Beyond personalization: Hyper-personalization of Greek party leaders on TikTok v.2

This study investigates the dynamics of discursive and visual personalization in the contemporary social media communication of Greek party leaders across the political spectrum, focusing on TikTok during the 2023-2024 electoral cycles. Using a multimodal quantitative content analysis of posts by the center-right Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the center-left Nikos Androulakis, the two successive left-wing leaders of SYRIZA, Alexis Tsipras and Stefanos Kasselakis, and the radical right-wing Kyriakos Velopoulos, we operationalize the notion of hyper-personalization and examine indicators of discursive and visual hyper-personalized politics. These include self-referential language, omission of party symbols, direct address to viewers, leader protagonism, and visual framing choices. Statistical analyses reveal similarities and differences across leaders. On TikTok Mitsotakis and Kasselakis consistently adopt hyper-personalized strategies, minimizing institutional references and projecting highly individualized personas. Velopoulos combines personalization with antagonism, while Androulakis and Tsipras display more institutionally oriented patterns. The findings confirm, to a significant extent, the centrality of hyper-personalized politics in the digital communication of Greek political elites and contribute to broader debates on the personalization of parliamentary democracies, and the mediatization of politics.