Revista de comunicación política e institucional

No. 54 (2023): Political communication and armed conflicts: perspectives, debates and approaches
Secciones monográficas

Determinants of users’ engagement with official military Instagram accounts

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.56151/maspoderlocal.180
Guillermo López-Rodríguez
Universidad de Granada

Keywords

  • Redes sociales,
  • militares,
  • Instagram,
  • participación,
  • ejércitos
  • Social Media,
  • Military,
  • Engagement,
  • Instagram,
  • Armies

How to Cite

López-Rodríguez, G. (2023). Determinants of users’ engagement with official military Instagram accounts. Más Poder Local, (54), 58-74. https://doi.org/10.56151/maspoderlocal.180

Copyright (c) 2023 Of the author or authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Modern militaries seek to increase their audience using metrics such as engagement to capture the success and popularity of their posts. This article follows on from previous research about the content of Instagram accounts, studying the main determinants of users’ engagement with official military accounts on Instagram. For this purpose, a sample has been sourced from the French, Israeli, Spanish, Australian and United States armies in 2021 (n=1922). The results provide evidence of a statistical correlation between engagement and the structure and themes of the posts, with posts related to consequences of military praxis, such as casualties or participation in conflicts, generating high levels of engagement. In contrast, users are least engaged with informative posts about non-military activities. The conclusions drawn point to some policy recommendations on how to improve public communication on Instagram and future research lines about the military’s public diplomacy.

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