Zwischen Kreuz und Community: Entwicklung einer Ziel gruppentypologie für christliche Personenmarken in Deutschland auf Instagram

Abstract

Christian personal brands (Christfluencer) on social media platforms such as Instagram represent an increasingly relevant form of digital faith communication. To date, however, there has been no system- atic analysis of the various communication strategies they employ and the target audiences they ad- dress. This IU discussion paper examines how Christian personal brands in Germany design their verbal and visual communication on Instagram to engage specific audiences, deriving communicative types and audience approaches from these practices. Based on deductively developed coding schemes, 113 posts from five representative Instagram ac- counts were described and subsequently coded. The qualitative content analysis resulted in the devel- opment of the 3D Code, a framework for classifying communicative types of Christian personal brands. The framework is based on three dimensions with bipolar characteristics: self-presentation (institu- tional-authoritative to personal-authentic), tone/mood (objective-instructional to emotional-commu- nity-oriented), and narrative style (media-presentational to subjective-narrative). By synthesizing the findings with the Sinus Milieu Model and content marketing models, the study de- velops a practical audience typology that provides recommendations for recipient-oriented content design. The five communicative types identified — Intellectual Thought Leader, Public Proclaimer, In- stitutional Activist, Relatable Faith Coach, and Authentic Witness — differ in their hypothesised fit with the ten Sinus milieus. The Intellectual Thought Leader, for instance, shows the strongest conceptual fit with the Conservative Upper-Class and Post-Materialist milieus, whereas the Relatable Faith Coach cor- responds more closely to the Adaptive-Pragmatic and Consumer-Hedonistic milieus. As a content-ana- lytical study, the research identifies and classifies branding strategies; it does not provide evidence of their reach, effectiveness or actual reception, which remains a task for audience-side research. The resulting typology can serve as both an analytical and consulting tool for a wide range of Christian media practitioners, helping them ensure the strategic coherence of their content, reflect on organic reach strategies, and sharpen their positioning on Instagram.