Populism and Social Media: A comparative analysis of populists’ shared content and networks on Facebook (original) (raw)
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A comparative analysis of populists’ shared content and networks on Facebook
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...
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...
PICTURE-PERFECT POPULISM - TRACING THE RISE OF EUROPEAN POPULIST PARTIES ON FACEBOOK
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.
Populist Communication on Social Media
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.
Political communication on Facebook and populism. The 2019 European Parliament election in Spain
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...
Populism and social media: a global perspective
Media, Culture & Society, 2018
The link between the spread of social media and the recent surge of populism around the world remains elusive. A global, rather than Western, theory is required to explore this connection. Such a theory would need to pay particular attention to five questions, namely, the roots of populism, ideology and populism, the rise of theocratic populism, social media and non-populist politicians, and the embedding of social media in larger systems of communication. In this essay, I draw from a range of cross-cultural examples to argue that social media are inextricable from a dense web of highly diverse online and offline communicative practices. Like most other forms of political communication, populism is twice hybrid, in that it entails the ceaseless interaction between old and new media as well as between online and offline sites of communication. Populists never operate in a vacuum or indeed in a filter bubble: they share hybridly mediated spaces and arenas with other populists and with...