Populism 2.0, digital democracy and the new ‘enemies of the people’ (original) (raw)
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Social media -a catalyst for civil society movements and a tool for populism. Evidence from Romania
Civil Szemle, 2023
The paper aims to evaluate the potential of social media in shaping civic and electoral behavior by analyzing several civic protest movements as well as the role of social networks in the last legislative elections held in Romania in December 2020. It examines both sides of social media, namely its use for organizing and supporting civic movements, and its use as a tool for the accession of a far right populist party to the Parliament. The selected cases demonstrate that social networks are a catalyst for civil society movements pillared by people who are demanding to have their share in the political process and a tool for maximizing the votes of a new populist party. Social media acts as a breeding ground for a vibrant civil society. Through social networks people connect with each other, organize themselves and discover the feeling of "togetherness". Civil society thus becomes an actor that politicians must take into account in the decision-making process, as the civic movements presented here demonstrate. The problems that arise are the way social media is used and the social responsibility of social platforms. The good side of social media, as platforms for organizing and mobilizing people for right causes that support democracy, citizens' rights, the anti-corruption fight, is often diminished by its dark side, which means fake news, manipulation or even incitement to hatred and violence. The social responsibility requires finding a balance between the freedom of expression, one of the greatest gains of modern democracies, and the need to reduce misinformation and manipulation that take place on digital channels.
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).
European Elections, National Agenda: Facebook in the 2019 Romanian EP Elections
Central European journal of communication, 2020
Politicians and political campaigns are not inadvertent to the development of social media platforms as environments that allow access to a larger audience. Not relying solely on the traditional media as a mouthpiece for their messages and taking matters into their own hands off ers new segues for analyzing political communication. However, not all elections are of equal interest, both for the electorate and for the candidates, as second-order election theory suggests (Reif & Schmitt, 1980; Hix & Marsh, 2004). Th is paper investigates the area situated at the intersection of these two research directions. Th is quantitative study aims to analyze how Romanian political parties and candidates used Facebook in the electoral campaign for the European Parliament, in May 2019. Th e study follows the correlation between Facebook metrics, like frequency of posts and the popularity of the pages, and the political agendas refl ected in each party’s Facebook posts. Th e conclusions are consist...
"Protect our homeland!" Populist communication in the 2018 Hungarian election campaign on Facebook
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.
UHIVE, 2017
On 18th of January 2017, in the capital of Romania, thousands of people began the protests against the reported plans of the newly elected government to grand prison pardons and decriminalize certain offences. What started as a simple protest in Bucharest, due to an online mobilization on the social network Facebook and the involvement of the youth people, the protests soon spread in other Romanian cities where people went out on the streets. Based on the Romanian protests, the main purpose of this article is to analyze the impact of the social network on the protest against corruption that occurred in Romania in January 2017. Employing a theoretical framework regarding the role of social networks as a method of political participation, this article will present the influence of network Facebook, which led to an online mobilization of people and protest against the implementation of pardon and amnesty law by Social-Democrat Party. Content analysis will be conducted to answer (a) how online mobilization in a society can influence and change the implementation of governmental decisions (b) how young people in Romania act, rely on participated in protests and (c) if social media can closes the distance between the society and the politics.
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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).
Romanian Rezist Protest. How Facebook Helps Fight Political Corruption
Revista de Cercetare si Interventie Sociala, 2019
Immediately after the parliamentary elections in December 2016, the Social Democratic Party wants to amend the criminal legislation and pardon through an revolting ordinance, which caused a third wave of protests in post-December Romania. The core of the protests was made of social activists who held the position of network nodes, had previous experience and acted as rallying coagulant factors in the January-February 2017 events. In the present study, we focused our attention only on the online community: Corruption kills (in Romanian: Coruptia ucide), this being the oldest and most active in the Romanian social media. We wanted to show to what extent the representatives of this community managed to: a) increase the number of fans (involved) who supported the cause of the anti-corruption protests; and b) how Facebook was used as an interactive communication tool for users between January and February 2017. The Corruption Kills Community was perceived as a powerful tool of organization and rallying in the 2017 protest.
Facebook was first used by the political candidates in a presidential campaign in Romania in 2009. Social media and web 2.0 changed the way people were interacting, so the politicians had to adapt their communication to these social changes. Politicians reacted mechanically to the fact that in the past years more and more Romanians started to use social media. The aim of the article is to explain how the Romanian politicians acted in response to what happened in the online communication: did the left wing or the right wing candidates use social media to convey electoral messages? Did the left wing or the right wing radicals communicate using social media? To analyze the political speech, the content analysis method was applied on the posts in the electoral campaign on the personal blogs and on the official Facebook accounts of the candidates. This study answers the question on whether the Romanian left wing or right wing adapted its communication faster to the online environment during 2009 presidential campaign.
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.
Populism and the Web: An Introduction to the Book
Populism and the Web: Communicative Practices of Parties and Movements in Europe, eds. M. Pajnik, B. Sauer, 2018
The Web plays an increasingly important role in the communication strategies of political parties and movements which utilize it for promoting ideas and ideologies as well as mobilization and campaigning strategies. This book explores the role of the Web for right-wing populist political parties and movements across Europe. Analysing these groups discourses and practices of online communication it shows how social media is used to spread ideas and mobilize supporters, whilst also excluding constructed “others” such as migrants, Muslims, women or LGBT persons. Expert contributors provide evidence of a shift in the strategies of mainstream parties as they also engage in “internet populism” and suggest ways that progressive movements can and do respond to counter these developments. Topics are explored using a cross-country analysis which does not neglect the particularities of the national contexts.