Doing Politics on Instagram: Social Media Affordances and the Conversationalization of State Messaging

As state institutions migrate to digital platforms, traditional formal registers are increasingly replaced by platform-native vernaculars. This article presents a multimodal discourse analysis of an Instagram reel using kittens to explain labor law reform published by the Polish Ministry of Family, Labor, and Social Policy. The study reveals communicative strategies that not only increase “clickability” and accessibility but also lower the audience’s critical resistance through emotional inoculation. This shift signals a move towards an affective mode of governmental communication with citizens. The analysis traces how lexical formality, phonological play, diminutives, and paralinguistic sound combine with platform affordances to produce semiotic whiplash – abrupt re-keyings of institutional message and stance. Ultimately, the article evaluates the implications of transforming complex bureaucratic discourse into emotionally charged, platform-native content.