They are all against us! The effects of populist blame attributions to political, corporate, and scientific elites

Abstract

Populist attributions of blame have important effects on citizens’ attitudes, cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. Extending previous studies that have mostly looked at populist messages blaming political elites, we use an online survey experiment (N = 805) to investigate the effects of blaming different elitist actors in populist and non-populist ways: (1) political elites, (2) corporate elites, (3) scientific elites, and (4) a combination of these elites. We compare mere causal responsibility attribution to populist blame attributions that highlight a central opposition between “pure ordinary people” and “corrupt elites” to tease out the specific effect of populist rhetoric. Results suggest that populist messages blaming all elites have stronger effects than isolated cues. Furthermore, populist blame attribution leads to more negative perceptions of the elites than non-populist blame attribution. The finding that populist frames can – under some conditions – activate negative perceptions toward different elites is alarming in times of declining trust in societal institutions, and calls for a more encompassing understanding of populists’ scapegoats.

How Politicians’ Attacks on Science Communication Influence Public Perceptions of Journalists and Scientists

“…While politicians' criticism of science or media is nothing new (Oreskes & Conway, 2011;Watts et al, 1999), social media enable the dissemination of attacks that otherwise would not have passed through journalistic gatekeeping. Especially populist politicians frequently use social media to spread anti-media and anti-science criticism and highlight their opposition to elite institutions (Egelhofer et al, 2021;Engesser et al, 2017;Hameleers & Van der Meer, 2021).…”

“…Today, one central theme of politicians' anti-media and anti-science communication is accusing these sources of spreading disinformation, "fake news," or "fake science." In doing so, these media and science are portrayed as malicious groups that intentionally lie and pursue hidden interests (Egelhofer & Lecheler, 2019;Hameleers & Van der Meer, 2021). The threat of (scientific) mis-and disinformation is a prominent theme in public discourse (Scheufele & Krause, 2019), leaving citizens highly concerned about being deceived by available information (Newman et al, 2019).…”

“…It is important to note that this sample size might be suboptimal for analyzing interaction effects which are said to require up to 16 times bigger sample sizes. Therefore, we will interpret these effects with caution (see also Hameleers & Van der Meer, 2021)…”

“…Political actors regularly attack media and science when it contradicts their political agenda (Druckman, 2017;Krämer & Klingler, 2020;Smith, 2010), frequently portraying them as a source of "fake news" and disinformation. This disinformation discourse is particularly popular among populist politicians, who argue that scientists and journalists are part of an "evil elite," deliberately misleading the public (Egelhofer et al, 2021;Egelhofer & Lecheler, 2019;Hameleers & Van der Meer, 2021;Mede & Schäfer, 2020). In the context of decreasing trust in science and journalism and growing online hostility towards experts, this type of discourse is highly concerning and has been characterized as "one of the most important challenges to science communication today" (Krämer & Klingler, 2020, p. 254).…”

“…If these verbal attacks impede effective science communication on pressing challenges such as climate change or pandemics, it can have severe consequences for humanity (e.g., Druckman, 2017). However, thus far, there is minimal evidence of the effects of politicians' attacks on science and journalism (but see Hameleers & Van der Meer, 2021). Against this backdrop, this pre-registered survey experiment (N = 548) explores how politicians' attacks affect citizens' perceptions of scientists and journalists, the information they provide, and the perceptions of the politicians using these accusations.…”