Feminist Approaches to Self-Representation & Political Storytelling: A Modern Strategy of Nation Branding in the West

Sammanfattning: This essay sought to investigate the extent to which two Nordic Prime Ministers performed their leadership on Instagram in accordance with a feminist leadership theory during the Covid-19 crisis. It then inquired into those performances’ potential consequences. In the initial section of the analysis, the essay identifies the narrative that the self-reported images as a stand-alone product produced through strategically constructed political storytelling. It finds that Stefan Löfven fails to create a narrative following the essay’s operationalisation of feminist leadership, whilst Mette Frederiksen does so successfully. In the following section of the analysis, this essay establishes that after looking at the immediate intertextuality, namely caption and Instagram features, as well as their countries’ national circumstances, both of the Prime Ministers’ political performances fit under the category of feminist leadership. It also claims that these performances might improve their countries' relationship with other Western countries, and it is argued that feminist leadership is a modern nation branding tool. In the final part of the analysis, it is contrarily claimed that this constructed leadership and the narrative produced might worsen the countries’ relationship with non-Western countries whose culture is based on distinct cultural repertoires consisting of different values, moral judgements, and narratives.