Expectation Vs Reality: Being a Young Representative in the Spotlight/Online

The integration of social media into political life has significantly reshaped the practices of representation, compelling politicians to stage their performances differently to navigate their visibility. This paper investigates how young representatives in Belgium experience and respond to the mediatised demands of social media. It draws on 10 semi-structured interviews conducted between February and August 2025 with the youngest members of the Federal Parliament in Belgium, aged between 18 and 40 years old (data collection of REDIRECT ERC project). These young MPs simultaneously have the least experience in parliament and the most with social media, as the first generation of digital natives entering into parliament. To study how they manage their own visibility as representatives online, the study introduces the concept of the spotlight—a metaphor drawn from theatre and psychology—to capture the dual dynamics of agency and scrutiny on political performances across stages. The spotlight metaphor illuminates how representatives actively manage their visibility while remaining vulnerable to involuntary exposure and audience misinterpretation. Through inductive coding using MaxQDA, three key themes emerged: the possible tension between the parties’ and individuals’ online personality, a generational divide when it comes to social media, and the trade-off between field presence and online engagement.