Populist politicians’ representations of the people: A comparative visual content analysis of candidates’ Instagram posts in 2023 Turkish general elections

Social media posts play a key role in understanding how the concept of “the people,” which is a critical concept for populist politicians, is constructed and presented. This study examines how the two leading candidates, as right and left populist figures in Türkiye’s 2023 general elections, portrayed “the people” in their Instagram posts. The Instagram posts of two leaders were coded according to the categories of gender, headscarf, class, and age, and the representations of the people in these posts were analyzed using visual content analysis method. As a result, it was revealed Erdoğan, as a right-wing populist, included more headscarved women in his posts, Kılıçdaroğlu, as a left-wing populist, preferred more heterogeneous visuals in images in terms of gender, and that young individuals were more intensely preferred in the images shared by Kılıçdaroğlu in terms of the category of age.