ABSTRACT
The Italian leader of the League, media-savvy Matteo Salvini, indisputably belongs to the close circle of Europe’s most prominent and successful right-wing populist politicians of the last decade. Both before, during, and after his appointment as Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Salvini strongly advocated taking a hard line on immigration and crime, largely supporting his policies through nationalistic discourses on mass and social media. Drawing on the qualitative methods of Wodak’s (2013) discourse-historical approach and van Leeuwen’s (2008) theory of social actors, this work critically analyzes Matteo Salvini’s representation of otherness in his Instagram posts dealing with crime news. The study shows that through the discursive strategies of nomination and predication, Salvini offers a systematically negative portrayal of people belonging to minority groups and attempts to establish a connection between individuals committing offenses and the ethnic, national, or religious communities to which they belong. The study also suggests that, in spite of its focus on images, Instagram can be used for written political communication just like other popular social media platforms.
