Digital political communication on Instagram. The cases of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Mauricio Macri in Argentina

In 2016, the "Gobernautas Ciudadanos" study described the development of political practices in social networks in Latin America: Instagram began to gain strength as a channel of political communication. A good use of social networks will form the new organization chart of public management and the "gobernautas" will be the new leader (Riorda and Valenti, 2016). In recent times, multiple investigations have emerged on the subject, from which we have selected some of the significant contributions, among which are: Beaudoux and Garcia (2012); Riorda and Valenti (2016); Enguix, (2016); Selva-Ruiz and Caro-Castano (2017); Rocio, Ariza, and March (2017); Ballesteros and Diez Garrido (2018); Gil-Ramirez, Gomez de TravesedoRojas and Almansa-Martinez (2019) and Gil (2019). The purpose of this research was to investigate and characterize the main strategies and stories that prevailed in the use made of Instagram as a tool for digital political communication; Based on an exploratory and descriptive methodological design on the case studies of Argentine politicians Mauricio Macri (president during 2015-2019) and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (former predecessor president). For this, a base of the most relevant publications of 2018 of both leaders of their official Instagram accounts was prepared, taking as an intentional criterion for sampling the interactions they had, focusing on the visual content, as well as on the use of the elements and functionalities offered by this network. Subsequently, a content (Krippendorf, 1990) and statistical analysis was applied based on the following variables: number of publications; amount of "like"; publication date; publication comments; format (photo, reel, video); hashtag; Location; mention; types of content (political, intimate and citizen); types of stories or stories (challenge, connection, creative, trampoline stories, stories that communicate the "who you are", stories that communicate the institutional "brand", stories that convey knowledge, stories that lead to the future, stories of personal struggles, victimization stories). In the cases analysed, which if doubt point to a massive audience and heterogeneity, the use of simple messages is a constant. However, it can be seen in the results that the content published by the two main politicians of Argentina in their accounts, seeks to legitimize and build power through the possibilities offered by this tool, since image, spontaneity and supposed horizontality, which in principle would allow a more emotional than rational communication. It also highlights the importance of sharing digital aspect or content of life with its followers in digital political communication, being more human and direct.