Political Communication During the Early Developments of the Coronavirus Crisis: A Quantitative Study of Swedish Party Leaders' Instagram Accounts

Sammanfattning: In light of the evolving Coronavirus crisis, this thesis aims to study the political communication of Swedish party leaders. Through a content analysis of 419 Instagram posts from January 31th to April 14th, 2020, we conclude that there was no strong relationship between important dates and developments in the Coronavirus crisis and the frequency of published posts. The crisis communication by the Prime Minister has however seemingly been successful. Party leaders continued to post party political content during the examined time period, meaning that that party politics did not seem to prevent crisis communication. Negative statements about other parties or politicians was associated with a higher number of likes, most party leaders did however not publish much negativity. Most party leaders shared also important non-political information, which was not associated with a higher number of likes. Lastly, we found that rationality, rather than displays of emotions, seem to have been most prevalent in the party leaders' posts.