A Populist Zeitgeist? The Communication Strategies of Western and Latin American Political Leaders on Facebook

Abstract

By focusing on the Facebook activities of eighty-three political leaders from twenty-six Western and Latin American countries, we analyze their reliance on elements of populist communication for their competitive strategies. By integrating both a communication-centered and an actor-centered approach to the study of populism, we tackle four major research questions: Do populist and non-populist leaders adopt similar communication strategies on Facebook? Is there any evidence of the so-called populist zeitgeist in such arena? What different combinations between the so-called three “elements of populist communication” characterize the communication strategies of political leaders on Facebook? Are there major differences between Western and Latin American leaders? The results of our analysis provide an important contribution to the existing literature on populism and political communication in different respects. First, the populist zeitgeist “thesis” does not apply to the communication strategies of political leaders on Facebook. Second, the spread of elements of populist communication in Latin America is considerably lower in comparison with Western countries, irrespective of party ideological background. Finally, this paper identifies all the logical combinations that can occur between the interplay of the different elements of populist communication, thus enabling the classification of the communication strategies employed by political leaders on Facebook.

Communicating Populism

“…This volume answers the call for more communication-centered comparative research into the populism voiced in recent years (e.g., Aalberg et al, 2017 ;de Vreese et al, 2018 ). Whereas attitudes, voting behavior, or party platforms have long been addressed in comparative studies (e.g., Oesch, 2008 ;Pauwels, 2014 ;Rooduijn & Akkerman, 2017 ;Rooduijn, de Lange, & van der Brug, 2014 ), comparative approaches to populist political communication by politicians and parties (e.g., Ernst et al, 2017 ;Zulianello et al, 2018 ), the media (e.g., Wettstein et al, 2018a), and citizens (e.g., Müller et al, 2017 ;Hameleers et al, 2018 ;Wirz et al, 2018 ) have only recently become more frequent. This book seeks to add to these studies and contribute to answering several key questions regarding populist political communication.…”

“…Several recent publications have pointed out that despite the huge importance of, and changes in, the media environment, many analyses of populism have demonstrated a blind spot when it comes to the media and communicative processes (e.g., Aalberg, Esser, Reinemann, Strömbäck, & de Vreese, 2017 ;de Vreese et al, 2018 ). This has begun to change recently with publications focusing on, for example, online activities of populist actors (e.g., Engesser, Fawzi, & Larsson, 2017 ;Krämer, 2017 ;Zulianello, Albertini, & Ceccobelli, 2018 ), media coverage of populism (e.g., Wettstein, Esser, Schulz, Wirz, & Wirth, 2018b ), and the eff ects of populist elements of communication upon citizens (e.g., Müller et al, 2017 ;Hameleers et al, 2018 ;Wirz et al, 2018 ). However, there remain a lot of unanswered questions.…”

“…Again, such comparative studies of populist communication have long been scarce. Only recently, scholars have made considerable progress in this respect by applying internationally comparative designs to investigate the rhetoric of populists (e.g., Ernst, Engesser, Büchel, Blassnig, & Esser, 2017 ;Zulianello et al, 2018 ), media coverage of populism (e.g., Wettstein et al, 2018a), citizen engagement with populist communication (e.g., Bobba, Cremonesi, Mancosu, & Seddone, 2018 ), and eff ects of populist communication (e.g., Müller et al, 2017 ;Hameleers et al, 2018 ). Ideally, such comparisons take into account the multi-level structure of factors infl uencing the senders, mediators, and receivers of populist communication by including, for example, contextual information regarding country characteristics such as unemployment rates or migration fi gures into their analysis (e.g., Hameleers et al, 2018 ), but this also poses considerable conceptual and methodological challenges.…”

“…Overall, only a comparative analysis can reveal and explain similarities and diff erences in the communicative aspects of populism across countries. However, as several authors have noted, there is still a lack of comparative analyses of populist communication-even if an increasing number of such studies have been published recently (e.g., Hameleers et al, 2018 ;Wettstein et al, 2018b ;Schulz, Wirth, & Müller, 2018 ;Zulianello et al, 2018 ). It is therefore still necessary to add to our understanding of populism by looking at it from a comparative perspective and to identify contextual (and individual-level) factors that might help to explain diff erences between countries.…”

The Inclusionary Populist Communication Style on Facebook: The Case of Ada Colau in Barcelona

“…Jagers and Walgrave (2007) link populism with a certain style of communication, and there is considerable agreement with regard to identifying a populist style in the domain of political communication (de Vreese et al, 2018;Zulianello, Albertini & Ceccobelli, 2018;Block & Negrine, 2017;Casero-Ripollés, Sintes & Franch, 2017;Bracciale & Martella, 2017;Aalberg et al, 2016;Rooduijn, 2014). This has four components that fit with Mudde's (2004) definition as well as with the typology of anti-political rhetoric described by Sorice (2013).…”