How Do Female Populist Politicians Navigate Authenticity? A European Perspective

• In Event: Populism and Right-Wing Politics with a Gender Lens

Abstract

Global politics has been witnessing an increase in populist women who are joining leadership ranks in elective politics. While the political left has generally attracted and produced more women politicians than the right, populist women across the political spectrum reaching power have garnered media attention and given populism a female face. Gendered political communication literature is structured into three main strands: news media coverage of politicians, citizen perception, and self-presentation by politicians. While female politicians and populist radical right politicians are covered by the media in mostly competing frames, the coverage overlaps in terms of downplaying the politicians’ accomplishments and experience; however, media coverage of Marine Le Pen transgressed this assumption (Snipes & Mudde, 2022). Thus, a female populist in the political arena can produce more accurate media coverage than female leaders in general, who are usually portrayed through a stereotypical lens, and their male populist counterparts, who are portrayed through a stronger populist lens. Considering Jamieson’s (1995) double bind, women who are populist leaders and embrace a masculine persona could portray authenticity and thus have an edge over regular political women who are deemed inauthentic in doing so, because of violating gender norms. Populist female leaders need to demonstrate competence to succeed, and at the same time, need to conform to gender stereotypes pertaining to female politicians (Bast et al., 2022).
According to Holtz-Bacha (2022), “performing authenticity is inherent to the populist style” (p. 279), as an artifact of their pursuit of demonstrating closeness to common people and of showing their outsider status from the establishment. Authentic content on social media often relies on performances of “ordinary people in seemingly unscripted moments” (Enli, 2015, p. 121), projecting spontaneity and disruption through their rudeness. For instance, populist female leaders perform authenticity through framing themselves as truth-tellers among politically correct politicians, an authenticity grounded in criticism of mainstream media and use of social media to directly address the people (Enli & Rosenberg, 2018).
The current study explores how female populist leaders’ authenticity is negotiated between visual self-presentation and media framing. To understand the extent to which ‘populist authenticity’ is altered by the mainstream media, our study pursues two different, but complementary goals. First, we examine how Marine Le Pen (France), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), and Diana Șoșoacă (Romania) visually present themselves on social media, more precisely on their official Instagram profiles. We then look at how the visual representation of the aforementioned female populist leaders was framed in the media outlets with the highest ratings in each of the three countries: Le Figaro (France), Corriere della Serra (Italy), and Libertatea (Romania). The three female politicians under analysis present relevant similarities: all of them are populist, conservative, and were very vocal against restrictions that were put in place during the first year of the pandemic. This research draws on Luebke’s (2021) authenticity indicators and Steffan’s (2020) ideal versus populist campaigner frames to analyze visual content (N = 1,232) in order to assess how performed authenticity and mediated authenticity are negotiated into populist authenticity of the three female populist leaders analyzed, and thus proposes a model for populist authenticity.

References
Bast, J., Oschatz, C., & Renner, A. M. (2022). Successfully Overcoming the “Double Bind”? A Mixed-Method Analysis of the Self-Presentation of Female Right-wing Populists on Instagram and the Impact on Voter Attitudes. Political Communication, 1-25.
Enli, G. (2015). "Trust Me, I Am Authentic!": Authenticity Illusions in Social Media Politics. In The Routledge companion to social media and politics (pp. 121-136). Routledge.
Enli, G., & Rosenberg, L. T. (2018). Trust in the age of social media: Populist politicians seem more authentic. Social media+ society, 4(1), 2056305118764430.
Holtz-Bacha, C. (2022). Strategic Political Authenticity: How Populists Construct an Authentic Image. In Cultures of Authenticity (pp. 273-285). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Jamieson, K. H. (1995). Beyond the double bind: Women and leadership. Oxford University Press.
Luebke, S. M. (2021). Political authenticity: Conceptualization of a popular term. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 26(3), 635-653. DOI: 10.1177/1940161220948013
Snipes, A., & Mudde, C. (2020). “France's (Kinder, Gentler) Extremist”: Marine Le Pen, Intersectionality, and Media Framing of Female Populist Radical Right Leaders. Politics & Gender, 16(2), 438-470.
Steffan, D. (2020). Visual self-presentation strategies of political candidates on social media platforms: A comparative study. International Journal of Communication, 14, 23.

Authors

• Andreea Voina, Babes-Bolyai University

• Mihnea Simion Stoica, Babeș-Bolyai University