Nationalist populism

Archives of Criminology [Archiwum Kryminologii], 2021

This paper introduces the concept of algorithm-driven populism, considering whether it has a consonant or a conflicting relation with liberal democracy. The overall argument is that social media platforms are not just new media used by populists; algorithms have co-constituted a new form of populism. Based on a literature review that connected different fields of research together in order to elucidate the relation between populism and digital media, this article details a few important features of social media platforms, examining how they set up specific affordances that endanger the values of liberal democracy.

2018

In this paper, I want to introduce a(n digital) ethnographic approach to populism that understands populism as a (digitally) mediatized chronotopic communicative and discursive relation. Populism, I argue, is not only constructed in a (mediatized) communicative relation between journalists, politicians and academics, but also in the relation to citizens, activists and computational agency. Attention to all these actors, and the media they use, is of crucial importance if we want to understand populism. Digital media are not just new media that populists use, their algorithms and affordances reshape their populism. In times of digitalization, we cannot understand populism by only looking at ‘the input’, the frame that actors prepare for uptake, it is about the uptake as well. More concretely, I will argue that digital media have given birth to a new form of populism: algorithmic populism. Understanding and focusing on populism as a ‘communicative relation’ between all these human and non-human actors allows use to analyze ‘populism’ more precisely.

The American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research, 2022

In modern democracies, elections are always special events, as they structure the political debate, allow voters to choose their representatives, distribute political power and thus influence future policy. Especially in difficult times, politicians tend to give simple answers to difficult questions-in short, populism seems to be the "measure of all things" especially in election campaigns. Using the example of the 2019 National Council elections in Austria, this paper examines how populist the election campaign is conducted on the social media sites Facebook and Twitter.

Diggit Magazine, 2018

Digitalization gave birth to a new form of populism: algorithmic populism. If we want to understand contemporary populism, we should understand it in its social, political, economic and technological context. Algorithmic populism cannot be understood without taking the uptake and algorithmic activism in particular into account. Populism and computational agency In the digital age, political discourses are only to a small extent produced by politicians. Millions of citizens, activists, bots and even algorithms (re)produce political discourses (Maly, 2018). That is why it does not suffice to look at the input and why attention for the uptake is at least as important. The affordances of digital media and Web 2.0 push us towards understanding populism as a digitally mediated communicative relation between different human and non-human algorithmic actors. Digital media have fundamentally altered the fields of media and politics, and studying politics and populism in particular inevitably means that we should include these media in our analysis. Social media like Facebook and Twitter allow politicians to control their own voice and message, but they only control it within the given formats of the social medium they use. These media come with specific affordances and as such they not only shape the discourse; they contribute to the construction or destruction and distribution of the populist voice. The number of followers, likes and retweets are political facts. Digital media are not just intermediaries anymore – the message is not just distributed by digital media but also shaped and altered. Digital media and social media in particular are non-linear. They (re)shape and reorganize the communicative structure of the 'input'-discourse. They have agency and are best understood as mediators (Tufekci, 2015).

2020

Authors: Samuel Bennett, Artur Lipiński, Agnieszka Stępińska, David Abadi, Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Nicolas Hubé, Martin Baloge, Giuliano Bobba, Eglė Butkevičienė, Charlotte Brands, Agneta H Fischer, Bogdan Ianosev, Lena Karamanidou, Sune Klinge, Jiří Kocián, Umut Korkut, Jaume Magre, Moreno Mancosu, Adina Marincea, Dejan Matić, Luis Medir, Vaidas Morkevičius, Esther Pano, Franca Roncarolo, Osman Sahin, Antonella Seddone, Andrej Školkay, Gabriella Szabó, Emmanouil Tsatsanis, Giedrius Žvaliauskas This working paper presents the findings of quantitave and qualititave research into populist communication on Facebook. Specifically, we look at how populist politicians from all across Europe used Facebook in their campaigns for the European Parliamentary elections in May 2019 and compared this with a posts from July 2019. We start the paper with sections on research design and then outline the importance of social media for populist political communication. From here, we present the findings of our comparative research. We found that the use of Facebook varied widely around the bloc. Some countries–Spain, Italy, the UK, France, and Poland–display a more widespread use of social media and with more complex usage, whilst others, such as Lithuania, have a low usage level. As a result, we maintain that there is no, one online populist strategy currently in use. Instead, the frequency, tone and topic of social media usage by populist actors differs from country to country, actor to actor, and over time, with specific national contexts playing an important role.

Parties are adapting to the new digital environment in many ways; however, the precise relations between populist communication and social media are still hardly considered. This study compares populist communication strategies on Twitter and Facebook employed by a broad spectrum of left-wing, center, and rightwing political actors in six Western democracies. We conduct a semi-automated content analysis of politicians' social media statements (N = 1400) and find that populism manifests itself in a fragmented form and is mostly used by political actors at the extremes of the political spectrum (both right-wing and left-wing), by opposition parties, and on Facebook.

Dr. Negin Bavili, 2023

This research studies how social media has transformed the populist politics. Qualitative research study will be done by means of examining the case of populist politicians use of social media in Turkey in 14 May 2023. At the first sectition of research, the difference between main stream media and social media are clarified. At the second part of the resaerch, the relavence of social media in populist communication is studied. In this section the research attempts to answer why populist politicians prefer social media platforms? The third part of the study, will investigate how new social communicative tools like twitter and instagram contextualisatıon of new insights in to an old phenomenon of populism? In the Fourth section of the reseach, the case of Turkey's election will be investigated to see how use of social Media has affected populism in turkey? In brief, this research is a case study that looks how social media affected populist politicians in Turkey.

Shifting Baselines of Europe, 2017

El profesional de la información, 2020

During the last decades populism has become a mainstream ideology in Western democracies (Mudde, 2004; 2016). At the same time, the popularisation of digital platforms has facilitated the process of political communication while social networks have become one of the preferred communicative tools for political populists to spread their messages. Drawing on the idea that computational technologies allow a particular performance of populism (Baldwin-Philippi, 2019), this paper aims to foster a better theoretical understanding of how innovation in communication technologies contribute to the success of populism. It is argued that the characteristics of populism (a focus on ‘the people’, technological savviness and chameleonism) allow it to overcome most of the obstacles put in place by digital networks. In particular, populism is in an ideal situation to deal with the phenomena of context collapse in social media (Boyd; Marwick, 2011). Finally, it is argued that in the era of personali...

Populism is a relevant but contested concept in political communication research. It has been well-researched in political manifestos and the mass media. The present study focuses on another part of the hybrid media system and explores how politicians in four countries (AT, CH, IT, UK) use Facebook and Twitter for populist purposes. Five key elements of populism are derived from the literature: emphasizing the sovereignty of the people, advocating for the people, attacking the elite, ostracizing others, and invoking the 'heartland'. A qualitative text analysis reveals that populism manifests itself in a fragmented form on social media. Populist statements can be found across countries, parties, and politicians' status levels. While a broad range of politicians advocate for the people, attacks on the economic elite are preferred by left-wing populists. Attacks on the media elite and ostracism of others, however, are predominantly conducted by right-wing speakers. Overall, the paper provides an in-depth analysis of populism on social media. It shows that social media give the populist actors the freedom to articulate their ideology and spread their messages. The paper also contributes to a refined conceptualization and measurement of populism in future studies.