# Towards Understanding Political Interactions on Instagram

## TL;DR

This study analyzes political interactions on Instagram during Italy's 2019 European Elections, revealing distinct engagement patterns for politicians and party differences in user behavior.

## Contribution

It provides a preliminary analysis of Instagram interactions in a political context, highlighting unique engagement behaviors and party-based differences.

## Key findings

- Politicians' profiles attract more comments and longer debates.
- A small group of users generate most comments and replies.
- Significant differences exist between parties in interaction patterns.

## Abstract

Online Social Networks (OSNs) allow personalities and companies to communicate directly with the public, bypassing filters of traditional medias. As people rely on OSNs to stay up-to-date, the political debate has moved online too. We witness the sudden explosion of harsh political debates and the dissemination of rumours in OSNs. Identifying such behaviour requires a deep understanding on how people interact via OSNs during political debates. We present a preliminary study of interactions in a popular OSN, namely Instagram. We take Italy as a case study in the period before the 2019 European Elections. We observe the activity of top Italian Instagram profiles in different categories: politics, music, sport and show. We record their posts for more than two months, tracking "likes" and comments from users. Results suggest that profiles of politicians attract markedly different interactions than other categories. People tend to comment more, with longer comments, debating for longer time, with a large number of replies, most of which are not explicitly solicited. Moreover, comments tend to come from a small group of very active users. Finally, we witness substantial differences when comparing profiles of different parties.