The Effects of “Live,” Authentic, and Emotional Instagram Images on Congressional Candidate Evaluations

This study examines how Instagram’s design and norms influence expectations for political imagery and, subsequently, the effects of these images on electability, vote likelihood, and candidate evaluations. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we propose three norms of Instagram that likely function as heuristic cues and affect the reception of political visual communication on the platform: liveness, authenticity, and emotionality. We experimentally test these visual features on Congressional candidate images, finding some evidence that live, authentic, and emotional images positively influence vote likelihood but negatively impact electability. Results also indicate that live, authentic, and emotional images either have no or negative effects on female candidate evaluations or have no or positive effects on male candidate evaluations.