Legitimacy First: Marine Le Pen's Visual De‐Demonisation Strategies on Instagram

Abstract

Recent research on populist visual communication has found a predominance of positivity in the way the populist radical right (PRR) communicates on Instagram. This counters the understanding of PRR actors as "dark" communicators, relying on appeals to negative emotions and attacks against perceived enemies and wider outgroups. This article tests the novel conceptual framework of "visual de-demonisation" that has been proposed to capture the interplay between populist strategic communication, radical right mainstreaming, and positive content on visual social media. This article uses Marine Le Pen's Instagram account (2015–2021) as a case in point, to illustrate the dynamics of visual de-demonisation and unpack how the three angles of the strategy (legitimacy, good character, and policy) are performed visually. The study offers two contributions to the literature on populism and leadership. First, it expands theory-building around visual de-demonisation by operationalising the framework, testing its empirical application, and producing further theoretical considerations to support concept development. Second, it contributes to debates on the mainstreaming of the radical right, by empirically unpacking its visual performance and evidencing the role of legitimacy-signalling as a prominent concern of populist leaders interested in de-demonising.