"Do you recognise me?" A Visual Analysis of Ukrainian Political Leaders' Self-representations on Instagram

The rise of populists claiming to represent the ‘people’ in their bid to overcome the repressive ‘elite’ has proved to be one of the key political issues of modern times (Caiani and Della Porta, 2011). A major component of the populist discursive frame, and one that contributes considerably to electoral success, is a leader’s ability construct an ‘authentic’ and relatable public persona, underlining their credentials as one of ‘the people’ (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017:63). Nowhere is this more evident than in the carefully cultivated self-images populist leaders present on social media to shape public perceptions and promote their political agendas through predominantly visual means (Lalancette and Raynauld 2017). Despite this, analyses of populism’s visual manifestations remain rare, with far greater attention paid to textual and verbal aspects of populist communication (Mendonça and Caetano, 2021:215). Therefore, this paper takes Ukraine as a cases study to examine visual self-representations of political leaders on social media site Instagram. In Ukraine, populist discourses are prevalent (Van Kessel, 2013), and leaders across the political spectrum regularly presenti themselves as ‘one of the people’ to win support. Most notably, Volodymyr Zelensky’s successful 2018 presidential election campaign utilised a ‘new breed’ of populism, comprising almost entirely of ‘infotainment’ and brand promotion, whilst lacking any discernible policy focus (Iliuk, 2019). Thus, in an environment where successful populist branding has a proven track record of electoral success (Skorkin, 2020), this paper adds nuance to understandings of populist visual communication. An examination of both the overtly political and apparently banal images Ukrainian political leaders post on Instagram, the paper assesses ways they present the apparently paradoxical image of being both ‘one of the people’, and simultaneously worthy of leading the country (Mendonça and Caetano, 2021:218).