Populist Communication on Social Media

Communication & Society

Populist actors have more success than other parties on social media –particularly Facebook– where their posts receive higher levels of engagement. The entry of populist parties onto the Spanish political stage can spread the use of their rhetoric and influence citizens’ political decisions, affecting the configuration of supranational institutions such as the European Union. The aim of this study is to use a quantitative content analysis to verify the presence of populist discourse in the 844 messages published on Facebook by Spanish parties during the 2019 European Parliament election campaign and to analyse their impact on user interaction. The results show that the newest and most extremist parties monopolise the messages with empty, anti-elite populism. However, the use of exclusionary populist discourse is also detected in more moderate conservative parties. Populist parties, especially VOX, lead user interactions, irrespective of whether the populist style appears in the mess...

AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research

Recent scholarship demonstrated that Facebook is a convenient space for populist political communication as its unmediated and viral nature make populist appeals highly efficient in voters’ mobilization (Engesser et al., 2017). However, less attention has been paid to the way these populist messages appear on political actors’ communication, and what post- and page-level factors they are associated with. We investigate these questions in the context of the 2019 European Parliament (EP) election based on a unique cross-national dataset covering 12 European countries. In our research project we categorized more than 8,074 Facebook posts published on the main pages of 67 parties. Our findings show that the three dimensions of populist communication are used strategically different way and appear in different communication context. Anti-elitist messages are articulated in relation to economy, labor and social policy and immigration mostly by extreme parties. People-centrism is frequentl...

Populism has been defined in many different ways, mostly in regard to political ideology and political dynamics, but only in recent years in relation to communication variables. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the identification of a socially mediated type of populist communication profoundly affected by the specific nature of social media. It presents and discusses empirical evidence on Italy's populist and non-populist leaders that use Facebook regularly, and highlights the extent of the overflow of populist communication patterns and ideological features into mainstream political communication. Populist ideology fragments emerged in Italian leaders' Facebook posts, thus leading to two main conclusions: first, populism appears to be 'endemic' in the Italian online facebooksphere; second, political actors—even non-populist ones—do not disdain the adoption of typical populist rhetorics.

This paper aims to analyse the extent to which new political parties in Croatia and Slovenia use populist political communication discourse in social media. This paper focuses on two new parties that entered the parliament in the most recent elections: Živi zid (Human Blockade) in Croatia, and Združena levica (United Left) in Slovenia. The paper will analyse these parties’ political communication on Facebook. The main question guiding the analysis is: to what extent are new parties in Croatia and Slovenia populist in their political communication on Facebook? The method used in the paper will be content analysis, with a Facebook post as a unit of analysis. The content analysis will be performed on posts published over a period of two weeks prior to the general elections (electoral campaigns).

New Media & Society, 2020

This paper presents a longitudinal, structural study where party and citizen activity on Facebook is studied over a ten-year period, outlining the growing importance of audio-visual content for online campaigning purposes – as well as the rise of populist parties on the same platform. The study shows that an overall increased focus on video as a means of communication emerges as especially pertinent for native Facebook functionalities. This could have repercussions for how online political communication messages are fashioned – but also for the dependencies on platforms that are supposedly strengthened as parties make choices regarding where to invest their campaign resources. In terms of citizen engagement, the results indicate the dominance of populist parties, who have strengthened their positions on the studied platform. The dominance of populist actors will likely have repercussions for the algorithmic spread of political messages – as well as for the ways in which political messages are shaped.

2021

Populist politicians and political parties often prefer social media, especially Facebook, for their communication with the public. Populists, as well as radical left and right leaders and parties, especially those on the margins of the mainstream political system and with less access to traditional media, have seen in platforms like Facebook a gateway to direct communication with their audiences, in the wake of elections as well as in non-electoral periods. Despite this, comparative or in some cases, country-specific populist communication on social media remains rather under-studied. To fill this empirical gap, the study explores contemporary populist politicians’ use of various media sources in their Facebook communication strategy, as well as the legacy and alternative media networks that disseminate and amplify their messages. The analysis is carried out at two levels: a) a classification of the media sources that are shared by 17 official Facebook pages of main populist leader...

2021

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 822590. Any dissemination of results here presented reflects only the consortium's view. The Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Central European Journal of Communication, 2019

The research presented in this paper is based on analysis of the Facebook posts of five major Hungarian political parties over the course of the official campaign season leading up to the 2018 parliamentary elections. We conducted a mixed-method analysis on 795 Facebook posts. First, the main topics of the parties were collected. Second, the posts of the parties were analyzed from a populist communicational perspective. Third, we tried to find some correlations between the basic topics and the populist communicational categories. Finally, we outline possible differences and similarities between parties' communication. Our analysis shows that opposition parties did not have a common communicational strategy on Facebook while ruling parties emphasized both inner and exterior threats that could destabilize Hungary.

Contemporary Southeastern Europe, 2018

This paper aims to analyse the extent to which new political parties in Croatia and Slovenia use populist political communication discourse in social media. This paper focuses on two new parties that entered the parliament in the most recent elections: Živi zid (Human Blockade) in Croatia, and Združena levica (United Left) in Slovenia. The paper will analyse these parties' political communication on Facebook. The main question guiding the analysis is: to what extent are new parties in Croatia and Slovenia populist in their political communication on Facebook? The method used in the paper will be content analysis, with a Facebook post as a unit of analysis. The content analysis will be performed on posts published over a period of two weeks prior to the general elections (electoral campaigns).

2020

This article, having an Iberian circumscription, focuses on populist parties – the Portuguese Basta and the Spanish Vox –, specifically on their online communication conducted in the context of the 2019 European elections. Using the mixed method and having a corpus comprised of Facebook posts (n=40) and videos (n=4), a triple content analysis was conducted: quantitative, qualitative, and rhetorical. The results show that, in terms of substance in Facebook, the two political actors focus more on the building of a sense of ingroup favoritism – in order to explore the feeling of inclusion, being the posts with this thematic substance the most liked, shared, and commented –, are unequivocal in presenting themselves as representatives of popular sovereignty and do not denote conflict in national and European entities. In terms of style, the use of visual image reveals that there are more posts focused on positive emotionality. In the videos, the tone against Europe is more critical and the use of rhetorical diversity is noted, such as emotional bipolarity, Manichaeism, exemplification, use of question mark, recency effect, repetition, factual evidence.