Far-Right Populism Online: Did Vox’s Community Reproduce the Party’s Discourse During the April 2019 Campaign?

Abstract

In April 2019, VOX, a far-right populist party, won seats for the first time in the Spanish parliament. VOX successfully used social media to participate in the electoral debate and to establish a more direct link with its followers. We investigated how the VOX online community was structured during the election campaign and to what extent the most influential profiles spread the party’s messages. We accordingly analysed two samples, one composed of tweets and retweets that used the hashtags #28A, #28Abril, and #28AbrilElecciones, and the other composed of metaphorical expressions identified in tweets by influencers. Applying social network analysis to the first sample, we studied the form and structure of the network and identified key profiles in the VOX community, i.e., influencers, builders, and bridges. Using critical metaphor analysis with the second sample, we identified the main frames used by VOX influencers to explore whether they reproduced the party’s populist discourse. We found that the VOX online community in 2019 did not only include party supporters or members but was composed of varied profiles. For this reason, the populist metaphorical framing used by the VOX leadership was only partially disseminated.

After the epistemological turn: A framework for studying populism as a knowledge phenomenon

“…Importantly, while there are already studies that address populists' supporters' communication online (e.g. Capdevila et al, 2022;Jungherr et al, 2022;Stier et al, 2020), there is virtually no data on their communication practices offline, mainly because they are much harder to track and observe. Thus, there is an important role in future research for social and political scholars who specialise in qualitative, ethnographic, and experimental methods.…”

Editorial: Populism in and Through Online Communities

“…Whether taking up populist communication as a style, strategy, discourse, or ideology, each contribution examines how a "virtuous" people is constituted against an enemy of elites who control the system and the status quo (Engesser et al, 2017;Lee, 2006). The scholars in this issue explore the relationship between populism and online communities by taking up questions such as: Capdevila, Moragas-Fernández, and Grau Masot (2022) also examine the communication of populist politicians; however, they examine whether the citizens of the far-right populist party VOX actually took up, spread, and repeated the communication of VOX politicians on Twitter. Using social network analysis, they find that the VOX online community did not solely reproduce the party's populist discourse, but circulated discourse from other actors as well.…”