#INSTAPOLITICS: How Politicians in Post-Yugoslav Countries Use Instagram in Order to Self-Present ‎Themselves?‎

Without understanding politicians and how they communicate with the public, we would not completely comprehend the realm of politics. Previous decades have been marked by an uprising of politicians using different social media platforms, and scholars argued that these phenomena could be approached as an indicator of increasing personalization in the political promotion. However, it is quite unusual that there is a lack of studies dealing with personalized political communication in post-communist countries, and more precisely, in former Yugoslavia states. This area of Europe is quite interesting because certain post-Yugoslav countries are experiencing regression from democracy towards autocratic regimes. One of the consequences of that trend is that traditional media channels are being captured by leading political parties, while opposition parties must rely exclusively on social media in order to reach citizens. One of the social media platforms that have shown to be a powerful platform during campaigns is Instagram. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate whether members from leading and opposition political parties use Instagram in different manners and unpack different underlying patterns. For this purpose, a qualitative analysis of 18 Instagram profiles of Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia politicians will be conducted. In particular, six from each country and three from leading and three from opposition parties. We believe that findings will provide novel insights about political elites' social media use from a non-mainstream political context.