Instagramming politics: Analyzing politicians’ day-to-day activities on social media

Social media has obviously impacted politicians’ behavior, because they are now more easier available, they can make transparent what they do, where and why, inform the public, share information and thereby legitimize their political positions in the digital public. However, little is known how and to what extent politicians use social media on a day-to-day basis. Previous studies have predominantly focused on Facebook and Twitter during electoral campaigns, leaving Instagram most often aside. If Instagram is studied, then to investigate electoral campaigns of (leading) candidates on Instagram and how they present themselves. This narrow focus is surprising because Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms with around 1 billion active users and by focusing on visual communication, Instagram puts a different focus on the presentation and use of social media than more text-focused platforms such as Twitter. Additionally, Instagram is more used by younger generations and thus offers new ways for politicians reaching this electoral group. Against this background, the study investigates the use of Instagram by members of parliament in the German Bundestag in the 20. legislative period at two bi-weekly intervals: in February and June 2022. On purpose, we selected weeks that are not related to any electoral campaign (on the national or federal level) and represent two consecutive ordinary weeks. We also selected two consecutive weeks to capture potential differences in social media usage between working weeks and sitting weeks in the German Bundestag. We proceeded in our analysis in two steps: First, we collected for all MPs socio-demographic characteristics (parliamentary group affiliation, gender, age, education) and whether they have an active Instagram account. 95 percent of them have such an account and show a huge variety in terms of followers. In the second consecutive step, we selected 24 parliamentarians Instagram accounts – based on quota sample for number of followers, gender, party affiliation, age – and coded their Instagram activities (post, story, reel, video) in these four weeks, following a pre-defined codebook. Preliminary results demonstrate that besides some outstanding high intense Instagram politicians who post with a high frequency their political activities, most content that politicians post on Instagram is not unique, but rather consists of reposts and shared links of others (own party, fellow MPs, legacy media). These relate to certain events which they attended, promote their media activities or reiterate their parliamentary work, indicating Instagrams primary use as promotion tool and platform for self-presentation. Moreover, in our selected time span, female politicians tend to use Instagram more often, younger politicians seem more active and politicians from the Green party and liberal FDP are more active on Instagram. Additionally, we demonstrate that context factors also shape politician’s social media activities. Hence, we give unique exploratory insights into who is Instagramming politics (and who is not) and how members of parliament integrate social media into their political life.