Crisis, Leadership, and Masculinity: How EU Leaders Visually Construct Authority in Digital Spaces
This thesis explores whether leaders of the European Union adopt more masculine-coded symbols in their online self-representations during times of crisis. It focuses on the illustrative cases of Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, analysing how their Instagram performances in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 differed from their portrayals during a per
