A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of MTN and Airtel Telecommunication Advertisements on Instagram

Cite this article as: Kenan, S. H., Umar, A. B., & Yusufu, W. (2025). A multimodal discourse analysis of MTN and Airtel telecommunication advertisements on Instagram. Sokoto Journal of Linguistics and Communication Studies (SOJOLICS), 1(1), 184–191. www.doi.org/10.36349/sojolics.2025.v01i01.022

A MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MTN AND AIRTEL TELECOMMUNICATION ADVERTISEMENTS ON INSTAGRAM

By

Dr. Suku Hyellamada Kenan,

hyellawilbe@gmail.com

Department of Languages and Linguistics,Gombe State University.

&

Aishatu Bello Umar

aishatubu@gmail.com

Department of English Language,

Federal College of Education (Technical) Gombe.

&

Willing Yusufu

willingyusufu@gmail.com

Wajah Girls Primary School Hong.

Universal Basic Education Board Yola, Adamawa State.

Abstract

In today’s visually driven digital culture, Instagram serves as a vital platform for brand communication, particularly within Africa’s mobile-first and youth-oriented media landscape. Telecommunications companies such as MTN and Airtel employ Instagram not only for marketing but also as a multimodal space for constructing identity, fostering relationships, and engaging audiences through interactive visuals. This study adopts a qualitative descriptive design grounded in Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) Visual Grammar, which extends Halliday’s (1978) Systemic Functional Linguistics to visual communication. Focusing on the interactional and compositional metafunctions, the study examines how Nigerian telecommunication brands construct meaning and engage audiences through Instagram advertisements. Six posts (three from each brand), published between January and December 2024, were purposively selected based on visual richness, communicative clarity, and representativeness of each brand’s marketing style. Each post was analyzed as a multimodal text integrating visual and linguistic resources such as images, captions, emojis, hashtags, and embedded text. Data were interpreted through multimodal discourse analysis (MDA), emphasizing gaze, angle, distance, and modality for interactional meaning, and information value, salience, framing, and balance for compositional meaning. Findings reveal that MTN’s advertisements foreground energy, inclusivity, and empowerment through high-modality imagery and vibrant colour contrasts, while Airtel’s emphasize love, connection, and reliability through closer social distance and compositional symmetry. Across both brands, interactional and compositional resources transform visuals into dynamic social interactions that humanize technology, establish trust, and articulate cultural narratives of unity and hope in African digital media.

Keywords: Multimodality, Visual Grammar, Instagram Advertising, Brand Identity, Engagement

1. Introduction

In today’s media-driven landscape, Instagram has become one of the most influential platforms for brand communication, particularly among Africa’s youthful, mobile-first audiences. Telecom giants like MTN and Airtel have leveraged this space not merely for promotion, but as a strategic arena where brand identity, consumer engagement, and visual culture converge. Their digital advertisements extend beyond simple product display, employing carefully designed multimodal strategies, integrating visual and textual elements—to persuade, influence, and connect with users on deeper emotional and ideological levels.

Despite the growing prevalence of digital advertising, limited scholarly attention has been devoted to how African telecom brands construct meaning through multimodal discourse. Most existing studies focus on branding outcomes, linguistic slogans, or marketing effectiveness, overlooking the semiotic mechanisms that shape perception and guide audience interpretation. This research addresses this gap by examining how MTN and Airtel employ interactional and compositional meanings, as theorized in Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) framework of Visual Grammar, to construct persuasive digital narratives on Instagram. It investigates how semiotic resources such as gaze, social distance, perspective, modality, salience, information value, and framing work together to engage viewers, direct attention, and assert brand authority.

The study’s objectives are threefold: to analyze how interactive meanings are constructed in MTN and Airtel’s Instagram advertisements; to examine the use of compositional resources in shaping visual structure and interpretation; and to explore how multimodal strategies contribute to the construction of brand identity and audience engagement. Overall, the research contributes to the growing field of multimodal discourse analysis by illuminating how African brands humanize technology, foster emotional connection, and project narratives of unity and progress through digital visual communication. It further expands the application of Kress and van Leeuwen’s framework to African digital advertising contexts, providing valuable insights for scholars, marketers, and media practitioners seeking to understand the semiotic and persuasive dynamics of visual branding in the digital age.

2.  Literature Review

In the contemporary era of digital communication, the landscape of advertising has shifted dramatically from traditional print and broadcast formats to visually driven and interactive social media platforms such as Instagram. This transformation underscores the growing need to understand how meaning is constructed not only through language but also through a rich interplay of semiotic resources. Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA), developed notably by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2006), provides a systematic framework for exploring such meaning-making processes. Their theory of Visual Grammar, adapted from Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics, identifies three metafunctions: representational, interactional, and compositional; that together explain how images, colours, gaze, perspective, and layout function to create communicative meaning. These metafunctions illuminate how visual and verbal cues interact to shape perception, identity, and viewer engagement within advertising discourse.

Several scholars have demonstrated the relevance of MDA in examining advertising as an inherently multimodal genre that synthesizes linguistic, visual, and spatial resources. O’Halloran (2012) and Machin and Mayr (2012) emphasize that advertising texts integrate multiple semiotic resources; image, colour, typography, and composition, to construct meaning and elicit emotional and ideological responses. In this context, advertisements serve not only as vehicles for information but also as strategic sites where semiotic choices are manipulated to align brand identity with sociocultural values. Forceville (2014, 2017) further advances this understanding through his studies of pictorial and multimodal metaphors in advertising, showing how visual metaphors foster creativity, persuasion, and cultural resonance. His work highlights the importance of cross-modal meaning construction, where visual imagery and linguistic text jointly produce metaphorical and affective appeal.

The interactional dimension of advertising has also been explored in the works of Royce (2007) and Unsworth (2014), who emphasize how gaze, social distance, and angle construct relationships between represented participants and viewers. These interactional choices invite viewers to engage emotionally or cognitively with the advertisement, thereby shaping audience alignment and brand perception. Similarly, van Leeuwen (2005) underscores the compositional metafunction, particularly layout, framing, and information value, as central to directing viewer attention and maintaining coherence in multimodal texts. Together, these insights establish MDA as a robust framework for decoding how advertisers use semiotic resources to construct persuasive, relational, and culturally situated meanings.

In the context of digital and social media, the logic of multimodal composition evolves further. Platforms like Instagram combine static and dynamic modes, images, captions, hashtags, emojis, and user interactions, into unified communicative events. Kress (2010) argues that digital environments reshape the spatial and semiotic logic of communication, demanding that brands engage users through visually strategic and affectively appealing designs. However, as Zappavigna (2016) and Page (2012) observe, much of the scholarship on digital multimodality has centred on Western contexts, with limited attention to African digital advertising practices and their culturally specific semiotic repertoires.

Recent African scholarship has begun to address this gap. Ilonga and Mapunda (2022), for instance, demonstrate how Tanzania’s digital telecom advertisements rely on multimodal complementarity, integrating image, gesture, and typography to communicate cultural meanings. Similarly, Abuel Wafa (2019) explores the persuasive power of visual tactics in Egyptian telecom commercials, revealing how multimodal cues like colour, gaze, and framing reinforce emotional appeal and brand authority. Oloko, Sonde, and Adeyemi (2024) apply MDA to Nigerian bank advertisements on Instagram, showing how visual design and semiotic orchestration enhance credibility and social trust in financial discourse. Hidarto (2021) extends this line of inquiry by analysing influencer-led Instagram advertisements, illustrating how multimodal semiotics foster authenticity and consumer connection in online marketing. Likewise, Suku (2022) examines MTN Nigeria’s Instagram advertisements and identifies how image representation functions as a tool of corporate storytelling that connects brand identity with national culture.

Despite these emerging studies, research on African brands’ visual-semiotic strategies remains limited. Much of the existing work on Nigerian digital marketing (e.g., Okoro et al., 2019; Eze&Eze, 2020) focuses primarily on linguistic style, consumer behaviour, or corporate reputation, leaving the multimodal construction of interactional and compositional meaning largely underexplored. Furthermore, as Mabena (2021) argues, African advertising often draws on culturally resonant symbols, colour codes, and communal aesthetics that Western MDA frameworks may inadequately capture without contextual adaptation. This calls for culturally grounded multimodal analyses that can account for the symbolic richness and localized semiotics of African visual communication.

In summary, while MDA provides comprehensive tools for analysing how meaning is created through visual and verbal interaction, there remains a significant gap in its application to African digital contexts—particularly Instagram advertising. Few studies have examined how leading African telecom brands such as MTN and Airtel use multimodal resources to establish interactional relationships with viewers, construct compositional coherence, and articulate brand identity through affective engagement. The present study addresses this lacuna by applying Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar to selected Instagram advertisements by these two major Nigerian telecom brands. It aims to uncover how interactional and compositional meanings are realized within this platform-native context, contributing to both the theoretical advancement of multimodal discourse analysis and the empirical understanding of African digital advertising practices.

3.  Methodology

This study employs a qualitative descriptive research design anchored in Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) theory of Visual Grammar, an extension of Halliday’s (1978) Systemic Functional Linguistics that explains how images communicate meaning through representational, interactional, and compositional metafunctions. The analysis concentrates on the interactional and compositional dimensions to examine how MTN and Airtel construct meaning and engage audiences through Instagram advertisements. The interactional metafunction explores visual resources such as gaze, camera angle, social distance, and modality to show how the viewer is positioned and how emotional or social engagement is prompted. The compositional metafunction examines information value, salience, framing, and visual balance to reveal how visual and textual elements are arranged to create coherence and guide interpretation. Six Instagram posts, three from each brand, published between January and December 2024 were purposively selected for their visual richness, communicative clarity, and representativeness of each brand’s digital marketing style. Each post was treated as a multimodal text combining images, captions, emojis, hashtags, and embedded text. Analysis followed a qualitative, interpretive multimodal discourse analysis approach in which each advertisement was examined individually to identify patterns, contrasts, and thematic consistencies across brands. Coding was done manually to maintain close engagement with the data, supported by analytical memos to ensure transparency and reflexivity. The findings were organized into thematic categories reflecting how visual, textual, and symbolic resources interact to construct brand identity, evoke emotional connection, and shape audience perception of MTN and Airtel in the Instagram advertising space.

4. Data Presentation and Analysis

4.1 Image 1

The analysis of Image 1 demonstrates how MTN’s advertisement integrates interactional and compositional meanings to convey accessibility, trust, and community engagement through its MoMo service. Interactionally, the image functions as an offer, with a man and a woman engaged in a cordial transaction, gazing at each other rather than at the viewer, which encourages observation and reflection. Their relaxed postures and pleasant expressions subtly invite the viewer into the social space of MoMo, while the medium shot balances intimacy with professionalism. A slightly oblique yet frontal angle fosters equality and participation, reinforcing MTN’s inclusive brand ethos. High-modality realism, achieved through vivid colour saturation, clear texture, and sharp detail, enhances authenticity and emotional warmth, with the dominant yellow symbolizing optimism and vitality. Compositionally, the MTN logo occupies the Ideal position at the top, representing aspiration and corporate identity, while the lower text functions as the Real, highlighting tangible service benefits. The Given–New structure moves from MTN’s established credibility on the left to successful customer interaction on the right, and central salience is created through the human figures, foregrounding emotional connection. Cohesive framing and a unified yellow background generate harmony across elements, collectively transforming the advertisement into a site of social interaction that positions the viewer as an active participant, thereby reinforcing MTN’s values of inclusivity, reliability, and collective empowerment.

4.2 Image 2

The analysis of Image 2 shows how Airtel’s advertisement effectively combines interactive and compositional meanings to convey affordability, connectivity, and empowerment. Interactionally, the African man and woman engage with a digital device rather than directly addressing the viewer, functioning as an offer that encourages observation and emotional connection. The close social distance creates familiarity and intimacy, situating the viewer within an everyday, relatable context, while the slightly low and oblique perspective empowers the participants and maintains equality with the audience. High-modality realism, achieved through natural lighting, vivid colors, and Airtel’s signature red, adds authenticity and emotional resonance, with the bright red background symbolizing passion and brand vitality. Compositionally, the vertical Ideal–Real layout positions the logos as abstract ideals and the participants as tangible realizations, bridging corporate aspiration with lived experience, while the horizontal triptych structure progresses from Given (the Airtel device) to New (the satisfied users), visually enacting the promise of accessible technology. Salience is emphasized through central human figures, and the cohesive red background unifies all elements, producing a multimodal discourse of empowerment, inclusion, and technological reliability that positions Airtel as a human-centered, modern, and community-oriented brand.

4.3 Image 3

The analysis of Image 3 demonstrates how MTN strategically combines interactive and compositional meanings to convey vitality, empowerment, and progress. Interactionally, the basketball player’s mid-action pose and averted gaze create an offer that invites viewers to observe and engage emotionally with the scene, while close personal distance and an eye-level, frontal perspective foster connection, equality, and inclusivity. High-modality realism, achieved through vivid colors, sharp textures, dynamic lighting, and MTN’s signature yellow, reinforces optimism, energy, and brand credibility. Compositionally, the vertical Ideal–Real layout positions the MTN logo and white background at the top as conceptual aspiration, while the blue lower section grounds the action in lived experience. Central salience of the player, balanced color zones, and framing elements unify visual and textual components, guiding attention and reinforcing brand identity. Together, these multimodal strategies create a coherent discourse of optimism, inclusion, and empowerment, transforming MTN’s advertisement into an emotionally engaging and visually compelling representation of progress.

4.4 Image 4

The Airtel Christmas advertisement seamlessly integrates interactional and compositional meanings to convey warmth, intimacy, and shared festivity. Interactionally, the participants’ indirect gaze creates an offer that allows viewers to observe a private family moment while feeling emotionally connected, with medium close-up framing and warm lighting evoking familiarity and comfort, and a frontal, eye-level angle reinforcing equality and inclusiveness. Compositional elements reinforce this narrative through a vertical hierarchy positioning the Airtel logo as Ideal, the family scene as Centre, and the verbal text as Real, while the horizontal tripartite layout signifies continuity and shared experience. High naturalistic modality, central salience on the family, and subtle framing unify brand, message, and scene, collectively portraying Airtel as a human-centred brand that celebrates connection, love, and togetherness, embedding it within family life and festive communication.

4.5 Image 5

The multimodal composition of Image 5 integrates interactive and compositional meanings to convey symbolic significance, brand collaboration, and anticipation for an upcoming event. Interactionally, the direct gaze of the participant operates as a demand, inviting the viewer to recognize the symbolic “1” as a marker of readiness and shared excitement, while the combination of medium-long and close-up shots balances warmth with formality, and the high-angle perspective enhances authority and credibility. The interplay of red, black, and gold tones heightens sensory realism and aesthetic appeal, fostering anticipation and authenticity aligned with the event’s promotional purpose. Compositional meaning reinforces this engagement through vertical and horizontal structuring: logos of Voice of Africa and Airtel occupy the top to signify partnership, the central “1 day to go” text serves as the focal message, and the lower text grounds context, while the central golden “1” achieves maximum salience. Cohesive framing and a unified color palette create visual harmony, symbolizing collaboration and shared purpose. Together, these multimodal strategies fuse emotional appeal with compositional coherence, effectively communicating excitement and reinforcing the synergy between the partnering brands.

4.6 Image 6

Image 6 strategically combines interactive and compositional meanings to foreground MTN’s corporate identity and enhance brand recognition through simplicity and symbolic prominence. Operating as a demand visual, the MTN logo directly engages the viewer, while the close personal distance and frontal orientation establish familiarity and inclusiveness, positioning the brand as approachable and central to everyday communication. The warm yellow background evokes optimism, energy, and friendliness, aligning with MTN’s brand ethos, while the abstract, schematic design emphasizes symbolic clarity over realism, and the bold contrast of yellow, blue, and white ensures visibility and memorability. Compositional features reinforce these interactive elements through a centralized layout, high salience, and cohesive framing, with the logo’s internal horizontal flow, from “M” to “T” to “N”, symbolically conveying continuity, connection, and innovation, and the blue elliptical frame adding distinction and exclusivity. Collectively, these multimodal strategies create a minimalist yet impactful design that communicates MTN’s confidence, accessibility, and leadership in the telecommunications sector.

5. Discussion  

The multimodal analysis of the six selected advertisements reveals a consistent pattern in how MTN and Airtel construct interactional and compositional meanings to communicate their corporate values, shape audience perception, and evoke emotional identification. Drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual grammar, the findings show that both brands systematically deploy gaze, distance, angle, modality, salience, framing, and spatial organization to reinforce discourses of credibility, inclusivity, empowerment, and connectivity. Interactional meanings operate as the interface between viewer and represented participants, with most images adopting the offer type, where characters gaze away from the viewer to create authenticity and naturalness. In images featuring everyday transactions, family affection, sporting energy, or celebratory scenes, the use of medium shots, naturalistic modality, and eye-level perspectives invites the viewer into shared spaces of warmth, trust, and social equality. These visual choices transform commercial communication into moments of social experience, positioning the viewer not as a detached observer but as a participant in the brands’ narratives of optimism and communal progress. Compositional meanings extend these interactional effects by visually organizing information to reflect ideological intent. The Ideal–Real structure appears prominently across the advertisements, with upper segments presenting aspirational or symbolic meanings and lower segments anchoring these ideals in practical consumer experience. Balanced framing, clear information flow, and cohesive colour palettes, especially MTN’s dominant yellow and Airtel’s expressive red, ensure coherence and emotional resonance. Human figures are centrally foregrounded to maintain relational salience, while colour saturation and contrast highlight brand identity and enhance sensory realism. When viewed together, the interactional and compositional resources form a coherent multimodal strategy through which both brands stage social relationships and articulate national aspirations. MTN’s visuals consistently foreground energy, inclusivity, and empowerment, aligning with a discourse of youth vitality and collective advancement, while Airtel’s visuals highlight affection, technological reliability, and emotional connection. These patterns show that Nigerian telecommunication advertising uses multimodality not only for aesthetic appeal but as a semiotic tool for socio-economic and cultural positioning. By embedding values of empowerment, equality, and connectivity into their visual grammars, the advertisements transcend product promotion and become cultural symbols of modernity, aspiration, and shared identity, demonstrating how multimodal discourse effectively bridges technology and emotion, corporate ideology and lived experience.

5. Conclusion

This study investigated how Nigerian telecommunication brands, MTN and Airtel, construct interactional and compositional meanings in their Instagram advertisements to communicate brand values, shape audience perception, and foster emotional engagement. Drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) Visual Grammar, the analysis focused on interactional meaning, which explains how visual choices create relationships between viewers and represented participants, and compositional meaning, which accounts for how the arrangement of visual elements generates ideological structure and interpretive coherence. The multimodal analysis of six purposively selected advertisements revealed a consistent visual–semiotic pattern in which the brands deploy gaze, perspective, distance, colour, and framing as deliberate communicative resources. The interactional meanings showed that MTN and Airtel frequently use offer-type gazes, where participants look away from the viewer, to create authenticity and naturalism. By embedding the viewer within everyday social contexts such as family moments, sports scenes, and communal celebrations, the advertisements transform commercial content into recognisable social experiences, thereby fostering inclusion, warmth, and emotional resonance that reinforce the brands’ ethos of connectivity and empowerment. The compositional meanings extended these interactional functions by organising visual information within the Ideal–Real schema, with aspirational meanings, such as innovation, empowerment, and progress, consistently placed in upper segments, while concrete depictions of accessibility, human connection, and service delivery appeared in the lower segments. This structure symbolically links corporate ideals with lived realities. Balanced framing, visual symmetry, and brand-specific colour saturation, especially MTN’s yellow and Airtel’s red, served as modality markers that enhanced realism, guided viewer attention, and strengthened brand distinctiveness. The synergy of interactional and compositional meanings revealed a coherent multimodal strategy through which the brands position themselves not merely as telecommunication providers but as agents of national progress, unity, and technological modernity. MTN’s representations foreground vitality, empowerment, and inclusivity, while Airtel’s visuals emphasise affection, reliability, and interpersonal connection. Together, they project a discourse of optimism and social cohesion aligned with Nigeria’s collective aspirations. The study concludes that Nigerian telecommunication advertisements use multimodality as a persuasive and ideological tool, integrating interactional and compositional resources to construct brand identities embedded in the nation’s sociocultural fabric. Through the interplay of gaze, distance, perspective, colour, and layout, the advertisements encode values of trust, equality, and connectivity, transforming visual communication into a semiotic space where technology and emotion converge. In the Nigerian context, where visual media often reflect collective identity and communal ethos, these advertisements function as cultural narratives that both mirror and shape public perceptions of belonging and progress. The findings affirm the analytical strength of Visual Grammar for digital advertising analysis while highlighting the importance of contextualising multimodal theory within African semiotic environments. Future research may broaden this inquiry by exploring other sectors and platforms to further understand how localised semiotic repertoires continue to redefine digital persuasion and cultural representation in Africa’s expanding media landscape.

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