A comparative content analysis of United States and Canadian nation branding on Instagram

This paper presents an exploratory content and thematic analysis of two Instagram accounts by national tourism organizations, one from Canada (@ExploreCanada) and the other from the United States (@VisitTheUSA), through the lens of nation branding. By adopting a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach, this study paired an analysis of interactive Instagram features alongside an analysis of the nation branding content itself to explore how @ExploreCanada and @VisitTheUSA construct a national image, and how their interactivity and thematic strategies compare. The corpus included 200 Instagram posts from each account, a total of 400, published between August 4, 2020 and December 27, 2021. To operationalize interactivity, Instagram post format was categorized: single image posts were low interactivity, image-based carousel posts were medium interactivity, and video posts were high interactivity. User engagement was operationalized as the number of likes associated with each post at the time of data collection, and caption text formed the corpus for qualitative thematic analysis. Results indicated that @VisitTheUSA used videos (high interactivity) more than @ExploreCanada, but these videos did not garner consistent user engagement. Single image posts (low interactivity) were the most reliable format in terms of like count, aligning with previous literature on the inhibitory effect of interactivity. Findings from the thematic analysis suggested that the two nation brands differed in their approach to first-person narratives, COVID-19, expressions of patriotism, and road trips. Canada’s brand of openness was expressed through captions that emphasized community and recognized multiculturalism. Conversely, the United States’ long-standing association with the concept of liberty revealed itself in @VisitTheUSA’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic and through frequent mention of automobiles as an expression of freedom.