The Kind Master is Petting Puppies - Transmutation of the Simplified Populist Rhetoric into Instagram Photography

Abstract

The communication power of the social network Instagram is important to address due to its relaxed nature of presenting details from the ordinary lives of individuals. A comparison of the manners in which influencers and politicians represent themselves brings to front a changed dynamic of social power, as it is available online to anyone who can persuade followers to identify with them or to wish to do so in the future. Two ways of identification with an influencer are assumed, namely increasing and decreasing of distance between them and their followers. The text focuses on the latter, where politicians approach the people by showing the banality of their everyday lives. After reviewing the profiles of two Slovenian politicians, a noticeable pattern is that they most often do so with photographs of puppies and kittens. Keywords: populists’ rhetoric, master, Instagram, politics, pets, selfie