Populists Prefer Social Media Over Talk Shows: An Analysis of Populist Messages and Stylistic Elements Across Six Countries

Abstract

Today, it has become almost impossible to read the news without noticing a reference to populism. Scholarly interest in this transnational phenomenon has been growing because an increasing number of politicians and parties are apparently resorting to populist communication repertoires. Several studies analyzed the utilization of populist rhetoric (e.g., Wodak, 2015), populist messages (e.g., Rooduijn, 2014), or populist communication styles (e.g., Jagers & Walgrave, 2007) and demonstrated that investigating populist communication is crucial to fully understand the rise of political populism, as populism is mostly reflected in the oral, written, and visual communication of political actors (Aalberg & de Vreese, 2017). In a hybrid (Chadwick, 2017) or high choice media environment (van Aelst et al., 2017), politicians have gained new options for action because they have a greater number of communication channels-which differ in their affordances-at their disposal. Hence, it has become increasingly difficult to understand the role of a single medium in isolation (Bode & Vraga, 2017). These difficulties call for a comparative analysis that considers different media systems and different channel types. This type of analysis is especially important in the context of populism because there is conclusive empirical evidence that features of specific media channels influence the amount of populist communication (Bos & Brants, 2014; Cranmer, 2011; Ernst, Engesser, Büchel, Blassnig, & Esser, 2017). Our study compares the communicative self-presentation of political actors in three prototypical media channels for populism, Facebook, Twitter, and political talk shows, across six Western democracies. In addition to the particularities of the channels, we investigate whether the characteristics of a political party influence the amount of populist communication. Although populism in Western democracies is often associated with right-wing political actors, several studies with a wider scope have revealed that parties at both edges 823358S MSXXX10.1177/2056305118823358Social Media <span class="symbol" cstyle="Mathematical">+</span> SocietyErnst et al.

The personality of populists: provocateurs, charismatic leaders, or drunken dinner guests?

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Political migration discourses on social media: a comparative perspective on visibility and sentiment across political Facebook accounts in Europe

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

“…The third age of political communication is marked by six tendencies: media abundance, intensified professionalisation of political communication, increased competitive pressures, a centrifugal process of diversification, changes in the ways people perceive politics, popularisation of anti-elitist stances, and populism (Blumler & Kavanagh, 1999, p. 219). Expansion of the social media must also be added to this list since digital platforms offer numerous communicative opportunities for populism (Casero-Ripollés, Feenstra & Tormey, 2016;Mazzoleni & Bracciale, 2018;Ernst et al, 2019).…”