The Discursive Strategies of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa on the Platforms Instagram and TikTok

Abstract

The growing influence of social media on political processes extends beyond electoral campaigns and is rapidly transforming the communication practices of incumbent leaders. We address the gap between populist practices in electoral marketing and the implementation of the Ecuadorian president’s discursive strategies from a geopolitical perspective, with a special focus on the use of two platforms: Instagram and TikTok. While existing scholarship has generally analyzed populist discourse on social media, this article applies theoretical and methodological tools to analyze the grammar of war and the performative strategies used to build leadership in contexts of high social unrest. Grounded in contemporary perspectives. This article reveals how populist leaders mobilize emotions through narratives on digital platforms to frame political crises. Using qualitative critical discourse analysis with multimodal and semiotic tools, we examined 156 posts from the official TikTok and Instagram accounts of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, published between January and July 2024. The findings highlight the strategic use of patriotic symbolism, personalization, and emotional appeals to legitimize executive actions and disseminate polarizing narratives. The proposed framework demonstrates how social media communication simplifies complex crisis scenarios into affect-laden “good versus evil” narratives. This model is transferable to other geopolitical and digital contexts, offering both conceptual and methodological tools for analyzing conflict-driven political communication.