PERSONLIG, MEN INTE PRIVAT. En kvantitativ innehållsanalys av svenska partiledares visuella kommunikation på Instagram

Abstract

Social media has become an increasingly important arena for political communication, where politicians can communicate directly with citizens without relying on traditional media as intermediaries. On visually oriented platforms such as Instagram, political communication is not only expressed through text, but also through images, settings, visual style and the ways in which politicians choose to present themselves. This makes Instagram a relevant platform for studying how political leaders combine issue-based political communication with more personal forms of self-representation. Previous research has shown that political personalization is a central feature of political communication. In this study, personalization is understood through the concepts of individualization and privatization. Individualization refers to images where the politician is presented in a professional or political role, while privatization refers to images where the politician is presented as a private individual through personal, informal or everyday elements. The study also uses personal branding as a complementary perspective to understand how party leaders strategically construct a recognizable public image. The purpose of this study is to analyze the occurrence and form of visual personalization in Swedish party leaders’ communication on Instagram. More specifically, the study examines how issue-based political communication and personal self-representation are visually expressed and combined in the image material. The study also investigates whether there are differences between party leaders connected to the government-supporting bloc and party leaders in opposition. The study was conducted as a quantitative content analysis of 365 still images published on the Instagram accounts of four Swedish party leaders: Nooshi Dadgostar, Ulf Kristersson, Magdalena Andersson and Jimmie Åkesson. The material covers the period from 1 October 2025 to 31 March 2026. Videos and other moving material were excluded, since the study focuses specifically on still images. Each image was coded according to a predetermined coding scheme based on the study’s theoretical concepts. The main variables concerned whether the image contained political communication, personal self-representation, formal or informal context, and different types of visual motifs. The results show that political communication and formal contexts dominate the material. Overall, 54% of the images contained political communication, while personal self-representation appeared in 26% of the images. Formal contexts were especially common, with 81% of the images coded as formal. This suggests that Swedish party leaders primarily use Instagram as a platform for professional and political communication rather than as a platform for private self-exposure. The comparison between the government-supporting bloc and the opposition did not reveal a clear pattern. Political communication appeared in 48% of the images from the government-supporting bloc and in 58% of the images from the opposition. Personal self-representation appeared in 29% of the images from the government-supporting bloc and in 24% of the images from the opposition. The differences between the two groups were therefore relatively limited. Instead, the results point to clearer differences between the individual party leaders. Jimmie Åkesson appears as the most politically focused party leader, while Ulf Kristersson shows the most personality-oriented communication strategy. The study concludes that Instagram does not automatically lead to extensive privatization in political communication. In the Swedish context, the platform appears to function as a professionalized arena where party leaders mainly present themselves as political actors. At the same time, personal elements are present and can be understood as part of broader personal branding strategies. The study therefore contributes to research on political personalization by showing that Swedish party leaders balance political communication and personal self-representation in different ways, but that individual communication strategies seem more important than political position in explaining these differences.