Social media are said to be a core driver of populists’ current success. Yet, our knowledge of how populist politicians use social media is limited. We argue that they can use Twitter and Facebook, politically the most important platforms, as a “double-barreled gun,” each serving a different target. Based on the architecture of the platforms and the populist ideology, we expect that Twitter is used to name and shame journalists publicly, Facebook to activate anger among citizens. Both types of use are examined by studying the Members of Parliament (MPs) of Austria, The Netherlands, and Sweden. We collected 9852 tweets for the 475 MPs on Twitter and 10,355 Facebook posts from the 287 MPs with a Facebook Page. Using negative binomial regression and content analyses, we find that populists seem eager to activate anger. They are not more likely to @-mention media accounts, but “shame” them roughly three times more often.
The argument goes that social media can reinforce the rise of populism as populists' emotionally charged language fits well with social media algorithms. However, whether this potential materializes in practice depends on (1) populists' actual social media adoption and (2) whether their messages actually elicit more (emotional) responses. This is a study of those two core elements of populist politicians' presence on Facebook. We examine 682 members of parliament (MPs) Facebook uptake in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Austria and the emoji responses to 10,355 of their posts. First, we argue that populist parties' centralized structure enforces discipline, which makes Facebook use by populist MPs other than the leader more problematic. Our study shows indeed that populist party leaders use Facebook prolifically to reach out to their community, but relatively few of populist parties' other MPs use Facebook. Second, we argue that Facebook posts of populist MPs activate feelings of indignation, triggering responses that are more emotional. Empirically this expectation is borne out. Compared to other parties, messages posted by populist actors receive more emojis than ordinary likes. In particular, "anger" and "haha" stand out. An exploration of the content of such messages shows that both are related: "haha" also reflects sarcastic ridiculing of political opponents, paving the way for anger.
Given the growing importance of issue competition and the growing use of social media during elections, this study seeks to create a better understanding of how issue dynamics relating to political parties play out on social media. It tests whether issue ownership theory can explain how parties and issues are being discussed on Twitter and to what extent a mediated form of issue ownership aligns with citizens’ perceptions of issue ownership. The results indicate that perceptions of issue ownership as measured in representative surveys correlate with variations of what issues parties are linked with on Twitter. Some deviations also emerged, which possibly reflect short-term changes in parties’ issue competition. Understanding how issue ownership mediates through social media platforms is important in order to evaluate the role of social media in contemporary opinion forming processes and sheds light on the issue competition among political parties in online fora.
The objective of this study is to contribute knowledge about formation of political agendas on Twitter during mediated political events, using the party leaders’ debates in Sweden before the general election of 2014 as a case study. Our findings show that issues brought up during the debates were largely mirrored on Twitter, with one striking discrepancy. Contrary to our expectations, issues on the left-right policy dimension were more salient on Twitter than in the debates, whereas issues such as the environment, immigration and refugees, all tied to a liberal-authoritarian value axis, were less salient on Twitter.
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