Keywords

Politics and Personalization

Personalization has always been a feature of politics (Balmas & Sheafer, 2015, p. 3), but as many scholars agree, it seems to have been gaining momentum in recent decades (Balmas, Rahat, Sheafer, & Shenhav, 2014, p. 37). Political personalization denotes a process in which “politicians become the main anchor of interpretations and evaluations” in the political field (Reinemann & Wilke, 2007, p. 101) or as Karvonen puts it “the core of the personalization hypothesis is the notion that individual political actors have become more prominent at the expense of parties and collective identities” (2010, p. 4).

This increase in the personalization of politics can be attributed to several factors: The ethos of modernity posits a shift from social embeddedness toward individuality (Accetti & Wolkenstein, 2017, p. 99), which in the political scene can also be translated into a decline in party identification and partisanship (Boumans, Boomgaarden, & Vliegenthart, 2013, p. 198; Holtz-Bacha, Langer, & Merkle, 2014, p. 154). The fact that opposing parties hold no substantial differences in their political programs anymore, since they orientate their political discourse to more pragmatic platforms with the aim to attract a larger part of the electorate, has given rise to individualized political choices (Caprara & Zimbardo, 2004). In other words, the fact that party identification is not anymore a crucial factor for the voters’ political choice suggests that political preferences are based upon voters’ likes and dislikes and on their personal concerns (Caprara, 2007, p. 154). Τhe “me generation”, which should be seen as the aftermath of the social fragmentation and the weakening of group loyalties, has inaugurated “an era of personalized politics in which individual expression displaces collective action frames in the embrace of political causes” (Bennett, 2012, p. 37).

As a result, political candidates try to convey an image of themselves that fits to voters’ expectations. Even political parties “strategically” choose to “market” their political program through candidates that hold a familiar personality to a particular constituency (McAllister, 2007, p. 580). Therefore, the increased attention to politicians as individuals implies that “they don’t only act more often as spokespersons for their respective parties, but also that they embody the party brand through their personal life and personality” (Olsson, 2017, p. 100). Politicians should learn to speak the “language of personality”, a term used by Caprara and Zimbardo (2004, p. 584) in order to denote the process whereby politicians become skillful in identifying and presenting those personality traits that are most appreciated by certain voters.

In addition, modern media and particularly TV, considered as the ideal vehicle for the political information that puts the political candidate in the forefront, are obsessed with elites and apply a fragmented approach to complex political procedures, a process known in literature as mediatization of politics (Mazzoleni & Schulz, 1999). In other words, since the media are the main arena where political competition takes place, politicians have to adjust their “political logic” to the “media logic”, in order to survive politically (Balmas & Sheafer, 2015, p. 4). As Garzia (2017) suggests, “the inner logic of televised political communication”, as well as the establishment of TV as the major source of political information, have been blamed for the significance that personality evaluations hold in voters’ minds. In the same vein, van Zoonen refers to the power of “celebrity politics” and points out how the contemporary political citizenship currently consists of an amalgam of political, cultural and personal concerns (2006, p. 299).

From the above, it becomes apparent that personalization should be conceived as the result of a set of interrelated factors (Bjerling, 2012, p. 51) and that the notion of personalization can be used in relation to voters’ and politicians’ behavior, as well as to the media coverage of politics (van Aelst, Sheafer, & Stanyer, 2011). According to Rahat and Sheafer’s (2007) typology, we can distinguish between three general types (or areas) of political personalization—institutional, media and behavioral—even though Adam and Maier (2010, p. 231) conclude that there is only one area of politics with plenty of evidence for the personalization thesis—media coverage.

The operationalization of personalization seems to be a demanding task since there is no consensus on the exact definition (Adam & Maier, 2010, p. 216). Van Aelst et al. (2011, p. 206) suggest that personalization in the media landscape comprises two dimensions: “individualization”, a term that describes a process where “individual politicians have become more central in media coverage, while parties and government institutions have become less relevant”, and “privatization”, which implies “a shift in media focus from the politician as occupier of a public role to the politician as a private individual, as a person distinct from their public role” (2011, p. 214).

Privatization can be further analyzed to two distinct sub-dimensions based on whether the media focus is on the “personal characteristics” or the “personal life” of the politician (van Aelst et al., 2011, p. 207). According to Jebril, Albaek and de Vreese (2013, p. 107), privatization denotes a “shift in journalism towards covering the private rather than the public side of politicians” and can be associated to strategic game coverage in the news, in the sense that media focuses on the personal traits of the political candidates rather than the party’s political platform. In the same vein, Langer speaks of the “politicization of private persona” referring to an increased importance “not just of leaders or of their leadership qualities, but of leaders as persons, as ‘human beings’” (2010, p. 61).

Bjerling (2012, pp. 78–79) proposes a three-dimensional analytical model for studying personalization, consisting of (1) personification, that echoes van Aelst, Sheafer and Stanyer’s typology (2011) of individualization, (2) orientation toward personae and (3) intimization. “Orientation towards personae” is used to denote “increased attention to inner traits” (e.g. competence and personality), while “intimisation denotes increased attention to outer attributes” (e.g. hobbies, clothes, marital statuses and personal styles). Whereas inner traits are “truly” personal (as they reside within a certain individual), outer attributes are less so (as they appear in an actor’s environment—or personal sphere—rather than within him or her as a “physical entity”). Finally, according to van Aelst, Sheafer and Stanyer’s typology, the “private life index” consists of four elements: (1) coverage of the family, (2) past life and upbringing, (3) leisure time and (4) love life (2011, pp. 213–214).

From the above overview it should have become apparent that most researchers identify two quite distinct aspects of personalization; on the one hand, the “hard side” of personalization, which refers to a stronger focus on politicians at the expense of parties, and on the other hand, there is a “soft side” of personalization, which goes beyond the visibility of the individual and stresses on the increased importance of personal traits and qualities that become more relevant and salient to the voters’ evaluations of politicians’ performance (Adam & Maier, 2010, p. 216; Bjerling, 2012, p. 45; Holtz-Bacha et al., 2014, p. 156).

Langer (2010, pp. 61–62) believes that the emphasis on the personal in “dealigned mediated democracies”, where a single politician can use his/her personal life as a form of manifestation of the party’s values and platforms, not only represents a key strategy to gain “soft” media coverage but can also act as “the unifying narrative that links what often seems like a set of ideologically disjointed policy proposals”.

In the new media environment, personalization of politics has found a new fruitful space to grow further since social media “are designed to facilitate a direct link between sender (politician) and receiver (citizen) and vice versa” (van Santen & van Zoonen, 2010, p. 65). More crucially, as Olsson notes, this direct communication has rendered politicians more autonomous in the construction of their desired image by bypassing the journalists’ intervention (2017, p. 100).

This kind of personalized communication in the online environment cultivates expectations of a more authentic and intimate communication culture (Graham, Jackson, & Broersma, 2017, p. 21). However, it remains to be seen how much of this “authenticity” is a product of a staged political repertoire that seeks to compliment personalization of politics in the mainstream media, rather than become its substitute.

Instagram and Politics

As already noted, political communication evolves according to changes in the communication field. Just as the television age gave rise to new televised forms of political communication, social media create the conditions for newer forms of political communication (Karadimitriou & Veneti, 2016, p. 336). Today, citizens, organizations and corporations, as well as politicians, take advantage of the affordances of social media (Ekman & Widholm, 2017, p. 17). Studies on social media platforms like Facebook and particularly Twitter have shown that they can provide a platform for politicians to promote the best version of themselves to the electorate (Avedissian, 2016; Jung, Tay, Hong, Ho, & Goh, 2017, p. 2195) through the implementation of predominantly textual communication strategies (Ekman & Widholm, 2017, p. 16; Poulakidakos & Veneti, 2016).

By signing up to social media communities, politicians can harness fresh energy by communicating personal or even private information and by taking advantage of the possibilities to connect with both influential personalities and ordinary people (Liebhart & Bernhardt, 2017, p. 17). Social media center public attention to the personal aspects of the politician and advance personalization and privatization in the communicative features of the individual politician. Thus, the underlying practices of politicians’ social media communication need to be understood, with a particular focus on how political communication and popular and celebrity culture merge in social media platforms (Ekman & Widholm, 2017, p. 18).

Originally launched in 2010, Instagram is a fast-growing social network site (SNS) (Abbott, Donaghey, Hare, & Hopkins, 2013; Reichart-Smith & Sanderson, 2015, p. 343; Sheldon & Bryant, 2016, p. 89), having already reached the milestone of one billion active users (insomnia.gr, 2018). It is an online, mobile phone photo-sharing, video-sharing social network service that enables its users to take pictures and videos and then share them in a simple way (Anderson, 2016, p. 12; Lee, Lee, Moon, & Sung, 2015). This “image first, text second” rule of Instagram (Ekman & Widholm, 2017, p. 18) creates a strong visual-oriented culture (Kanaouti, 2018, p. 51). “A user’s stream of images is an unfolding construal of identity, a presentation of personal style” (Zappavigna, 2016, p. 273). Photographs are much better than texts for self-expression and impression management since the “myth of photographic truth” lends photography a credibility that text can lack (Lee et al., 2015, p. 559). In this sense, image refers to “a mental construct of an object or a person, which is generated on the basis of consciously or unconsciously perceived (media) images, facts, associations, experiences or judgments” (Müller & Geise, 2015, p. 35 in Liebhart & Bernhardt, 2017, pp. 17–18).

In addition, Instagram is an example of the concept of “spreadable media”, that is, media that is shared by audiences for their own purposes within participatory cultures (Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2013; Zappavigna, 2016, p. 273). As a social network, Instagram shares many of the features, options and settings that are familiar to users of other social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, that is, followers, sharing, liking and commenting, through hashtagging (Sheldon & Bryant, 2016, p. 89). Additionally, on Instagram, there is a longer “public” life for content than there is on Facebook and Twitter. When you upload an image on Instagram, it will be readily available for your followers to view for a long time (Miles, 2014, pp. 11–12).

Politicians’ Instagram use can be understood as a way of producing visual flows of professional, personal and private practices in which the authenticity of everyday political life takes center stage (Ekman & Widholm, 2017, p. 29). Instagram serves to disseminate campaign messages and helps to mobilize voters; it is used for image management and complements other campaign channels (Liebhart & Bernhardt, 2017, p. 23).

Visual political communication on social media platforms merges the personal and the professional realm of politicians’ lives through specific modes of addressing the audience (Ekman & Widholm, 2017, p. 16; van Zoonen, Vis, & Mihelj, 2010). Instagram posts might include different types of performances and practices related to the private moments with friends and family (Jung et al., 2017, p. 2197), personal, semi-professional and professional aspects of political life, like everyday professional footage (e.g. imagery of day-to-day duties/tasks), political performances (superseding the everyday duties of politicians), media appearances, attendance at celebrity events and public demonstrations (Ekman & Widholm, 2017, p. 21).

Through the dissemination of snapshots, among them selfies, given that political selfies can be regarded as a new type of image event, which challenge the obsolete representations of the traditional political figure with an aura of proximity and intimacy, politicians are able to construct strategically self-managed galleries, in which work practices and glimpses of their private life become visible (Karadimitriou & Veneti, 2016, p. 321). This is a typical feature of celebrity culture, where actors “must constantly shift between performing their stage persona, concealing or revealing personal information, and creating intimacy and authentic self-presentation” with their followers (Ekman & Widholm, 2017, p. 29).

The posting of interpersonal content on Instagram enables a politician’s audience to establish a parasocial or “face-to-face relationship” with her/his followers (Avedissian, 2016, p. 6). This mixture of professional (e.g. meetings, presentation/promotion of policies, public speeches, etc.) and private imagery (e.g. family moments, self-focused daily tasks/routines) is an apparent feature identified in previous research, but there are also variations between politicians, especially concerning the private realm (Ekman & Widholm, 2017, p. 28). Hence, in terms of personalization, the central question is not whether the platform enhances personalized political communication, but how and to what extent personalization occurs among different political actors (Ekman & Widholm, 2017, p. 18).

As already discussed, this form of personalization contributes to a “depoliticization” of public discourses, primarily by shifting focus from ideological questions to lifestyle politics. Even when political issues are the main focus, they come to the fore with an emphasis on the persona or on the achievements of the particular individual (Ekman & Widholm, 2017, p. 29). The production, selection and distribution of visual imagery in terms of image management by politicians may thus help to shape “the image of persons, their behavior and lifestyle as well as their character traits” (Liebhart & Bernhardt, 2017, p. 23).

Main Research Questions and Hypotheses

Based on our theoretical background, the main research question is how is the “image” of the political leaders of three major Greek political partiesFootnote 1 (Alexis Tsipras of SYRIZA/Coalition of Radical Left, Kyriakos Mitsotakis of New Democracy and Fofi Gennimata of PASOK/Movement for Change) formed through their Instagram posts to their personal accounts. Our coding unit is the Instagram post, hence the picture (or video) along with its caption (if it exists). More specifically, we examine the posts of the aforementioned politicians from the beginning of their Instagram activity to their last post of June 2018 (until June 30, 2018), accumulating 593 posts (238 for F. Gennimata, 210 for K. Mitsotakis and 145 for A. Tsipras). Each post is coded according to the variables outlined in the following research hypotheses and research questions, which stem from our discussion of the literature on personalization and the use of Instagram as a political communication tool:

  1. (1)

    We expect a rather frequent presentation of the personal and/or private life (e.g. family moments, self-focused daily, [non-]political tasks/routines) of the politicians through their Instagram posts.

  2. (2)

    We expect that through their posts the politicians will seek primarily to “construct” a positive self-image, rather than “attack” their political opponents.

  3. (3)

    We expect that the majority of the posts in each politician’s account will include a depiction of the politician her/himself.

  4. (4)

    Given that the politicians seek to form their online “image” on a constant basis, we expect that the politicians are posting on their profiles rather frequently (e.g. 2–3 times per week) since their first post on Instagram.

In addition, we will seek to answer some additional research questions such as:

  1. (1)

    What is the proportion in the depiction of different personal performances? For example, everyday professional footage (e.g. imagery of meetings and other day-to-day duties/tasks), political performances (superseding the everyday duties of politicians), posts including party content (posters, ads), media appearances and attendances at celebrity events and public demonstrations?

  2. (2)

    In terms of the “connectivity” of the politicians, with connectivity seen as a strategy that creates symbolic ties between individual politicians and various spheres of society, from the micro-political level of the family to the macro-political level of global international relations (Ekman & Widholm, 2017), are the politicians depicted being on their own, with other politicians (either allies or opponents), media professionals (e.g. journalists), celebrities (e.g. actors, athletes, musicians), non-political actors (scientists, civil society representatives, business actors, etc.) or citizens?

  3. (3)

    Given the importance of (political) selfies in the public construction of the contemporary political self (Karadimitriou & Veneti, 2016), how frequent is the use of selfies by the Greek politicians under scrutiny?

Methodology

The method used for the current research is quantitative content analysis. It can be briefly defined as the systematic, based on scientific criteria, analysis of the characteristics of various messages (Kyriazi, 2001; Neuendorf, 2002). It constitutes a systematic, reproducible technique for transforming the content of various forms of messages (text, still and moving image, sound, etc.) into fewer categories of meaning, based on specific codification rules (Miller & Brewer, 2003; Stemler, 2001), allowing the researchers to examine large amounts of data through a systematic methodology. The ability to implement content analysis to a variety of “texts” makes it useful as a research method. The primary target of content analysis is the systematic research of the content of the unit of analysis (text, image, news item, advertisement, etc.) (Berelson, 1971). In our case, the unit of analysis is the Instagram post, including both the image (either still or video) and its caption. The post will be analyzed in terms of its content as already stated in the research hypotheses and additional research questions.

The quantitative analysis of the posts will be conducted with SPSS 25 and the appropriate statistical test implemented to assess the similarities and differences in the Instagram communication strategy of the politicians under scrutiny is the chi-square (Field, 2017).

Results

Our first hypothesis focuses on the personal/private aspects of the politicians’ posts since we expect a rather frequent presentation of the personal and/or private life (e.g. family moments, self-focused daily, [non-]political tasks/routines) (van Aelst et al., 2011) of the politicians through their Instagram posts. As is shown in Graphs 10.1 and 10.2, Kyriakos Mitsotakis is the one to share personal and private moments of his life with his followers more often, compared to Fofi Gennimata and Alexis Tsipras. Almost 40% of the posts of K. Mitsotakis include personal (non-)political moments, such as snapshots of him in his office, or photos from his personal point of view of the places he visits, or moments he considers significant enough to share with his followers (e.g. a photo of a rainbow after the rain). His two political rivals follow this strategy to a significantly lower level.

Graph 10.1
A stacked bar graph plots the percentage of personal and private Instagram posts shared by three politicians namely Alexis Tsipras, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and Fofi Gennimata. Kyriakos Mitsotakis shares the maximum number of posts.

Posts with personal aspects of the politicians (per politician) (chi-square p value = 0.000)

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Graph 10.2
A stacked bar graph plots the percentage of family moments shared on the Instagram posts by the three politicians. The maximum number of family posts are shared by Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Posts with private aspects of the politicians’ lives (per politician) (chi-square p value = 0.000)

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Quite significant (more than 20%) is the percentage of the posts through which Kyriakos Mitsotakis shares moments with his family (e.g. during bank holidays, anniversaries or birthdays) as well, following a more “privatized” approach to the formation of his image through Instagram (Jebril et al., 2013). Notable is the fact that both F. Gennimata (1.7%) and A. Tsipras (0.7%) almost do not share any family photos/moments at all. After these results, we accept our first hypothesis only for Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Given that Instagram is a self-oriented SNS, we expect that through their posts the politicians will seek primarily to “construct” a positive self-image, rather than “attack” their political opponents. According to Graph 10.3, the politicians “obey” the rationale of Instagram, using it almost exclusively as a means of positive self-presentation (the lowest percentage is 83.6%). This is a rather interesting finding, especially for the polarized Greek political scene, in which the rationale of mutual blaming is a common practice, especially during the period of the economic crisis (Poulakidakos & Veneti, 2017). Of course, in order to assess whether Instagram contributes to a significant change in public political discourse, one should examine political posts during pre-electoral periods as well.

Graph 10.3
A stacked bar graph represents the percentage of a positive self-image, attack, or both posts. Alexis Tsipras's posts all promote a positive self-image.

Positive self-image or “attack” to political opponents per politician (chi-square p value = 0.000)

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Similar to the focus on the positive self-presentation is the depiction of the politicians in the majority of their posts. Even though one can observe differences in the percentages of the three politicians, all of them, mostly A. Tsipras (77.9%) and K. Mitsotakis (73.3%), and less systematically F. Gennimata (55%), seem to rely rather heavily on the depiction of themselves in their Instagram posts in order to construct their personal and political profile. Based on that, we accept our hypothesis that the majority of the posts in each politician’s account will include a self-depiction of the politician (Graph 10.4).

Graph 10.4
A bar graph plots the percentage of self-depiction on Instagram posts by three politicians. Among the three politicians, Alexis Tsipras shares the maximum number of self-depiction posts.

Self-depiction of the politicians in their posts (chi-square p value = 0.000)

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In terms of the frequency of political posts, this appears to be rather different between the politicians under scrutiny. To begin with, the temporal starting point of the posts is different for each politician. Kyriakos Mitsotakis was the first to upload content in 2012, followed by Fofi Gennimata during the pre-electoral days of September 2015 and Alexis Tsipras, who began his Instagram activity in mid-2017. As shown in Graph 10.5, with the exception of the posts of F. Gennimata during 2015, the actual spike in the usage of Instagram takes place in 2017 and the first half of 2018. Instagram is more systematically included in the political communication strategy of the politicians during these years. Especially during the first half of 2018, the politicians seem to post on Instagram on a frequent basis (an overall average of one post every 2.54 days). Thus, we accept our research hypothesis on the frequent posting on behalf of the politicians only for the first half of 2018 and reject it for the previous years (with the borderline ratio of F. Gennimata in 2015—one post every 3.13 days).

Graph 10.5
A line graph indicates the posts held by the three politicians in their respective years. Kyriakos is the first of the three to start the Instagram post.

Instagram posts per year per politician. The chi-square test is invalid due to the high percentage (28.6% > 20%) of expected values less than 5

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In this sense, even though Instagram has existed as a platform since 2010, Greek politicians seem to have embraced it as a de facto communication tool rather recently, during 2018, maybe acknowledging that 2019 is an election year in Greece since three different elections are to take place in 2019: European elections, Municipal-Prefectural elections and general elections. The triple election year could be a possible reason for the rapid increase in the use of Instagram on behalf of politicians, who seek a new tool to “refresh” their political image at the threshold of a decisive electoral year. Furthermore, given the crucial character of 2019 in political terms and Instagram’s increased penetration in the SNS field, we should expect an even more intense use of it as a political communication tool.

Apart from personal or private aspects, political posts include professional instances as well. Though we coded for six categories—daily professional footage, political performances superseding everyday routine (e.g. public speeches, visits), party content (ads, slogans, posters), media appearance, attendance in non-political celebrity events, attendance in protests—the politicians seem to promote four kinds of professional instances through their posts. All three politicians appear to participate mainly in political performances, such as speeches and visits to various places, either in Greece or abroad. These depictions are the ones that seek to enhance their political profiles in terms of their leadership skills. Apart from that, Fofi Gennimata promotes her party material (in 49 posts), her media appearances (7 posts) and her daily professional routine in 6 posts. In a quite different strategy, Kyriakos Mitsotakis does not promote any material coming from his party and focuses slightly more on his media appearances (20 posts), while he dedicates only 4 posts in the projection of his daily professional routine. Alexis Tsipras, the contemporary prime minister, feeds his Instagram account with more daily footage compared to his political opponents, a way to build the perception of him as a hard-working leader, and complements the professional content of his Instagram account with party content and media appearances (Table 10.1).

Table 10.1 Division of the professional content of the politicians’ accounts (per politician)
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Another important element serving the construction of a positive public image is the promotion of “connecting” in terms of meeting/discussing/collaborating with, significant in political terms, others (politicians, citizens, celebrities, media professionals and business people). In our research, one can observe two different strategies: on the one hand, the Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras promotes his connections/collaborations with politicians (in 60 posts) in order to enhance his image as a leader of Greece. On the other hand, Kyriakos Mitsotakis (in 65 posts) and Fofi Gennimata (in 78 posts), leaders of opposition parties, seek to increase their popularity by promoting themselves mainly through their contact with everyday people. At the second level, though, they also depict their contact with other politicians, either in Greece or abroad (in 27 and 45 posts, respectively), whereas the interaction of all three politicians with non-political actors (e.g. business people and NGOs representatives) and media professionals is rather limited (Table 10.2).

Table 10.2 Depicted connectivity of the politicians (per politician)
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Our last research question has to do with the use or depiction of selfies, given that nowadays selfies are being used for political purposes as well (Karadimitriou & Veneti, 2016). Our research showed that, at least up to now, the politicians do not seem to make frequent use of selfies (either taken by them or depicted in their posts) in order to form their image in Instagram, since the relevant percentages are rather low, with Fofi Gennimata having the highest one with 5.5%, followed by Kyriakos Mitsotakis (4.8%) and Alexis Tsipras (0.7%).

Discussion

Our research has examined the visual communication strategies of the party leaders of the three biggest—in terms of their parliamentary power—Greek political parties. Though Instagram has existed since 2010, Greek politicians seem to have taken advantage of it as a strategic communication tool rather frequently (especially during 2017 and 2018). Instagram’s initial use on behalf of the Greek politicians provides us with several differences as well as similarities in terms of the usage patterns.

Regarding the differences, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, on the one hand, appears to handle his Instagram account with a more celebrity-like rationale compared to his political rivals, since he is the one to publish significantly more personal and private moments, seeking to form his Instagram personality through the combined use of personal/private and political content. In accordance to Langer’s terminology (2010, p. 61), this promotion of the “private persona”, remains in its essence “politicized”, as the aspects of his personal life are used in the public construction of his leader profile and its assessment by his followers. On the other hand, Alexis Tsipras and Fofi Gennimata prefer a more “strictly political” approach to the formation of their Instagram profiles. Tsipras, being the Prime Minister of Greece, focuses on his activities and implementation of policies as the head of the Greek government, seeking to appear as an effective, problem-solving and internationally accepted politician. Fofi Gennimata, whose account relies much less on her personal images, compared to K. Mitsotakis and A. Tsipras, seeks to promote the rationale of a “new beginning” for PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Party) after the significant losses in electoral power it suffered during the crisis, mostly through the projection of party events, party people (employees, associates) and party content (e.g. poster photos with party positions). This finding also echoes van Zoonen’s claim (2006, p. 299) that “celebrity politics” works in a two-gendered way, which turns in favor of male politicians in the merging of private and political life into a “hybrid political persona” since the emphasis on the sphere of domesticity for female politicians “runs the risk of attracting attention to their nonstandard gender choices”. In a nutshell, the attempt for the political regeneration of PASOK, along with the gender dimension of celebrity politics, can be included among the main factors forming Fofi Gennimata’s image on Instagram, which is focused on the “hard side” of personalization (Adam & Maier, 2010; Bjerling, 2012; Holtz-Bacha et al., 2014).

Among the similarities in the Instagram presence of the abovementioned politicians, one could focus on their effort to formulate a positive self-image, rather than to attack their political opponents, even though K. Mitsotakis and F. Gennimata are leaders of opposition parties. In this sense, Instagram seems to encourage the articulation of a “positive” political “discourse”, aiming at positive self-promotion, rather than political attack style communication that is systematically employed during a pre-electoral period where the political competition is at its highest level. Thus, similar research should take place during a pre-electoral period as well—in September 2015 elections, there was very limited use of Instagram only on behalf of F. Gennimata—so as to gather more evidence on either positive or negative character of the political self-presentation in Instagram. The coming elections in 2019 will be a good chance to study the political images on Instagram in a comparative way both between the different politicians and between the different elections (European, Municipal-Prefectural, National).

In addition, when it comes to political images, all three politicians prefer to promote their participation in political performances that exceed their daily routines (public speeches, meetings with other politicians, campaigning in different places) and through these images to underline their face-to-face contact with various social groups (other politicians, non-political actors, citizens).

A last common characteristic of the Instagram accounts of the three politicians is the very limited use of selfies. Perhaps the rather recent systematic use of Instagram on behalf of all three political leaders, along with their choice to form their Instagram communication strategy in a mutatis mutandis formal way (especially for A. Tsipras and F. Gennimata, who focus almost exclusively on personalized political content), has contributed to the avoidance of selfies.

Contrary to the age of the traditional mass media—especially television—when journalists would mainly choose which images of the politicians would be published, Instagram provides politicians with the ability to actively form their public image. In this sense, the aforementioned research is a first attempt to examine Instagram as a political communication tool in Greece, offering an insight into the similarities and differences of political performance strategies via the Instagram platform.

It goes without saying that the scrutiny of a dynamically growing social network such as Instagram cannot be limited to a single research. A future goal of this project would be to explore how different social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) interact with each other in the context of political image-making. Do they convey the same message or are they used for targeting micro publics? (Lalancette & Raynauld, 2017, p. 31). A future Instagram analysis should include morphological characteristics of the posted photos as well, such as the angle that the politician is depicted and the composition techniques (close-up, half-body or full-body shots) (Ekman & Widholm, 2017). In addition, the research can be extended to social media users, following politicians, in an attempt to trace the users’ assessment and comments of the political communication strategies of different politicians through Instagram and other social media platforms.