Populist Communication on Social Media (original) (raw)

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.