Right-wing immigration narratives in Spain: A study of persuasion on Instagram Stories.

Abstract

Ephemeral media has become a staple of today’s social media ecology. This study advances the first exploratory analysis of Instagram Stories as a format for political communication. Through an initial content analysis of 832 stories in three verified Vox accounts and a secondary content and discourse analysis of 114 stories, we delve into the strategies used by right-wing party Vox in Spain to portray immigration as an issue for ideological positioning. The findings shed light onto the ways in which the representation of migrants is employed as an instrument for anti-migratory policy support, through the construction of a very specific profile of migrant in terms of age and gender and the exclusion of significant migrant populations from the argument. Moreover, the party employs the content creation functionalities of Instagram Stories to construct arguments and storylines where diverse information sources converge, effectively bypassing traditional media and reaching their supporter base directly.