1The paper provides an empirical verification of the concept of populism as communication phenomenon. It moves away from the actor-centered approach, where parties are perceived as populistic or non-populistic according to their ideological positioning. The populism as communication approach assumes that any party may present populist content when communicating with the voters. In the analysis, we employ the data from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom during three different periods: EU elections 2014 (second-order), national parliamentary elections 2017 (first-order), and a non-electoral period from January 2018. The paper is based on the 3,564 posts produced by political parties on Facebook during six weeks.
2The article first contains a comprehensive discussion of the theories and proposes the hypotheses, it is followed by the method description of the data and results are presented. The last part is dedicated to the discussion of the results.
3Populism is everywhere: it is evident in the news, in public discourses, and in political communication research. Over the past 30 years, the support for populist radical right-wing parties rose to a historic high (Tartar, 2017). Populism has become a ubiquitous research topic – not only due to the upsurge of right-wing and left-wing populist leaders, parties, and movements but also because populism is a mesmerizing phenomenon. It is notoriously vague (Canovan, 1999), “immaîtrisable, incontrôlable et inutilisable” (Pranchère, 2020), promiscuous (Oliver and Rahn, 2016), chameleonic (Taggart, 2000), and an opaque zeitgeist (Mudde, 2004) at the conceptual level, and therefore poses an irresistible challenge to social scientists.
4Recently, Claes H. de Vreese and his co-authors (2018, p. 3) evoked the notion of “a new generation of populism researchers”. In this section, we argue that an understanding of populism as communication (Mazzoleni and Bracciale, 2018) indeed enables researchers to bridge the current debates on whether or not populism is an ideology, a discourse, a mobilization strategy, an organizational type, or a political logic (Laclau, 2005; Moffit and Tormey, 2014; Zulianello et al., 2018).
5In line with C. H. de Vreese and his co-authors (2018), we view populism as a communication phenomenon that includes typical elements of content (i.e. people, anti-elitism, and the exclusion of out-groups) and of style (i.e. evoking fear, oversimplification, and style of language). Accordingly, “the emphasis is on populist messages as independent ‘phenomenon-as-such’ and no longer on a particular party family or type of politician” (de Vreese et al., 2018, p. 3). We see populism not only as actors’ attributes, but mostly as actors’ actions. We do not view populism in terms of an either/or, populist/non-populist dichotomy, but as a phenomenon that varies in degree. As a consequence, the proposed paper does not concentrate on populism as an ideology or actor-centred approach (Mudde, 2004), on its ideational character (Mazzoleni, 2008; Pauwels, 2011; Hawkins et al., 2012), its critique as “thin ideology can […] become so thin as to lose its conceptual validity and utility” (Moffit and Tormey, 2014, p. 383) or on the populism “d’en-bas” (Ivaldi, 2018).
6Populism, within the context of this paper, refers to three core elements of the content of communication: the people, anti-elitism, and the exclusion of out-groups.
- People: essentially, populism appeals to the people – not for the sake of the people as such, but in opposition to the values and ideas of elites and certain minority groups who do not belong to “the people”. As an element of populism, the people is a rhetorical construct that is instrumental and that can be exploited, and its meaning is not the same as the citizens or the population of a territory. As a united, homogenous group of ordinary people, the silent majority (Oliver and Rahn, 2016), the notion of the people is a fiction. In this view, the people are united, solidary, guided by common sense, endowed with the same interests, values and opinions, and can be invoked into many forms such as the nation, peasants, voters or the proletariat (Rooduijn, 2014). In populism, the people are in a default state of crisis, threatened by others from the outside, which is why populism has been associated with a Manichaean perspective and a dualist world view of Us vs. Them.
- Anti-elitism: similar to the people, the elite refers to a homogenous group with its identity based on antagonism directed at the people (Engesser et al., 2017a). Elites are found in the political, economic and legal systems, in the media, and in supranational institutions. The core idea behind anti-elitism is the attribution of blame. When conjuring up a people in crisis, elites are blamed as either unable or unwilling to represent the people’s will and to respect the people’s sovereignty. Populism’s opposition to complexity is connected to anti-elitism: “complexity is a self-serving racket perpetuated by professional politicians” (Canovan, 1999, p. 6) suggesting that policy should be guided by the people’s common sense that is actually pure and simple. The degree of antagonism also varies: populism always presents itself as distinct from elites but, rather than blaming or shaming elites, it may oppose other groups in society as well (Moffit and Tormey, 2014).
- Out-groups: some scholars contend that the exclusion of out-groups is not a key feature and element of populism as such, but only one of radical right-wing populism. We argue, along with C. H. de Vreese and his co-authors (2018), that the exclusion of out-groups is not a defining element of all variants of populism, but is one that features both on the right and the left of the populist spectrum. The exclusion of others constitutes the horizontal dimension of populism’s inherently antagonistic character. Elites are those in power and, therefore, the enemy from above; out-groups – being groups that populists stigmatize as a threat or a burden to the people (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007) – are the enemy from within society. Once more, the out-group is a construction of “a blameless in-group opposed to a culprit out-group” (Hameleers et al., 2018, p. 872). In this sense, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser (2018) differentiates between exclusionary and inclusionary populism. While the former is often rooted in notions of nativism and right-wing ideologies that oppose immigrants, ethnic and religious minorities, homosexuals or welfare recipients, the latter focuses on radical left-wing positions and constructs a homogenous group out of those affected by alleged unjust socio-economic policies and austerity measures. Similarly, Michael Hameleers and Rens Vliegenthart (2020) differentiate left- and right-wing exclusion. In our operationalization, we do not make this differentiation of who is excluded but focus on the question of whether any groups are excluded (see in the codebook in Appendix B: V8_OSTRACISM).
7Based on the contributions of Jan Jagers and Stefaan Walgrave (2007) and C. H. de Vreese and his co-authors (2018), we apply a typology of populism that differentiates between four levels of populism as a communication phenomenon and that to varying degrees can be empirically identified in political messages.
- Full populism: people + elite + out-group
- Anti-elitist populism: people + elite
- Exclusionary populism: people + out-group
- Empty populism: people
8In this typology, the invocation of the people is at the core of populism and produces different types of populism depending on whether or not it is linked to the elite and out-group elements. Full populism combines all three elements. Anti-elitism or the exclusion of out-groups individually do not constitute populism; both only do so in combination with the people element. Similarly, the mere invocation of the people without reference to anti-elitism or out-groups is deemed to be empty populism, the thin, “empty-shell, initial definition” of populism (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007, p. 323).
9Although, regarding content, people, anti-elitism, and the exclusion of out-groups form three “pillars of populist discourse” (Bobba, 2019, p. 12), we must also consider how populism manifests in the style of messages, that is how actors present ideas and information. As previously argued, populism is not about the attributes of a political actor, but about the actions of an actor. Populism is performed; it is what is said and how it is said (Bracciale and Martella, 2017). Also, performing populism is not limited to the political right or left, since “politicians can slip in and out of the populist style” (Moffit and Tormey, 2014, p. 393). The performative style of populism has been described as direct, emotional (Canovan, 1999), simple (avoiding complexity) and blunt. The populist transgresses the limits of presumed political correctness: “like a ‘drunken guest’ [...] with ‘bad manners’ [...], the populist disrupts the normal dinner table, much to the discomfort, even alarm, of the usual patrons” (Oliver and Rahn, 2016, p. 191). Populism is emotional and evokes emotions by purposefully breaching the taboos of mainstream politics and political culture, by employing calculated provocations (Pauwels, 2011), and by taking on a narrative of underdogs (Mazzoleni, 2008), of self-victimization, or other symbolic themes. These emotions emphasize fear and anger (Hameleers et al., 2017).
10To address these issues and to conceptualize populism as a communication phenomenon, we study both populism in content and populism in style. Both aspects vary in degree, as actors from across the political spectrum can employ populist content and style elements in their public communication. As James Stanyer and his co-authors point out:
It is important to reiterate that most studies are actor-centered and that we lack systematic empirical studies. Consequently, our knowledge is poor about how frequently both populist and non-populist mainstream political actors refer to the people, express anti-elitism, and exclude various out-groups in their communication. (2016, p. 361)
11Recent empirical studies have begun to address populism as a communication phenomenon, also considering that the proliferation of social media platforms allows access to populist communication with an additional type of data. Whereas previous research was limited to highly formalized genres like public speeches and party manifestoes, social media enable scholars to monitor the use and effects of political communication in a more granular fashion. Social media have become standard platforms for election campaigns, where parties and politicians broadcast their messages unfiltered by journalists or other gatekeepers. Social media posts are less formalized than party platforms, the way content is produced, distributed and used is very different from traditional mass media (Klinger and Svensson, 2015). In the fourth era of campaigning (Roemmele and Gibson, 2020), social media posts provide numerous and fertile material to study the use of populist messages and populist elements in party communication.
12Not surprisingly, populism has become a popular research topic of political communication scholars interested in the impact of social media platforms. Although the data is proprietary and only partially accessible through APIs, it has nonetheless brought about an increase in quantitative empirical research designs (Ernst et al., 2017; Stier et al., 2017; Zulianello et al., 2018; Bobba, 2019). This is all the more relevant as experiments show that populist elements have mobilizing and de-mobilizing effects on voters (Hameleers et al., 2018).
13Social media offer a communication environment that significantly differs from traditional mass media outlets. The affordances of social media platforms provide a particularly fertile ground for populist communication, being mostly un-edited, enabling public communication outside of and circumventing journalistic outlets. On social media, political parties remain in control of their messages, they can tailor messages according to target groups or use micro-targeting tools for political advertisements (Kreiss, 2016). It is popularity and not news values or other professional criteria that determine the relevance and reach of a message. Indeed, there is empirical evidence that purported populist parties have profited from social media (Bobba, 2019), that they find new supporters among adolescents (Heiss and Matthes, 2017), that populist messages receive more comments online and “prompt citizens to use populist messages themselves in their comments” (Blassnig et al., 2019, p. 629).
14However, previous studies have shown that social media platforms are by no means a “populist paradise” since so-called populist parties often have a centralized structure and avoid internal dissent (Jacobs and Spierings, 2019). A study on Twitter use by populist presidents in Latin America found that the prevalent communication mode remains top-down (Waisbord and Amado, 2017), confirming that populist communication on social media tends towards normalization/politics as usual (Koc-Michalska et al., 2021). In their social media practices, populist actors are not always and necessarily more apt to respond and engage with the people (Spierings et al., 2019).
15While social media data call for comparative analyses, only few empirical studies have made comparisons across countries and even less so across time. Matthijs Rooduijn (2014) set an example by using data obtained from newspaper articles, comparing five countries where, over two decades (1988-2008), purported populist parties (at the time) had varying success. Nicole Ernst and her co-authors (2017) analyzed 1,400 Twitter and Facebook posts from 6 countries, published by 88 politicians from 29 political parties. They found that parties at the fringes of the political spectrum and opposition parties were more prone to populist communication. In another study on politician statements from six Western democracies, N. Ernst and her co-authors (2019) found that populist communication is associated with typical issues (such as immigration, crime and economic hardship), and that politicians from parties considered as populist indeed are more populist in their communication. They particularly stress the importance of studying the content and style of populist messages, claiming that “the ideology of populism cannot be communicated without stylistic elements” (p. 167). S. Engesser and his co-authors’ (2017a) comparative qualitative text analysis showed that “populism manifests itself in a fragmented form on social media” (p. 1109), justifying the need for a differentiated and comparative look at party messages on Facebook or Twitter. S. Engesser and his co-authors (2017b) provided a useful operationalization, based on emotionalization and negativity (p. 1282), to identify variations in content and style. Even though the thresholds they apply are debatable, Mattia Zulianello and his co-authors (2018) compared the Facebook communication of 83 political leaders from 6 Western and Latin American countries, showing that populism as communication can be empirically identified and that it varies extensively across parties and actors.
16Based on the research presented above, our paper seeks to test the following hypotheses.
17N. Ernst and her co-authors (2017) concluded that populist communication is mostly used by parties at the extremes of the political spectrum, both left and right. S. Engesser and his co-authors (2017a) showed that left parties tended towards attacking economic elites, whereas right-wingers attacked media elites and ostracized out-groups. Based on this, we expect to find more populism in communication among right-wing parties.
- Hypothesis 1: political ideology impacts on populism: right-wing parties have a higher populism in content and populism in style than left-wing parties.
18By using a comparison across countries, election types and over time – comparing EU elections 2014, national parliamentary elections 2017 and a non-electoral period 2018 in France, Germany and the United Kingdom – we also want to determine if and how populism in content and populism in style changed over time. Previously, researchers have shown that the presence of populism and populist elements have been increasing over time in party manifestoes and traditional media (Manucci and Weber, 2017; Hameleers and Vliegenthart, 2020), and that populists have been increasingly successful in elections (Tartar, 2017). Based on this we assume that:
- Hypothesis 2: populism in content and populism in style increase similarly over time on Facebook.
19While populism does not increase in a linear and simultaneous way, Luca Manucci and Edward Weber (2017) show increases of populism in party manifestoes and newspapers across four countries after 2010, including Germany and the UK. We seek to test whether
- Hypothesis 3: populism in content and populism in style increase in time at the similar level in all three countries.
20Second-order elections are characterized by lower turn-outs, better prospects for small and new parties, worse prospects for government parties, a tendency towards protest voting, and perceptions that less is at stake (Reif and Schmitt, 1980). Owing to these differences, campaigns and campaign strategies vary, and we expect to detect different levels of populism in communication. In the 2014 EU election campaigns, public interest in candidates and election as well as voter turnout were at record low levels (Treib, 2014). Based on this we expect more populist communication during national elections.
- Hypothesis 4: populism in content and populism in style are more prevalent during first-order elections than during second-order elections and non-electoral periods.
21To our knowledge, the only study so far connecting populism to specific topics or policy fields is N. Ernst and her co-authors (2019), finding that there are indeed typical issues connected with populist communication. A possible reason for this research gap is that populism research either focused on right-wing or on left-wing parties, thus on ideologies rather than on policy fields. If we follow the notion of populism as communication, we can determine whether and to what extent populism is linked to and more prevalent in specific policy fields (e.g. migration policy). Thus our research question is: Is there a link between populist communication and the topic of the post?
22In comparing party communication in election campaigns in France (FR), Germany (GER) and the United Kingdom (UK), we opted for cases based on different political and media systems (within Western democracies), in order to focus on only one feature (populism in communication) that political parties may or may not have in common. The three countries differ considerably with regard to their political systems, having centralized (FR) or more federal (GER, UK) forms of governance, presidential (FR) or parliamentary (GER, UK) systems, and majoritiarian (UK, FR) or more consociational (GER) decision-making. Their media systems cover all three types identified by Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini (2004): polarized-pluralist (FR), democratic-corporatist (GER), and liberal (UK). In their updated and empirically richer categorization of media systems, Michael Brüggemann and his co-authors (2014) classify both the UK and Germany as central types, “characterized by strong public broadcasting, strict ownership regulation, and low press subsidies” (p. 1056) and France as the southern type, combining “the highest degree of political parallelism with the least professional journalism and the least inclusive press market” (p. 1056-1057). None of the three countries had so-called populist parties in a government position.
23Facebook has become a major source of information and news. In all three countries, approximately one-third of internet users received their news through social media (France 36%, Germany 31%, and the UK 39%), a large portion of which came from Facebook (Germany 24%, the UK 27%, no data for France) (Newman et al., 2018, p. 10). Unlike Twitter, with its very short informational messages, posts on Facebook can be longer, more detailed, and do not force authors to be explicit and pointed. Since Facebook has become a standard platform for the campaign strategies of political actors (Klinger and Russmann, 2017), it is a prime source of official party communication. In the campaigns we analyze, all relevant political parties had Facebook profiles that they used for party communication.
24A comparison of the three countries also produces longitudinal insight into different types of elections and election campaigns, and also provides a comparison with a randomly chosen non-electoral period. All the countries participated in the (second-order) 2014 European Parliament elections and held (first-order) national parliamentary elections in 2017. The data we use originate from the political parties’ official Facebook profiles and contain all posts published during the last two weeks of the electoral campaigns prior to the 2014 European Parliament and the 2017 national parliamentary elections, as well as during two weeks in January 2018 as a non-electoral period for comparison (data accessed via Sotrender). The data contain a total of 3,564 posts from 24 political parties in Germany, the UK and France (Table 1). The data represent all major parties present during all three periods, except La République En Marche, La France Insoumise and Debout La France which did not exist in 2014 and no data are available for them in respect of the 2014 EP election. (Please see Appendix A for party in the study, and Appendix C for detailed results.)
Table 1. Number of postings for each country in time
|
2014 |
2017 |
2018 |
Germany |
421 |
546 |
215 |
United Kingdom |
586 |
686 |
273 |
France |
253 |
337 |
247 |
25We do recognize that often party leaders can be more relevant politically, reach a larger audience than their parties and can impact the likeability of messages. However, we focus only on the party profiles, for reasons of comparability and to avoid the intervention of personality traits, political status, celebrity status or biographical aspects. S. Engesser and his co-authors’ study (2017a) on political leaders found that populism manifests in a fragmented form on Facebook, and our study seeks to focus on the party side of this finding.
26All posts were manually coded by three intensively trained coders (German and French native speakers, fluent in English). Inter-coder reliability of Krippendorff was α=.7621. A self-reliability test was run for each coder within a few weeks after the first coding, with the mean for the coders being Krippendorff α=.904. (The dependent and independent variables and the detailed codebook are available as Appendix D.)
27Of the 3,564 party posts on Facebook, 376 contained only populism in content, 317 contained only populism in style, and 213 simultaneously contained both forms of populism. In total, we identified populism in 906 posts, implying that populism is not a marginal phenomenon but that it is present in about one fourth of all posts created by parties during the six weeks under consideration.
Table 2. Regression analysis for Populism in Content (PiC) and Populism in Style (PiS)
|
PiC Empty |
PiC Excluding |
PiC Anti-elitism |
PiS |
|
IRR |
|
IRR |
|
IRR |
|
IRR |
|
Time (year 2014 ref.) |
2017 |
1.170 |
|
1.251 |
|
1.079 |
|
1.702 |
** |
2018 |
.806 |
|
1.015 |
|
.874 |
|
1.434 |
|
Country (France ref.) |
Germany |
5.956 |
*** |
5.260 |
*** |
5.834 |
*** |
12.013 |
*** |
United Kingdom |
15.844 |
*** |
7.753 |
*** |
11.981 |
*** |
10.003 |
*** |
Party Size (Major Parliamentary ref.) |
Minor Parliamentary |
.676 |
|
1.084 |
|
.823 |
|
.753 |
|
Fringe |
.322 |
|
1.024 |
|
.509 |
|
.813 |
|
Governmental |
.585 |
|
.551 |
** |
.510 |
* |
1.144 |
|
Party Ideological Family (Center, Regional and Green ref.) |
Radical Left |
1.411 |
|
.770 |
|
2.715 |
* |
1.447 |
|
Radical Right |
3.094 |
** |
2.706 |
* |
3.604 |
*** |
3.250 |
** |
Right |
1.910 |
|
2.938 |
** |
2.307 |
|
1.432 |
|
Left |
1.190 |
|
1.824 |
|
1.331 |
|
.888 |
|
Constant |
.016 |
*** |
.020 |
*** |
.020 |
*** |
.011 |
*** |
(1/df) Deviance |
.4184 |
|
.5177 |
|
.4962 |
|
.4700 |
|
(1/df) Pearson |
1.1809 |
|
1.2098 |
|
1.1216 |
|
.9584 |
|
Log pseudolikelihood |
-1355.6 |
|
-1713.9 |
|
-1647.2 |
|
-1628.1 |
|
Note: GLM Negative binomial, IRR (Incidence Rate Ratios). Data was clustered by party*year. ***p<.001 **p<.01 *p<.05.
- 2 Statistical method allowing to search for relation between dependent variable and several explanat (...)
28Table 2 presents the regression analysis2 on each form of populism discussed above. Notably, the analysis suggests that there is little variance over time in populism as communication. The exception is populism in style that was used almost twice as much during the 2017 national elections as in the 2014 EU elections. This suggests that populism in style may be used as a campaign strategy to mobilize voters in first-order elections. The variance between countries is also significant as political parties in both the UK and in Germany are more likely to employ populist communication in content and in style than parties in France. During all three periods there was a much lower level of populism in communication within all parties in analysis prevalent in France than in the UK and Germany.
29As expected and repeatedly shown in the literature, radical right-wing parties extensively employ populist communication in all its dimensions. They strongly advocate anti-elite messages and spearhead the use of populism in style. However, while radical right-wing parties are prone to use any kind of populism, they are joined by some traditional, moderate right-wing parties (the UMP in France and the Conservatives in the UK), who also use exclusionary populism. Both the radical left and radical right show a preference for strong anti-elite communication. (Appendix C provides a table comparing the results and number of posts on the party level.)
- 3 ANOVA analysis allows to estimate the differences between the means.
30ANOVA3 analysis comparing populist communication according to party political ideology suggests a variation across the party spectrum regarding both populism in style [F(4, 3559)=41.45 p=.000] and full populism (in content) [F(4, 3559)=37.05 p=.000]. The post-hoc tests indicate strong dissimilarity not only for radical right-wing parties but also for all other parties. This confirms the previous results. We found a longitudinal variation for populism in style [F(2, 3561)=7.96 p=.000] (the post-hoc test indicates a stronger difference between 2014 and 2017), but not for full populism. The results (see Figure 1) suggest that across the political spectrum, no party type is free from populist statements. The temporal development of populism in style and full populism by the radical parties is particularly notable. Since 2014, radical parties – especially radical right-wing parties – have become more populist in their communication style, whether there was an election campaign or not. In fact, their style was most populist during the non-electoral period of 2018.
Figure 1. Relative mean for full populism and populism in style by party’s ideology
31Moreover, it is clear that radical right-wing parties pursue full populism: content that does not merely refer to a vague “people”, but content that at the same time is anti-elitist and exclusionary of out-groups. Take this post by the British National Party as an example for full populism:
LIKE & SHARE The terminally liberal political class were slammed last night for their Immigration “disaster” by a member of the BBC Question Time audience. Except for the fact that an individual with different opinions to the far-left BBC was even allowed to take a seat in the carefully staged audience, there’s nothing unusual about this event, oh… except that this man was ASIAN!!! […] “Now you realize that immigration has destroyed the country”, he told a disapproving panel. “Immigration has messed up the country […] the whole of the North of England is full of my community!” he lamented. “This is not England anymore!” Britain must start expelling people from the country and turning people away he said, echoing BNP policy almost word for word. […] When it takes an immigrant to tell the political class what’s what, you know they’re beyond the pale. Count yourself among the growing ranks of British people saying “enough is enough” and taking a stand. […]4
32This pattern remains stable over time and is independent of election campaigns. This differs from the moderate left-wing and right-wing parties who also mobilize support by using populist messages, but more so in national, first-order elections, only to relax their emphasis on populism outside the election periods. Based on these results, we confirm Hypothesis 1. Indirectly, this finding also validates Ronald F. Inglehart and Pippa Norris’ notion that cultural values matter (2016).
33Regarding longitudinal and cross-sectional variance, Figure 1 represents the prevalence of populism in the perspectives of both content and style. As in the regression analysis, the country differences are clearly visible. French parties are reluctant to use populism in content and populism in style, a trait most likely due to the difference between parties seen as populist (i.e. the Front National and France Insoumise) and all other parties. The descriptive data suggests that the former extensively uses populism in communication, whereas the latter seldom uses it. In contrast, all parties in the UK and Germany extensively use populist communication in their posts. Populism in style strongly increases over time in Germany, while empty populism or the mere invocation of the people dominates in the UK election campaigns, but clearly decreases during the non-electoral period. In France all forms of populism are at a much lower level than in the UK and Germany, but increased during the non-electoral period.
Figure 2. Relative mean for populism in content and populism in style by year
Note: to facilitate inter-index comparison, the mean score was averaged (by number of elements in each index).
34Over time, exclusionary populism strongly increases in Germany and slightly increases in France, but not in the UK where it decreases during non-electoral periods. This confirms Hypothesis 2 for Germany and France, but not for the UK where the levels of both populism in content and populism in style clearly peaked during first-order election campaigns (with empty populism dominating in 2014 and 2017 and populism in style in 2018). We reject Hypothesis 3, because it only holds true for France and Germany. Hypothesis 4 is confirmed for the UK, but not for Germany and France where all forms of populism increase over time, albeit on a higher level in Germany than in France.
35With regard to our research question, the most prominent policy fields that parties posted about were economic and social policy, but they were not particularly populist. Rather, we found that the perennial (“usual suspect”) topics were the most populist, with posts on migration and security policy containing more than half of all the populist elements.
Table 3. Policy fields and populism
|
Populism |
Full populism |
PiS |
N |
Migration policy |
.60 |
.48 |
.47 |
172 |
Security policy |
.50 |
.32 |
.37 |
119 |
Social policy |
.40 |
.28 |
.20 |
259 |
Economic policy |
.36 |
.23 |
.20 |
394 |
Health policy |
.32 |
.22 |
.14 |
152 |
Foreign policy |
.31 |
.18 |
.19 |
156 |
Education policy |
.20 |
.08 |
.14 |
122 |
Environmental policy |
.12 |
.07 |
.07 |
82 |
Brexit (for UK) |
.44 |
.35 |
.19 |
121 |
Populism indicates if any kind of populism (populism in content PiC or populism in style PiS) was evident in the posting. Numbers indicate the ratio of the posting containing populist element to those which do not contain such element.
36While not surprising, it is striking that about half the posts by political parties on migration policy contain full populism. These posts invoked the “people”, and they contained anti-elitist notions as well as messages about the exclusion of out-groups, with the same number using a populist style. About one third of the posts on respectively security and social policy exhibited full populism. Education policy and environmental policy were the fields least related to full populism, although not completely free from populism either. Other categories that we controlled (e.g. technology, transportation, and media) did not contain any populist communication. Although only valid for the UK, posts about Brexit confirmed intuition and contained high levels of populism. Based on these findings, we conclude that populism in content and populism in style are more prevalent in specific policy fields. While populism is prevalent in messages of all the political parties across the political spectrum, it is evident that typical right-wing policy fields dominate the populist posts.
37Our results underline that it makes sense to study populism as a communication phenomenon (rather than only as an actor type approach) that includes typical elements of content and elements of style. Populist elements were evident in the messages of all parties across the ideological spectrum, and confirm that over time a populist style is increasing particularly in the messages of radical parties on the left and right. But moderate and center parties are not always “non-populists”, as they tend to use a populist style during first-order election campaigns, but less so during second-order campaigns and in non-electoral periods. As was expected, radical right-wing parties employ all types of populism (full, anti-elite, and excluding out-groups) on a constant level over time. Regarding the three countries included in our study, all forms of populism are increasing in Germany. In the UK, populist communication peaked during the 2017 national election, particularly empty populism, but not as much in 2014 and 2018. In France, all forms of populism are also increasing, but at a lower rate. Considering that the radical-right Front National (currently RN) under Marine Le Pen, the very low level of populist messages in France is somewhat counter-intuitive. Closer scrutiny of the data reveals that En Marche, while occasionally referring to the people (empty populism), is the only case where no evidence of ostracism, the exclusion of out-groups, and the evoking of fear was found in their posts. This is remarkable in comparison to all the other parties. However, other French parties are also very reluctant to use populist communication. A possible explanation lies in the long tradition of legal constraints that prevent negative campaigning in France. Also, Front National is very centered on Marine Le Pen, a lot of communication in general and populistic in particular is emitted by the party leader, not by the party and thus not captured here.
38Studying populism as a communication phenomenon allows for a differentiated view: Yes, populism is increasing and has been scoring at the ballot boxes. But in many cases, it consists only of empty references of “the people” by moderate parties in specific settings. This is hardly threatening the integrity of democratic elections. The more problematic elements, such as the exclusion of specific groups from society, xenophobia, homophobia, attacks on elites, institutions and intermediary actors of various kind, can be obscured by a global focus on populism. In many cases, referring to “the people” is a cloak to mantle illiberal, anti-democratic or authoritarian notions as a presumable “popular” agenda.
39An interesting finding is that populist style increased much stronger than populist content. This underlines the importance to see populism not only as an ideology or a political strategy, but as a particular form to communicate – employed by parties across all political spectrum. We can also interpret this as a sign for the brutalization of political language and public discourse.
40Populism is also not limited to the perennial topics of migration and security, as we noted populist style elements in posts on environmental issues and on education, foreign and health policies. Environmental policy, in particular, could play an increasing role in the future since radical right-wing parties have recently turned to opposing the notion of a climate crisis and attack climate activists.
41To better understand how populism forms part of campaign strategies and how it mobilizes or demobilizes support, researchers need to look beyond parties nominated as “populist”. Improved comparative research designs (beyond the particularities of individual parties) and quantitative, data-based studies on more campaigns and over more extended periods, can be attained by redirecting populism research from actor-centered approaches towards content-centered approaches. The notable difference between the findings in respect of first-order and second-order elections and non-electoral periods suggests that, depending on the political situation, the prevalence and intensity of populism as communication varies.
42Our study faces several limitations. We only included one case of a specific time-period. Undoubtedly it would be valuable to reproduce this study with the 2019 EU election and the next round of national parliamentary elections. Also, including party leaders, which may differ in their communication style from parties. We only used data from three countries, which are similar (Western democracies) but also distinct (electoral system). For example, in the case of France, parliamentary elections take place right after presidential elections, which impact campaign content and dynamics, and could produce different results as in the separate campaigning in the UK or Germany. We only coded Facebook posts made by the parties, excluding comments of users and parties in response (although the parties were not very responsive and rarely contributed to the comment section). The inclusion of comments would show whether or not users similarly populist as parties. Another way forward is a comparison across platforms, including Twitter and Instagram. Unfortunately, due to all restrictions on data from social media platforms, independent research is only “peeking through the keyhole” at the moment and only grasping in part what is happening on social media platforms during political campaigns. Also, little is known on how affordances of the platform can influence the popularity of certain posts (e.g. are post with populist content somehow differently promoted by the algorithms). This situation poses a threat to democracy, especially since social media platforms have become a major source of news and information, also considering that populist messages across the political spectrum, time and location, undeniably form part of this environment.