Misinformation, Populist Rhetoric, and Polarized Attitudes in Mexico

• In Event: The New Polarization in Latin America and Its Implications for Democracy

Abstract

Research in political science has increasingly shown that politicians’ framing of the social and political world is essential for acti¬vating and directing citizens’ political attitudes (Busby, Doyle, Hawkins, and Wiesehomeier 2019; Bos, Van Der Brug, and De Vreese 2013; Hameleers, Bos, and de Vreese 2016; Hawkins, Gubler, Busby, and Carter 2014). Following this tradition and focusing on a single-case study, in this work we explore the links between politicians’ populist rhetoric and the activation of polarization among citizens. Specifically, this work concerns which of the attributes of populist rhetoric provokes polarization among citizens, proposing the hypothesis that slanted causal policy stories, that is, misinformation, generate polarization.

Causal stories are empirical claims about sequences of events between certain policies and certain outcomes in the social and political world (Stokes 2001; Stone 1989; Walsh and Sloman 2004). Populist rhetoric often contains slanted stories. It portrays issues in a biased way to make them fit their normative narratives. As we hypothesize, slanted causal policy stories may strengthen polarized sentiments among citizens.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has embraced populist rhetoric, according to the ideational definition of populism (Sarsfield 2022; Team Populism 2021). Thus, this paper seeks to inquire into the role of slanted causal policy stories in the activation of polarized attitudes at the individual level in Mexico. To do so, we employ machine learning techniques, mainly from the field of natural language processing (NLP), to apply to both AMLO’s posts on Facebook and Twitter accounts and to his followers’ comments. Preliminary findings suggest that slanted causal stories indeed activate citizens’ polarized attitudes.

Authors

• Rodolfo Sarsfield, Autonomous University of Queretaro

• Zacarias Abuchanab, National University of Guillermo Brown