Collective Identities on Social Media

Eklundh, Emmy

doi:10.4324/9781351205719-7

Cited by 4 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Finally, at the end of the story, we can also re-read all these results under a different light. Moving from a radical democratic theory perspective, we could contend that by using a Laclauian framework which sees politics as equal to hegemony as equal to populism, one can conclude that populist actors are no different from other political actors: emotions and affects are always central to any political identity (Eklundh, 2019). In this regard, we could argue that the division between the emotional and rational in politics serves to sediment exclusionary practices against newcomers and challengers of the status quo (ibid.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Populism and emotions: a comparative study using Machine Learning

Caiani

Cocco

2023

Riv. ital. sci. polit.

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This study aims to unpack the mobilization of emotions in the political discourse of populist and non-populist parties and above all, across ‘varieties of populism’ (right wing vs. left wing or hybrid). Is there an empirical connection between emotions and populism? Are all types of populisms alike with regards to the emotional appeals within their political discourse? Focusing on Italy as a crucial case for populist communication and using a novel methodological approach based on supervised machine learning, it systematically investigates the intensity and trends of specific emotions in political discourses (institutional and informal, i.e. leaders’ speeches) of all Italian political parties over the last 20 years, for a corpus of more than 13,000 sentences analysed. The findings confirm that (i) populists tend to use more (and a broader repertoire of) emotional appeals than non-populist parties; however (ii) overall, there is an increase in the use of these appeals in the Italian political party discourse over time, especially in terms of negative emotions; and, most importantly, (iii) different types of emotions are mobilized by different types of populisms. Right wing populism mainly uses negative emotions while left wing or hybrid populism employs positive emotional appeals. The communication arena (party manifestoes vs. speeches) nevertheless does matter in the degree and types of emotions mobilized by political actors. This study identifies important implications for research on emotional appeals in politics, populist communication and political campaigning, and populist contagion from an emotion-based perspective.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Populism and emotions: a comparative study using Machine Learning

Caiani

Cocco

2023

Riv. ital. sci. polit.

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“…We share Eklundh's (2019Eklundh's ( , 2020 view that affects and emotions inform all kinds of politics-particularly populism. Affectivity is central for Laclaudian populism Palestrino, 2022;Stavrakakis, 2007) as the force of discourse, which explains the potency of populist articulations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Populism has been defined as a ‘discursive repertoire’ or a sedimented range of significations of the ‘people’ (De Cleen & Stavrakakis, 2017, 2020), as a signifier in discourses about populism (De Cleen, Glynos & Mondon, 2018; Dean & Maiguashca, 2020), as a discursive frame (Aslanidis, 2016), or as a signifier articulated by different political camps (Dean & Maiguashca, 2020; Mondon & Winter, 2020). This tradition includes an emphasis on left‐wing populism and its productive component for democracy (Custodi, 2021; Eklundh, 2019, 2020; Katsambekis & Kioupkiolis, 2019; Prentoulis, 2021; Stavrakakis et al, 2016) but also on right‐wing populist movements and parties (De Cleen, Glynos, and Mondon 2021; Glynos & Mondon, 2019; Palonen & Sunnercrantz, 2021). Some address performative aspects of populist politics, like ‘strong,’ mostly male, leadership (Casullo, 2020; Moffitt, 2016; Szebeni & Salojärvi, 2022; Vulović, 2022) or even technocratic leaders (Hartikainen, 2021).…”

Section: The Relevance Of the Laclaudian Tradition And The Ontic–onto...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Nationalism, populism or peopleism? Clarifying the distinction through a two‐dimensional lens

Vulovic

Palonen

2022

Nations and Nationalism

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Prompted by recent scholarly debates on the distinction between populism and nationalism, we elaborate on the Laclaudian understanding of populism as an antagonistic form of us-building/community-making that relies on the extension of equivalential chains between demands. From this heuristic perspective, populism can be understood as an empty form to be filled with different contents, such as nationalism. Our radically anti-essentialist stance combines Laclau's formalist conceptualisation of populism and Brubaker's work on nationalism. We highlight the ontological dimension of populism, as a form of us-building, and the ontic dimension, as an array of discursive repertoires that fill the form, such as 'the people' for peopleism. We explore the ontological-ontic distinction through the case of Narodism in Serbia. Conceptualising populism two-dimensionally contributes both to debates on the 'core' of populism and to cases where articulations of 'the people' coincide with expressions of nationhood, civilisationalism and culturalism, rather than being entirely the same.

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“…One could argue that identification rests not so much on rational choice, but on affects. However, the hegemony of rationalism has excluded emotions from socio-political analyses, framing parties and movements appealing to emotions as folksy or mad (Eklundh, 2019). This framework missed the significance of discourse, be it words, gestures or symbols, in the structuring of socio-political reality (Stavrakakis, 1999).…”

Section: Beyond Reason? Populist Rupture Performativity and Identific...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Donald Trump in Power: Discourse, Performativity, Identification

Venizelos

2022

Critical Sociology

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Donald Trump’s style is often described as provocative and his administration as catastrophic. Despite this, his popularity remained high throughout his term in office, and in the 2020 US elections, he received 10 million votes more than in 2016. This paper investigates the paradox of political identification through a discursive, performative and stylistic framework. It argues that policy outcomes and rhetorical consistency do not suffice in understanding identification. Rather, transgression – which is typical of populist performativity – plays a pivotal role in interpellating affective collective subjectivities. This article investigates the case of Donald Trump, from his emergence in 2015 until the 2021 Capitol insurgence. It employs discourse and visual analysis to study Trump’s rhetoric and performativity, integrating this with in-depth interviews and ethnographic research to examine the ways his style resonated with his supporters. It concludes that charismatic performativity and transgression play a crucial role in political identification regardless of the quality of institutional performance.

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Collective Identities on Social Media

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Populism and emotions: a comparative study using Machine Learning

Populism and emotions: a comparative study using Machine Learning

Nationalism, populism or peopleism? Clarifying the distinction through a two‐dimensional lens

Donald Trump in Power: Discourse, Performativity, Identification

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