“I JUST CAME HERE TO READ THE COMMENTS”: HOW JOURNALISTIC IMAGERY IS SHAPING SOCIAL MEDIA DISCOURSE AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

Abstract

Social networking sites (SNS) have become prominent media to express public political ideology. This study investigates how audiences respond within comment sections to selected news images of Donald Trump posted by multiple national news outlets on Facebook and Instagram. Prior scholarship investigates polarization and online political discourse, and further examination is provided to discover how identical news images may produce differing audience responses through social media comments. The study explores audiences participating in the comments sections, with responses to five selected news images of Donald Trump posted on multiple news outlets’ Facebook and Instagram pages. Through the use of qualitative visual framing content analysis, a total of 5,284 comments were examined and identified patterns of support, criticism, and framing across social media platforms and selected news outlets. Findings reveal the dominant pattern of commenters’ responses were polarized and largely either expressed overwhelming support of Trump or extreme criticism of the current president. Platform differences between Facebook and Instagram were minimal, with Facebook audiences commenting with lengthier feedback and often scandal-focused language. Instagram comments contained far more emojis and gifs, unaccompanied by text, than Facebook. Finally, commenters on both platforms, and especially Facebook, expressed distrust of and criticism of legacy media. The study’s findings demonstrate that identical political news images of Trump do not produce identical political meanings. The meaning is shaped within platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and the sampled news sources that post political imagery on these sites.