Populism and the Gender Gap: Comparing Digital Engagement with Populist and Non-populist Facebook Pages in France, Italy, and Spain

Abstract

This paper clarifies whether and to what extent populist communication could drive different gender-oriented reactions. We adopted an original research design intending Facebook as a natural environment where investigating the interaction between social media users and populist and non-populist parties. Our case selection considers three countries falling into the pluralist polarized media system: France, Italy, and Spain. A human content analysis was carried out on a sample of 2,235 Facebook posts published during thirty days in 2016 by the four main parties/leaders in each country. An original algorithm allowed to identify the gender of users liking each message. We tested whether men tend more to provide likes to messages posted by populist parties, messages published by radical populists, messages containing populist contents, and different components of populist messages. Findings confirm the existence of a gender-oriented reaction to populism: Men tend to support populist actors and parties on Facebook more than women do, by providing likes to their content. Yet the difference in gender gap between radical and moderate parties is not significant. We also found that the antielite component of populist discourse obtains more likes by male Facebook users. This pattern is common for both populist and non-populist parties.

Why people vote for thin-centred ideology parties? A multi-level multi-country test of individual and aggregate level predictors

“…From demographics point of view, our results replicate previous research that shows males [ 54 , 55 ], those less educated, and right-wing or right leaning individuals support populist parties more [ 56 ]. In terms of individual and country level processes, our findings also suggest that support for populist and thin ideology parties is driven by a fundamental intergroup mechanism, i.e., social identity and status concerns, which in turn are influenced by country level processes, i.e., opportunities available for human development (HDI) and corruption perceptions (CPI).…”

Populism as an Expression of Political Communication Content and Style: A New Perspective

“…In the first article, Zulianello et al (2018) analyze communication strategies of political leaders on Facebook with evidence from multiple continents. In the second article, Bobba et al (2018) focus on the potential gender gap by comparing user engagement with populist and nonpopulist Facebook pages in three countries. In the third article, Wettstein et al (2018) analyze more than nine thousand news stories from ten countries, identifying distinct roles the media can assume in their coverage of populist actors.…”

MAX share this! Vote for us! Analysis of pre-election Facebook communication and audience reactions of Latvia’s populist party KPV LV leader Aldis Gobzems

“…Empirical research shows that populist success is increased by the development of social media and the populist actors' skills to effectively use the new communication platforms (Rožukalne, 2017;Bobba et al, 2018, Postill, 2018. Social media are a fertile ground (Engesser et al, 2017) for populist communication that helps populist politicians to bypass the use of professional media during election campaigns.…”