Digital Populism: The Affinity between Social Media and Parties’ Populist Communication Strategies

• In Event: Populism in the Press and Online

Abstract

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 right-wing 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.

Authors

• Nicole Ernst, U of Zurich

• Sven Engesser, TU of Dresden

• Florin Buechel, U of Zurich

• Sina Blassnig

• Frank Esser, U of Zurich