This study investigates the role of public opinion for members of parliaments (MPs) in a time in which communication about the will of “the People” is high on the political agenda. By means of face-to-face elite interviews with Dutch MPs, we explore who politicians perceive as “the People,” how they assess “the will of the People,” and how this translates into their communication strategies. We find that MPs distinguish between listening to individual opinion, to understand what topics are at the forefront of “the People’s” minds, and taking political action considering a more general public. MPs are divided in their acceptance of the term “the People”—some find it useful, while others voice concerns over its antipluralistic implications. We find evidence of populist communication strategies in the form of references to public opinion across the political spectrum. Political communication is used for political marketing and to connect to the electorate. We conclude that Dutch MPs are not becoming more populist across the political spectrum, but rather that there is a tendency toward personalization and authenticity in political communication, which makes “normal” political communication appear more populist.

Conflict framing is key in political communication. Politicians use conflict framing in their online messages (e.g., criticizing other politicians) and journalists in their political coverage (e.g., reporting on political tensions). Conflicts can take a variety of forms and can provoke different reactions. However, the literature still lacks a systematic and theoretically-grounded conceptual framework that accounts for the multi-dimensionality of political conflict frames. Based on literature from political epistemology, political communication, and related fields such as psychology, we present four conceptual dimensions of political conflicts: (1) the style (civil/uncivil); (2) the subject (personal/substantive); (3) whether it is about underlying moral/epistemic principles or not (deep/superficial conflict); and (4) whether it concerns a normative or factual issue. Results of a content analysis of newspaper articles and politicians’ tweets confirm the usage of these conflict dimensions in the Netherlands during a non-election period. Interestingly, most of the conflicts are civil, substantive, and do not highlight deep fundamental clashes. In light of the current societal concerns about the lack of respect in political debates and the deepening of our political divides, these findings can be considered encouraging.

This article examines how politicians’ conflict framing strategies in online campaign advertisements affect citizens’ political participation in a multi-party context. We rely on a unique combination of innovative research methods to do so, including a four-wave panel survey, a content analysis of Facebook browser-tracking data and a mobile experience sampling survey with data donations. All data were collected during the 2021 Dutch general elections. We find that conflict framing can discourage citizens from engaging in low-effort forms of political participation, such as discussing politics, signing a petition and visiting political websites. The results show that conflict frames can demobilize citizens because they lower enthusiasm and are perceived as less informative. Our study provides insights into the potential unintended consequences of using conflict framing as a campaign strategy in a multi-party setting.

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