How Emotional Are Populists Really? Factors Explaining Emotional Appeals in the Communication of Political Parties

Abstract

Are populists really more emotional than mainstream parties? The alleged link between populism and emotional communication has barely been subject to systematic empirical scrutiny. I use literature on populist communication and appraisal theory to generate expectations about which political parties use which emotional appeals. I test these claims by applying a novel emotional dictionary to a large set of text data including more than 700,000 press releases and tweets from three European countries. As expected, I find that populist parties use significantly more negative emotional appeals (anger, fear, disgust, sadness) and less positive emotional appeals (joy, enthusiasm, pride, hope) than mainstream parties. Furthermore, I find that political actors adapt the usage of emotional appeals to different purposes depending on the communication medium and the politicians' status level. This study entails important implications for the research on emotional appeals in politics and populist communication.

Communication, Social Networks and Sustainable Development Goals: A Reflection From the Perspective of Social Marketing and Happiness Management in the General Elections in Spain

“…Engagement is another issue that has been analysed on numerous occasions (Garz et al, 2020;Sally and Wickramasinghe, 2020). Another topic that has been of particular concern to researchers in this context has been the persuasion technics, the emotional tone and content of Facebook conversations, with a negative emotional connotation being the general tone (Bronstein, 2013;Abejón and Mayoral, 2017;Falck et al, 2020;Park et al, 2021;Widmann, 2021). Other authors approach this topic from the perspective of social network analysis, such as the research by Bíró et al (2016).…”

Fear, Hope, and COVID‐19: Emotional Elite Rhetoric and Its Impact on the Public During the First Wave of the COVID‐19 Pandemic

“…Overall, this study adds to a strand of literature that researches the strategic use of emotional rhetoric in political communication, arguing that emotional style is an important part of party competition (Kosmidis et al, 2019 ). It further contributes to research on the importance of distinct emotions for populist actors (Widmann, 2021 ) and shows how distinct emotional appeals can contribute to or be embedded in populist narratives during public health crises (Lasco, 2020 ) and beyond. In addition, the results add to a strand of literature researching the consequences of emotional rhetoric by showing that changes in emotional elite messages correlate with how the public talks about political issues, thereby potentially impacting attitudes individuals hold (Gross & Brewer, 2007 ; Stapleton & Dawkins, 2021 ).…”

“…Moreover, research has found that emotional appeals are dependent on the incumbency status and the position in the political space. While government parties make extensive usage of positive emotional appeals, opposition parties and especially parties on the fringes of the political spectrum, such as populist challenger parties, make greater usage of negative emotional appeals (Widmann, 2021 ). Yet, does this pattern change during a global health crisis?…”

“…In routine times, populist challengers try to attack the competence of mainstream competitors, such as government actors, by bringing up new divisive issues and using antiestablishment rhetoric (De Vries & Hobolt, 2020 ). In doing so, research has shown that they make extensive usage of negative emotions such as fear (Widmann, 2021 ). Yet, during the COVID‐19 crisis, increased levels of fear might benefit their political competitors, as it can increase trust in governments (Schraff, 2020 ; Vasilopoulos et al, 2022 ) and compliance with governmental advice (Jørgensen et al, 2021 ; Vasilopoulos et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Furthermore, the general pattern found is that incumbents make more use of positive emotional appeals, while opposition parties (and especially challenger parties on the fringes of the political spectrum) make greater use of negative emotional language. This does not only apply to general positive or negative sentiment, but also to discrete emotions (Widmann, 2021 ). Yet there is reason to believe that this pattern changes during a global public health crisis.…”