and YouTube. Religions 13:1 ► pp. 19 ff.
Purnomo, Agung, Ira Audia Agustina, Andre Septianto, Liahmad & Yanu Endar Prasetyo
2020. 2020 International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech), ► pp. 583 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.