Photo quality in political Twitter during COVID-19

Photo quality on social media has received little published research attention, despite the critical role that images play in social media. While photo quality is an inherently subjective evaluation, it is also based upon standards that are widely shared by professionals. This study builds upon professional standards of photo quality to analyze images on Twitter, a popular social media app. Since the COVID-19 pandemic placed increased demands on political social media to inform the public, this study focused on the use of images on Twitter from political leaders in the US during 2020. This study created a reliable rubric to evaluate photo quality, confirmed through intercoder reliability testing. Of 471 tweets from US governors that included photographs, 34 percent were of professional quality. Quantitative analysis linked high-quality photos to larger states, images including the governor’s face and images with patriotic themes. Qualitative analysis described how photographs utilized color, lighting, and angles to enhance messages.