United they construct the people of Europe? A comparative visual analysis of right wing populists’ Euroscepticism.

Understanding how right-wing populist parties visually construct “the people” and “the elite” across local, national, and European electoral campaigns is crucial for grasping the evolving dynamics of Euroscepticism and its impact on European integration. Prior research has shown that the European Union is frequently invoked as a salient theme at multiple electoral levels—not only in European Parliament elections but also in national and local contests (de Wilde & Trenz 2012; Braun, Popa & Schmitt 2020; Hutter & Grande 2014)—yet the visual dimension of this phenomenon, especially on social media, remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by investigating whether, and how, right-wing populist parties’ visual campaigns on Instagram construct a “people of Europe” and an “elite of Europe,” and whether these constructions are uniform or vary across governance levels. The research draws on advances from studies dealing with both populism and euroscepticism (Taggart & Szczerbiak 2018; Pirro & van Kessel 2017; Dunin-Wąsowicz et al. 2025; van Kessel 2025), as well as visual populism (Moffitt 2024; Farkas et al. 2022), to interrogate whether right-wing populist visual communication reinforces national identities, fosters a transnational “Europe of the nations” visual narrative, or adapts fluidly to different electoral contexts. The study systematically maps how “the people,” “the elite,” and the EU in general are visually represented. Empirically, the paper conducts a comparative, multi-level visual content analysis of Instagram campaigns by four right-wing populist parties, each represented by a national and a sub-national leader from Italy, Germany, France and Hungary. Images are coded for references to national and European identity, representations of “the people” and “the elite,” and explicit or implicit Eurosceptic themes. The analysis explores whether a uniform transnational narrative emerges, at which level(s) it is most visible, and how mimetic and polarizing strategies adapt across contexts. While the focus is on the supply side, the findings may also inform debates on the interplay between party strategies and public attitudes, as well as the broader impact on party competition and EU legitimacy. The research anticipates variation in the construction of “the people” and “the elite” across levels, with the possibility that a more coherent “people of Europe” narrative may emerge at the European level, but not necessarily at local or national levels. By identifying these patterns, the study advances theory on the populism–Euroscepticism nexus and contributes to understanding the strategic and fluid nature of populist visual communication, with potential implications for policy and mitigation strategies.