What Drives Populist Styles? Analyzing Immigration and Labor Market News in 11 Countries
The success of populist political actors in Western democracies and the dramatization and emotionality of political communication in news media have been the object of several theoretical and empirical studies in the past decade. It has been argued that the mediatization of politics and the convergence of populist and tabloid communication styles foster these developments by mutual promotion in mass communication. This article uses a cross-national quantitative content analysis to disentangle associations among news genres, populist actors, content, and style. In spite of indisputable prevalence of populist styles in tabloid style media, populist ideology is identified as their strongest s…
online_appendix_revised3 – Supplemental material for We Are the People and You Are Fake News: A Social Identity Approach to Populist Citizens’ False Consensus and Hostile Media Perceptions
Supplemental material, online_appendix_revised3 for We Are the People and You Are Fake News: A Social Identity Approach to Populist Citizens’ False Consensus and Hostile Media Perceptions by Anne Schulz, Werner Wirth and Philipp Müller in Communication Research
The effects of populism as a social identity frame on persuasion and mobilization: evidence from a 15-country experiment
This article investigates the impact of populist messages on issue agreement and readiness for action in 15 countries (N = 7,286). Specifically, populist communicators rely on persuasive strategies by which social group cues become more salient and affect people's judgment of and political engagement with political issues. This strategy is called ‘populist identity framing’ because the ordinary people as the in‐group is portrayed as being threatened by various out‐groups. By blaming political elites for societal or economic problems harming ordinary people, populist communicators engage in anti‐elitist identity framing. Another strategy is to blame immigrants for social problems – that is, …
Cognitive Responses to Populist Communication
This chapter investigates the cognitive effects of different populist messages on blame attributions and stereotyping in the 15 countries participating in the study. It first gives an overview about whether respondents blamed politicians, the wealthy, immigrants, or ordinary people for the future economic decline described in the experimental stimulus. In addition, general stereotypical perceptions of those groups among respondents are presented. With respect to populist message effects, the analyses show that these were generally rather weak. But the analyses were also able to show that left-wing anti-out-group cues blaming ‘the rich’ and economic elites were most influential in this exper…
We are the people and you are fake news: a social identity approach to populist citizens’ false consensus and hostile media perceptions
This study aims to investigate the relationships between citizens’ populist attitudes, perceptions of public opinion, and perceptions of mainstream news media. Relying on social identity theory as an explanatory framework, this article argues that populist citizens assume that public opinion is congruent with their own opinion and that mainstream media reporting is hostile toward their own views. To date, only anecdotal evidence suggests that both assumptions are true. The relationships are investigated in a cross-sectional survey with samples drawn from four Western European countries ( N = 3,354). Multigroup regression analysis supports our hypotheses: False consensus and hostile media p…
The Polarizing Impact of News Coverage on Populist Attitudes in the Public: Evidence From a Panel Study in Four European Democracies
This study explores how news messages carrying parts of the populist ideology contribute to a polarization of public opinion about populism. It combines a content analysis of news coverage on two policy areas (N = 7,119 stories) with a two-wave panel survey (N = 2,338) in four European metropolitan regions (Berlin, Paris, London, and Zurich). In three regions, unopposed media messages with a populist stance have a conditional effect on populist attitudes that depends on prior convictions. A higher dose of exposure to populist news coverage enhances both prior agreement and disagreement with populism. Although the observed interaction patterns vary between regions, the general picture sugges…
How populist crisis rhetoric affects voters in Switzerland
Right-wing populism has a long tradition in Switzerland. Nevertheless, only little is known about how populist messages in the media contribute to the success of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and to the acceptance of the party’s anti-immigration policies. In this study, we combine data from a large media content analysis (including newspapers and TV news shows) with data from a panel-survey in order to address this research gap. Thereby we differentiate between effects driven by the content and the form of right-wing populist communication. While right-wing populist content depicts immigrants and the political elite as a threat to the Swiss people, populist style evokes the sense of a cris…
Measuring populism across nations: testing for measurement invariance of an inventory of populist attitudes
Abstract The rising voter support for populist parties in Western Democracies in recent years has incited academic interest in populist voters and attitudes connected to the voting propensity of populist actors. In line of this research, numerous scales to measure populist attitudes among voters have been proposed. In most cases, however, the measurement of populist attitudes was tailored to specific countries and its applicability to cross-national research on populism was not assessed. This article uses a cross-national survey to assess the measurement invariance, reliability, and validity of a deductively developed inventory for populist attitudes. The findings suggest that there is a co…
Online_Appendix – Supplemental material for The Effects of Right-Wing Populist Communication on Emotions and Cognitions toward Immigrants
Supplemental material, Online_Appendix for The Effects of Right-Wing Populist Communication on Emotions and Cognitions toward Immigrants by Dominique S. Wirz, Martin Wettstein, Anne Schulz, Philipp Müller, Christian Schemer, Nicole Ernst, Frank Esser and Werner Wirth in The International Journal of Press/Politics
The Effects of Right-Wing Populist Communication on Emotions and Cognitions toward Immigrants
The persuasiveness of right-wing populist communication has become a widely discussed topic; it is often assumed that such messages might foster anti-immigrant attitudes among citizens. The present study explores the effects of the different components of right-wing populist communication—anti-immigrant messages, populist content, and populist style—on attitudes toward immigrants. By combining a media content analysis ( N = 605 articles) with a panel survey ( N = 1,968) in metropolitan areas of four Western European countries (France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), this study analyzes how citizens’ attitudes toward immigrants are influenced by the right-wing populist commun…
ONLINE_APPENDIX_(1) – Supplemental material for Start Spreading the News: A Comparative Experiment on the Effects of Populist Communication on Political Engagement in Sixteen European Countries
Supplemental material, ONLINE_APPENDIX_(1) for Start Spreading the News: A Comparative Experiment on the Effects of Populist Communication on Political Engagement in Sixteen European Countries by Michael Hameleers, Linda Bos, Nayla Fawzi, Carsten Reinemann, Ioannis Andreadis, Nicoleta Corbu, Christian Schemer, Anne Schulz, Tamir Shaefer, Toril Aalberg, Sofia Axelsson, Rosa Berganza, Cristina Cremonesi, Stefan Dahlberg, Claes H. de Vreese, Agnieszka Hess, Evangelia Kartsounidou, Dominika Kasprowicz, Joerg Matthes, Elena Negrea-Busuioc, Signe Ringdal, Susana Salgado, Karen Sanders, Desirée Schmuck, Jesper Stromback, Jane Suiter, Hajo Boomgaarden, Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt and Naama Weiss-Yani…
Measuring Populist Attitudes on Three Dimensions
Theoretically, populism has been conceptualized as a political ideology with three sub-dimensions: anti-elitism attitudes, a preference for popular sovereignty, and a belief in the homogeneity and virtuousness of the people. However, empirical research to date has treated populist attitudes as a unidimensional construct. To address this issue, we propose to conceptualize populist attitudes as a latent higher-order construct with three distinct first-order dimensions. A 12-item inventory was developed using two survey studies conducted in Switzerland in 2014 and 2015. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to test the construct validity of this measure of populist attitudes. …
Start Spreading the News: A Comparative Experiment on the Effects of Populist Communication on Political Engagement in Sixteen European Countries
Although populist communication has become pervasive throughout Europe, many important questions on its political consequences remain unanswered. First, previous research has neglected the differential effects of populist communication on the Left and Right. Second, internationally comparative studies are missing. Finally, previous research mostly studied attitudinal outcomes, neglecting behavioral effects. To address these key issues, this paper draws on a unique, extensive, and comparative experiment in sixteen European countries (N = 15,412) to test the effects of populist communication on political engagement. The findings show that anti-elitist populism has the strongest mobilizing eff…