The Power of Populism!
An Analysis of the Spread of Populist Communication Across the Political Spectrum.
Student: Imani White Student Number: 12834319
Master Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Communication Science: Political Communication University of Amsterdam
Supervisor: Dr. Andreas R. T. Schuck 26th June 2019
Abstract
The power of populism has been underrated and misjudged. What was once understood as a far-right phenomenon spreading over Western democracies, is now spreading across the political spectrum, in fragmented forms. This paper centres around the adoption of a populist
communication style by all parties during the 2019 United Kingdom general election, adding to the vast but fragmented body of growing literature around populism. A clear, measurable and adaptable definition of populism is created, defined as a thin-ideology that is expressed as a communication style, consisting of people-centrism, anti-elitism, popular sovereignty and outgroup exclusion. Using the case study of the UK general election, Tweets made during the campaign period are analysed (N=772) from six political parties (the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrat Party, the Brexit Party, the Scottish National Party and the Green Party) and their respective leaders at the time (Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Jo
Swinson, Nigel Farage, Nicola Sturgeon, Sian Berry and Jonathon Bartley). Analysis shows that party accounts displayed more populist communication strategies than their leaders, with those parties in the centre of the political spectrum displaying more than those on the edges. At least two core dimensions of populist communication were adopted by all parties, with the adoption of outgroup exclusion rendering almost non-existent. The results indicate that the assumption of the third wave of populism as far-right and exclusionary, is changing, as populist communication was spread across the entire political spectrum. The research provides a clear definition on a contested topic, and identifies key trends within the use of political communication in UK politics, offering suggestions and direction for future research.
Keywords: Populism, Populist Communication, UK General Election 2019, Twitter, Social Media, Populist Contagion
Introduction
The presence of populism is undeniable. The first record of populism was recorded in the late 19th century, stemming from ‘people’ centric movements, and did not always carry a
negative label. However, populism has increasingly become widespread across the globe, particularly Western Europe where it has mainly stayed to the right of the political spectrum, carrying with it negative connotations (Bale, Van Kessel and Taggart, 2011). As a consequence, populism is usually studied in terms of right wing parties and their ‘populist’ leaders; however, much of the theory behind populism argues that it is a thin ideology (Mudde, 2004), that can be manifested as a communication style. Which ensures that populist communication is a broad spectrum that can, in theory, be adopted by any political figure. This study aims to address populism across the political spectrum by offering a clear conceptualization of populism, which is seemingly “plagued by a lack of conceptual clarity” (Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011, p.1272) within academia, in addition to creating a measurable scale that can be used to determine a communicators level of populist communication. In order to test this, I will use the case study of the 2019 United Kingdom general election, an election which came after several years of
political uncertainty following perhaps one of the most defining moments of 21st century European populism - the Brexit referendum. The 2016 Brexit campaign was rooted in populism and divided the nation, based on rhetoric such as ‘lets take back control’ with the referendum results seen as the “will of the people” (Freemen, 2016, p.7). Populism has since set the tone
(Boggards, 2017, p.513) for UK politics, with the 2019 general election being hailed as an important moment for Britain, framed as the ‘Brexit election’ and was to set the precedent for how and if the UK was going to negotiate exiting the European Union. The Conservatives won the election, with a campaign based on the slogan of ‘Get Brexit Done’, sending a clear message to the world: populism is not going anywhere any time soon. Consequently, this has prompted the need to assess the reach of populism, and to what extent it is reaching across the political spectrum. I therefore aim to answer whether during the election campaign the main political parties and party leaders adopted a populist communication style, and to what extent. Focusing on Tweets made during the campaign period from the accounts of the six main political parties (the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrat Party, the Brexit Party, the Scottish National Party and the Green Party) and the party leaders at the time (Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Jo Swinson, Nigel Farage, Nicola Sturgeon, Sian Berry and Jonathon Bartley.). Twitter plays a vital role in election campaigns as Tweets have the potential to reach “a large audience as unmediated as possible” (Blassning, Ernst, Buchel and Engesser, 2018, p, 341). It was utilized by all parties throughout the election as it provides a free channel through which politicians can campaign directly to the electorate, therefore is an appropriate medium through which to test the use of populist communication. I aim to create a clear conceptualization and definition of populism, as a thin ideology that is adopted as a communication style by political actors, using the case study to answer:
RQ: To what extent was a populist communication style adopted by political parties during the 2019 UK general election campaign?
What is Populism?
Populism is an “inherently contestatory political phenomenon” (Roberts, 2017, p.296), however it has not always had negative and divisional connotations. The first wave of populism can be traced back to three defining political movements of the 19th century: in the early stages of Russian revolution in the 1860’s and 70’s in which a group of educated students tried to gain the support of the peasantry to overthrow the Tsarist regime (Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo and Ostiguy, 2017, p.4). Secondly, in the United States in the early 1890’s, used to describe the People’s Party who had aspirations to move the government towards a technocratic process (Kaltwasser et al, 2017, p.3). Finally, it was also seen in Boulangism in France, a movement which championed the workers and fought against a parliamentary regime (Kaltwasser et al, 2017, p.4). What united these three movements was a “shared celebration...of the ‘true’ common people” and a “powerful sense of opposition to an establishment” (Kaltwasser et al, 2017, p.4), thus populism was born. In the 20th century, the second wave of populism spread to Latin America, particularly Argentina and Chile, where the combination of industrialization and suf-frage reforms gave the vote to emerging working and middle classes who had no ties to the traditional parties of elites (Collier and Col-lier, 1991, as cited in Roberts, 2017, p.291).
Additionally the second wave saw an increase in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe after World War One (Kaltwasser et al, 2017, pp.5-6). Currently, we are experiencing the third wave of populism, which “is increasing in momentum” (Nai and Martinez i Coma, p.1358). It is often portrayed negatively due to its heavy focus on anti-immigration (Taggart, 2017, p.253), typically associated with radical right-wing movements (Gil de Zúñiga, Koc Michalska and Römmele, 2020, p.587; Bale et al, 2011, p.112; Roberts, 2017, p. 295) and often lead by a strong
conceptualisation of populism started to have a dominant position in literature post 1990,
particularly among European Political scientists (Moffit and Tormey, 2014, p.383). Kaltwasser et al (2017) found that the majority of the body of literature has focused on South America and Europe, with populist studies in the United States only starting to gain traction after the electoral success of Trump. The literature is rather “fragmentary” (Kaltwasser et al, 2017, p.2), with the term being widely used but heavily contested (Roberts, 2006, p.127), as it has been used to describe “political movements, parties, ideologies, and leaders across geographical, historical, and ideological contexts” (Gidron and Bonikowski, 2013, p.3). Within the literature there are several approaches to populism, however, for the purpose of this study I will conceptualize a definition that demonstrates the central ideological concepts of populism and how this is adopted as a discursive and communication strategy.
Key Components of Populism
The key point of departure for populism is the fundamental importance of the centrality of ‘the people’ (Ionescu and Gellner 1969: 4; Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011, p.1273). The
evocation of ‘the people’ differentiates populism from other political styles (Moffit and Tormey, 2014, p.391). They are identified as “the privileged subject of politics” (Stanley, 2008, p.102), aiming to justify their place on the pedestal (Stanley, 2008, p.102) and claim sovereignty. Additionally, they are the central audience of populists, as well as the subject that populists attempt to render present” (Moffit and Tormey, 2014, p.391). The “chameleonic” (Taggart, 2004, p.276) nature of populism ensures that ‘the people’ is an easily adaptable homogeneous group that can “expand or contract to suit the chosen criteria of inclusion or exclusion” (Stanley, 2008 p.107). ‘The people’ can refer to for example the nation, the electorate, workers, or sometimes no
fixed group at all (Taggart 2000). Ultimately populism advocates that the pure, ordinary people and their will should be the focal point of politics (Hameleers and Vliegenthart, 2020, p.20). However, populism presents a Manichean outlook, in which there are only friends and foes (Mudde, 2004 p.544, Gerstlé and Nai, 2019, p.431), the enemy comes from outside of the homogenous group; which can come in two forms “the corrupt elites and/or dangerous others” (Hameleers and Vliegenthart, 2020, p.19). These out-groups live amongst the ordinary people, without being part of its superior community, therefore the threat to ‘the people’ comes from within the nation (Hameleers, Feldman and Zmerli, 2019, p.82).
Notably; every definition of populism includes an opposition to the elites, and all identify the existence of two homogenous units; the “hardworking ordinary people” who are seen in opposition to the “corrupt self-interested elites” (Hameleers et al, 2019, p.81), that seek to oppress and disempower the people (Bale et al, 2011, p.114). The elites are seen as “corrupt” (Mudde; 2004; Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011; Moffitt and Tormey, 2014; Taggart, 2017; Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2018; Hameleers et al, 2019; Hameleers and Vliegenthart, 2020) as they prioritize their own needs ahead of ‘the peoples’ needs, making them incapable of representing the silenced majority of the people” (Hameleers and Vliegenthart, 2020, p.22) and standing in the way of the centrality of the people (Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011, p.1273-4). There are various elites that can be constructed as in opposition to ‘the people’; in “democratic settings it nearly always includes mainstream party organizations” (Roberts, 2017, p.290), with politicians in the government often being “attributed the negative qualities of being corrupt, self-interested, dishonest, and insensitive to the people’s needs and desires” (Canovan, 1999 as cited in
Hameleers et al, 2019, p.82). Additionally, they are often accompanied by economic
the European Union” (Hameleers et al, 2019, p.82). Additionally, there are several definitions that find populism to involve a triple relationship involving not only ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’ but also ‘the dangerous others’ ( Bale et al, 2011, p.114). Proposing that populism also includes an emphasis on the distinction of ‘the people’ and other non-elite ‘out-groups’ whose “actions or inactions are antagonistic to ‘the people’” (Stanley, 2008, p.96). Within Western Europe “these dangerous others are mainly defined on a religious or cultural basis” (Hameleers and
Vliegenthart, 2020, p.22), and portrayed as a threat to ‘the people’ and their sovereignty. Overall, populism praises the role of ‘the people’ and their movement towards political sovereignty “aiming to dichotomize the political arena and society into ‘us, the people,’ versus ‘them, the elites’” (Gil de Zúñiga et al, 2020 p.586) and the non-elite “evil others” (Hameleers et al, 2019, p.80).
Conceptualizing populism
Now the basis of populism has been discussed, it is important to determine just exactly what ‘populism’ is, avoiding a “fundamental problem that cuts across all three generations of the populism literature...treat[ing]populism as a thing’ (Robert Jansen, 2011, p. 82; Moffit and Tormey, 2014, p.388). The ideational approach to populism was redefined by Mudde (2004) who put forward the definition of populism as a “thin-centred ideology” (Mudde, 2004; Stanley, 2008) which is characterized by the Manichean distinction between “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite” and the defence of popular sovereignty” (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2018, p.1676). The ‘thin’ nature of populism means that it is unable to stand alone as a practical political ideology (Stanley, 2008, p.95) whilst it offers a “distinct interpretation of the political” (Stanley, 2008, p.106) its “morphological structure is restricted to a set of core concepts”
(Stanley, 2008, p.99) which “do not provide answers to all the major socio-political questions” (Gidron and Bonikowski, 2013, p.6). Mudde argues that by defining populism as “thin-centred” (Mudde, 2004; Stanley, 2008), it must be understood that “populism does not exist in any pure form, but rather is always present in mixed iterations with other ideologies (Moffitt and Tormey, 2014, p.383), that are found to be “full ideologies” (Stanley, 2008, p.95) classed as “extensively developed political belief systems” (Gidron and Bonikowski, 2013, p.6) such as communism, nationalism or socialism (Mudde, 2004).
In line with the ‘thin’ ideational approach to populism, it must be determined how populism is manifested. To approach this at its simplest; it is a communication style (Canovan, 2002; Jagers and Walgrave, 2007; Laclau, 2005). The communication-centred approach
conceives populism as a thin-centred ideology that is communicated discursively (de Vreese, Esser, Aalberg, Reinemann and Stayner, 2018, p.425; Hawkins et al, 2012: p.3). Determining populism not only as an underlying “set of basic assumptions about the world” but focusing in particular on “the language that unwittingly expresses them” (Hawkins, Riding, and Mudde 2012: 3). At the linguistic level populism articulated by political agents is about ‘the people’ (Stanley, 2008, p.100), and the positioning of the communicator as on “their side” (Jacobs, Sandberg and Spierings, 2020, p.613), in attempts to mobilise them. Thus, the efficacy of populist messages stems largely from reminding the audience of their common background (Cranmer, 2015, p.288). However, it can be argued that in politics ‘the people’ are often referred to, regardless of the discursive message or ideology. Therefore it is important to define the accompanying sub-frames to populist communication, there are some differences within literature as to what to include and how to measure this. Whilst some studies define the
anti-elitism and popular sovereignty (Schmuck and Hameleers, 2019; Gerstlé and Nai, 2019; Ernst, Engesser, Büchel, Blassnig and Esser, 2017; Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011). There are other studies that additionally refer to ‘the exclusion of others’ (Schmidt, 2018; Block and Negrine, 2017; Hameleers and Vliegenthart, 2020; Engesser, Ernst, Esser and Büchel, 2017; de Vreese et al, 2018; Jagers and Walgrave, 2007). Therefore, in order to create a measure of populist communication, the discursive framework of populism should consists of all four sub-frames, “which may appear together or separately in politicians’ self-communication” (Schmuck and Hameleers, 2019, p.3), with it therefore becoming possible to determine the degree of populist communication a political actor can adopt. Consequently, based upon the previous research and reviewing previous approaches to defining populism, I have created my own definition, which will be used to empirically measure populist communication during this study:
“Populism is understood as a ‘thin’ ideology, which is manifested as a political communication
style composed of four core elements: people-centrism, anti-elitism, popular sovereignty and exclusion of out-groups.”
Social Media and Populist Communication
Additionally to the importance of the ‘what’ of populist communication is the ‘how’. Populism has become “more mainstream” (Stanley, 2008, p.96), in recent years, and it is “claimed that online media are an important factor contributing to this development” (Groshek and Koc-Michalska, 2017 as cited in Jacobs et al, 2020, p.612). Yet missing from previous studies of populism is an understanding of how politicians communicate populism over social media (Groshek and Koc-Michalska, 2017, p.1391; Jacobs et al, 2020, p.611). Pre-internet
research on populism saw Habermas (1991) write about the need to re-appropriate the public sphere by “creating opportunities to mobilize citizens and reflecting features of traditional populism such as openness, directness and democracy” (as cited in Housley, Webb, Williams, Procter, Edwards, Jirotka, and Williams, 2018), foreshadowing the role of the internet in modern populist communication. Additionally Bimber (1998) connected populism and online
communication, suggesting that the internet had the potential to ‘restructure political power in a populist direction’ (p. 137) and the possibility of an ‘unmediated communication between
citizens and the government’ (p. 137). These are early predictions of the social media system that is present today, which plays a crucial role in the political sphere, offering politicians “new communication channels” (Ernst et al, 2017, p.1347) and influencing the way “campaigns are carried out, and the ways political actors communicate and directly engage with the electorate” (Gil de Zúñiga et al, 2020, p.587). Baldwin-Philippi (2019) argue that “digital platforms and their material features, play a constitutive role in constructing the very notion of populism” (p.379). Social media is compatible with populist communication, as it gives “populist actors the freedom to articulate their ideology and spread their messages’ (Groshek and Koc-Michalska, 2017, p.1392). Furthermore, it is said to be a “core driver of populists’ current success” (Jacobs et al, 2020, p.611) as it provides a platform where political actors can directly speak to ‘the people’, bypass traditional ‘elitist’ media and create viral messages, all for free. Firstly, social media as a channel fits the populist message by being non-hierarchical (Ernst et al, 2017, p.1347), facilitating the direct communication of political actors and the people (Schmuck and Hameleers, 2019, p.2), it provides politicians with multi-directional communication within a network of citizens (Graham, Broersma, Hazelhoff and van 't Haar, 2013, p.708). This is crucial for populist communication, which relies on people-centrism, and anti-elitism, as political actors
can engage with members of the public on a personalized level. Additionally, social media allows populist communicators to “bypass journalists and spread their ‘raw message’ in an undiluted way” (Engesser, Fawzi, & Larsson, 2017, p.110; Jacobs and Spierings, 2019, p.1681). Consequently, social media sites are “especially attractive for populist actors who try to reach a large audience as unmediated as possible” (Blassning et al, 2018, p.341), as “such
self-communication aligns with the populist argument that traditional media represent the corrupt elites” (Schmuck and Hameleers, 2019, p.2). Ernst et al (2017) follow the two-step flow of communication hypothesis by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) and argue that within social media sites, politicians communicate directly to their followers, reaching a primary audience, however if this is re-circulated by their followers, their message is extended to a secondary audience, creating an indirect communication flow (p.1350). This “mobilization potential” (Jacobs et al, 2020, p.614) of social media ensures that their messages reach a wider audience, and “often lie at the basis of more widely consumed media coverage” (Van Kessel and Castelein, 2016, p.595). Furthermore, individually Twitter cemented its importance as a campaign tool in UK politics in 2010 when it was used “as one of the core communication tools amongst political and media elites (Newman, 2010, p. 3 as cited in Graham et al, 2013, p.693), now surpassing 13.7 million users in the UK (Omnicore). Twitter has become a “pervasive tool in election
campaigns” (Jungherr, 2016, p.72), due to its low operating costs, virality potential and
interactive unmediated character especially when compared to party manifestos (Van Kessel and Castelein, 2016, p.595). The short format of Tweets (140 characters) links with populist
communication, which is said to often rely on “simpler, informal language void of excessively technical terms” (Gerstlé and Nai, 2019, p.414), which contrasts to ‘the elitist complex language of representative politics’. (Jacobs and Spierings, 2019, p.1685).
Populist Communicators - Who?
Having conceptualized the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of populism, I aim to determine the ‘who’: which political actors use populist communication. Using the case study of the 2019 UK general election, I aim to show the breadth of populist communication, determining if, and which, political actors are adopting it. I draw upon the six main political parties within UK politics at the time of the election, as they represent a broad church of fundamental belief systems. Figure 1 below demonstrates the political positioning of the parties and consequently their respective leaders, the information of which I gathered from Ballard (2019), and The Political Compass (2020). Whilst I understand that political leaders may personally differ slightly with the full ideological stance of the parties, they are the figureheads and therefore represent and technically share the political stances of their party.
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Figure 1. The positioning of parties on the political spectrum during the 2019 UK election. (Conservative Party Logo, 2017; Brexit Party Logo, n.d.; Lib Dem Logo, n.d.; SNP Logo, n.d.; Green Party Logo, n.d.; Labour Party Logo, n.d.)
Political leaders play the key role in communicating populism to ‘the people’ and there is an understanding within research that actors who employ populist communication are “charismatic leaders” (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2018; Taggart, 1995; Gidron and Bonikowski, 2013; Di Tella, 1997; Gil de Zúñiga et al, 2020). Taggart (1995) argues that populism “requires the most
extraordinary individuals to lead the most ordinary of people” (as cited in Mudde, 2004), further arguing that the emergence of populism often relies on “charismatic leadership” (Taggart, 2004, p.274). However, Mudde (2004) suggests that the role of charismatic leadership is relevant to “some, but definitely not all” populist movements (p.560). To add to the discussion of the ‘type’ of actor that employs populist communication strategies, Barr (2009) argues that populism is often “led by an outsider” (p.44), whom is trying to “gain or maintain power” (p.44). However Mudde (2004) counters this by arguing that “the populist leader is not necessarily a true outsider” (p.560) citing political actors such as Berlusconi, who was already well connected before his political career took off (p.560). Consequently, whilst the definition of the personality traits of key populist communicators are up for debate within literature, it cannot be ignored that the role of the party leader as an individual is fundamental to the development of populist communication, therefore:
As I have defined populism as a communication strategy, it is important to understand that it can be adopted by anyone, Stanley (2008) argues that “populism has become more and more
‘mainstream’ in recent years throughout Western democracies” (Stanley, 2008, p.96) and “may emerge from anywhere, such is its potential for combining with different full ideologies” (p.108). This supports the concept of a “populist Zeitgeist” (Mudde, 2004; Hameleers and Vliegenthart, 2020). First introduced by Mudde (2004), who argues that “populist discourse has become mainstream in the politics of Western democracies (p.562), as it can “colour the ideas and communication of mainstream parties” (Hameleers and Vliegenthart, 2020, p.19). The theory of populist contagion is also closely related, arguing that populist discourse has migrated from the fringes to the core of the political spectrum, suggesting that traditional boundaries have broken down, as mainstream politicians can adopt populist language that was once restricted only to extremists (Berezin, 2009 as cited in Gidron and Bonikowski, 2013 p.26). Bale et al (2011) conducted an empirical study on the use of ‘Populist/Populism’ in the UK Print Media, recording the number of times the words ‘populism’ and ‘populist’ appeared and in what context (p.116) finding that the terms were “used for a wide range of individuals and political parties that seem to have little in common” (Bale et al, 2011, p.127). Additionally, when they looked at the issues connected to populism they found that they were “both left-wing and right-wing causes, and sometimes even causes that would seem to be almost the exact opposite of each other” (Bale et al, 2011, p.127). Blassning et al (2018) suggest that populist communication content in Britain is employed by any politician regardless of their ideological position, although not to the same extent (p.357). Overall this suggests that populism communication is not simply restricted to a specific place on the political spectrum, which posits it as ‘a kind of common currency into
which the concerns of most brands of politics can be converted’” (Stanley, 2008, p.96), therefore:
Hypothesis 2: Populism will be employed by all accounts, to varying degrees
Populism and political parties “are often studied separately, yet neither can be understood in isolation from the other (Roberts, 2017, p.288). In Europe populism is often described as occurring mainly “on the far right of the political spectrum” (Bale et al, 2011, p.115), with a ”focus on immigration” (Taggart, 2017, p.253) meaning that it is often “associated with politics that are xenophobic” (Bale et al, 2011, p.115). However, this has not always been the case, in the late 1960’s and early 1980’s populism was seen mainly from the left: in the New Left and New Social Movements in the 1970s, and the Green or New Politics parties in the early 1980s
(Mudde, 2004, p.548). Roberts (2017) found that right-wing populists “conceive of “the people” in cultural and national terms that are highly exclusionary toward cultural minorities” (p.300) whereas left-wing populism “is more inclined to conceptualize the community in class terms that are broadly inclusive of subaltern groups, defining “the other” as political and economic elites that are the domestic embodiment of transnational market and power relations” (Roberts, 2017, p.300). Previous studies have further demonstrated the use of populism amongst the fringes of the political spectrum, with Ernst et al, (2017) finding that “political actors placed on the left and right fringes of the party spectrum (both right- and left-wing extreme parties) draw on populist strategies more often than centrist parties do...with exception of the Green Party” (p.1358). Jagers and Walgrave (2007) find that “the more parties fundamentally oppose the political system in which they operate, the larger the chance they will embrace a populist style (p.336),
which is supported by Block and Negrine (2017) who found that there are significant segments of the population that are disenchanted, even angry, with center-ground politics” (p.183). Additionally, Schmidt (2018) analyses the different types of populist communication styles that were used during the 2014 European Parliament election campaign, conducting a content analysis of press releases. Finding that “populist party communication appears to be more pronounced on the fringes of the political spectrum” (p. 475), suggesting that “populism is basically composed of a reference to the people and an establishment critique, while the element of exclusion is used significantly more often among populist parties from the right than among parties in the centre or on the left pole of the political spectrum.” (Schmidt, 2018, p.476) Consequently, this suggests a challenge to the “commonly held assumption – especially in the context of European Western democracies – that populism is only a right-wing phenomenon” (Ernst et al, 2017, p.1358), therefore:
Hypothesis 3: Populism will exist more in parties that are on the extremes of the political spectrum
Method
Codebook and intercoder reliability
In order to conceptualize a measurable populist communication scale, I have drawn on two key studies. Ernst et al (2017) investigate to what extent a broad spectrum of political actors from six Western democracies over two social media platforms (Twitter and Facebook) use political communication strategies on social media (p.1348). Their conceptualization of populism is based on previous studies and see it as a ‘thin set of ideas’ and a ‘communication style’ (Ernst
et al, 2017, p.1348) consisting of “three core concepts: the people, the elite, and popular sovereignty” (Ernst et al, 2017, p.1349). Ernst et al (2017) argue that in communicating populism, the communicator becomes the key element (p.1349) and “transports the three core dimensions of populism into the public agenda by using a set of populist communication strategies” (p.1349). Within the three core dimensions they have developed nine populist communication strategies, which refer to the content of communication (Ernst et al, 2017, p.1349). Schmuck and Hameleers (2019) replicated this framework in a study to “distinguish the stylistic elements of populism and how populist communication is presented (p.1). They
understood populist political communication “as a discursive framework that has several sub frames, which may appear together or separately” (Schmuck and Hameleers, 2019, p.3). However, based on previous conceptualizations of populist communication, I also draw on Jagers and Walgrave (2007), who created an “empirically measurable concept of populism” (p.321) that can be “operationalised for quantitative content analysis” (p.321). Jagers and Walgrave (2007) define populism as “a communication style adopted by political actors” (p.324), and created a ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ measure of populism; the thin definition relies on references to the people as an operational definition (p.322). Whilst the thick definitions “consists of a combination of the three elements and states that populism refers to the people, vents anti-establishment ideas and simultaneously excludes certain population categories.” (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007, p.322). This conceptualization ensures that there are four types of populism that can be identified; thin, anti-elitist, excluding populism, and complete populism (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007). In order to create an appropriate measure of populist
communication, in line with my definition, I have combined the measures from these two key studies, using Ernst et al’s (2017) conceptualization and adding Jagers and Walgrave’s (2007)
additional dimension of exclusion populism to create four core dimensions of populism, with twelve communication strategies, displayed in Table 1.
Table 1
Four Core Dimensions and Twelve Communication Strategies
Core Dimensions Communication Strategies People-Centrism Closeness to People Stressing the Peoples Virtues Praising the Peoples Achievements Describing the People as Monolithic Anti-Elitism Discrediting Elites Blaming Elites Detaching Elites Overall Outgroup Exclusion Discrediting an Outgroup Blaming an Outgroup Detaching an Outgroup Popular Sovereignty Demanding
Popular Sovereignty
Denying Elite Sovereignty
The codebook was created to identify the core dimensions and subsequent identifiable communication strategies within text, each were defined clearly and demonstrated through examples, this can be found in Appendix 1. Following this, a manual content analysis was conducted, with the unit of analysis consisting of the text of the Tweet including hashtags,
however due to the scale of the study, the text of any additional attached media was not analysed. To assess inter-coder reliability, a second coder was extensively trained, having to first pass a sample reliability test before training. The coder was not informed about the research question or hypotheses to avoid confliction. They coded 15% of the original sample reaching acceptable levels of reliability with the average Krippendorff’s Alpha for the content analysis variables being .9058, the full results can be found in Appendix 2.
Sample
Tweets were gathered from an overall sample period of five weeks, beginning at the start of the election campaign on November 7th, 2019 and ending on the day of the election,
December 12th, 2019. Within this period, two days per week were randomly selected, totalling ten days. Overall a maximum of ten Tweets per account per day were selected, in time order, if an account had not made any Tweets on the selected day then Tweets made the following day would be collected. All Tweets were accessed through the use of the advanced search feature on Twitter. Six political parties accounts were selected: The Labour Party (n = 91), The
Conservatives (n = 97), Liberal Democrats (n = 99), The Brexit Party (n = 71), The Scottish National Party (n = 80) and The Green Party (n = 70). Additionally the party leaders accounts were also selected, consisting of Jeremy Corbyn (n = 97), Boris Johnson (N = 88), Jo Swinson (n = 53), Nigel Farage (n = 37), Nicola Sturgeon (n = 30) and a combination of the joint leaders of The Greens, Sian Berry and Jon Bartley (n = 52). In order to make the party leader sample as equal a ratio as possible between accounts, during analysis every other Tweet was chosen from the gathered sample from Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson (n = 48, n = 44), this led to a final sample of N = 772.
Operationalization of variables
Two dependent variables were used to measure the use of populist communication within Tweets. Firstly a cumulative score of use of communication strategies was computed, with the highest recorded use of the communication strategies per Tweet being 7 (M=1.48, SD=1.4). Additionally another variable was computed to measure the use of the overall four core dimensions, dummy variables were created for each core dimension and combined to create a
scale ranging from no core dimensions used to 4 core dimensions used (M=.88, SD=.71). The independent variable for H1 was coded via the codebook, categorising whether the account belonged to a political party or a party leader. For H2 the independent variable was also coded during the codebook: the name of the account. Finally, the independent variable for H3 was computed to categorise accounts in terms of their positioning on the political spectrum, with left and right indicating the edges of the spectrum, and centre encompassing all parties in between. Due to the previously discussed UK political spectrum (Figure 1), accounts that belonged to the Labour Party were categorised as belonging to the left. Ernst et al (2017) found that the Green Party was an exception in their findings that political actors on the fringes of the party spectrum deployed more populist communication strategies, therefore, I chose to leave it out of the ‘left’ of the spectrum and include it in the ‘centre’ category. Both accounts categorised as belonging to the Brexit party, and both belonging to the Conservatives were included in the ‘right’ category, with all of the other parties falling under the large category of ‘centre’ parties, due to not being on the edges of the political spectrum.
Results
The results demonstrate that just over half of the overall sample (50.5%) contained one core dimension of populist communication. The presence of two core dimensions were found to be less (17.5 %), whilst the presence of three core dimensions was almost non-existent (0.8%). Furthermore there was no single Tweet that displayed all four core dimensions of populist communication. The most common dimension was found to be people-centrism (65.8%), followed by anti-elitism (16.7%), popular sovereignty (5.3%) and outgroup exclusion (0.3%). Additionally, out of the 12 communication strategies, 10 were found within the sample, with the
highest combination reaching 7. The most commonly found was ‘describing the people as a monolithic group’ (56.1%), followed by ‘closeness to the people’ (31.2%), ‘praising the peoples achievements’ (14.6%), and ‘discrediting elites’ (8.5%). Interestingly, the two communication strategies not found within the sample both derived from the exclusion of outgroups core dimension, ‘blaming outgroups’ and ‘discrediting outgroups’. The results for each core dimension and communication strategy are summarised below in Table 2.
Table 2
Frequency of core dimensions and communication strategies
Core Dimensions Communication Strategies Frequency
People-Centrism - 65.8% Closeness to People 31.2% Peoples Virtues 3.6% Peoples Achievements 14.6% People as Monolithic 56.1% Anti-Elitism - 16.7% Discrediting Elites 8.5% Popular Sovereignty
Overall Outgroup Exclusion
Blaming Elites Detaching Elites -
Demand Popular Sovereignty Deny Elite Sovereignty - Discrediting Outgroup Blaming Outgroup Detaching Outgroup 4.5% 6.3% 5.3% 4.5% 0.8% 0.3% 0% 0% 0.3%
In order to test hypothesis one, an independent t-test was conducted to compare the cumulative populism communication strategies score between party leader accounts and party accounts. Overall the findings show that there was a significant difference between party leader
accounts (M=1.13, SD=1.34) and party accounts (M=1.66, SD=1.39), t(770)=5.03, p=< .001, with party accounts demonstrating more populist communication strategies overall than party leader accounts. Furthermore, to test hypothesis two, a chi-square test was conducted between all accounts and the presence of any of the four core dimensions, the relation between these
variables was significant X2 (36, N = 772) = 186.42, p = < .001. All accounts were found to
demonstrate at least two of the four core dimensions, with Labour, SNP and Nigel Farage all showing three dimensions, yet no party showed all four dimensions. Finally, to test hypothesis three a one-way ANOVA was conducted to compare the effect of an accounts political ideology on the populism communication strategies scale, the ANOVA results show that there is a
statistical significance between the groups, F(2, 769) = 5.39, p = .005. However, the assumptions of homogeneity of variance was violated, therefore the Brown-Forsythe procedure was
conducted, with the results still indicating that the test was significant, F(2, 656.77) = 5.19, p = .006. Additionally, to further explore the relationship and find out where the differences lie, an additional post-hoc test, Games-Howell, was conducted. The results show that there was a significant difference between left of the spectrum and the right of the spectrum (Mdifference = .31,
p= .013) with the account on the left scoring higher on the communication strategies scale. Additionally, there was also a significant difference between the centre of the spectrum and the right of the spectrum (Mdifference, = .37, p =.018), with those accounts in the centre of the spectrum
scoring higher than those on the right.
Discussion
Originally, from the literature, I found that there was a trend in the importance of a “leader” (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2018; Taggart, 1995; Gidron and Bonikowski, 2013; Di Tella,
1997; Gil de Zúñiga et al, 2020) within populist communication literature. Therefore, hypothesis one tested whether this meant that political party leaders are more likely than political parties to employ populist communication strategies. The results demonstrate overall that party accounts adopted a higher level of populist communication within Tweets than party leader accounts, therefore disproving the hypothesis. Interestingly, the party leader accounts (with the exception of Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson) tweeted on a whole less than the party accounts,
suggesting that whilst leaders play a key role in UK politics, perhaps the role of the ‘party’ is more significant to voters, especially during campaigns. The results fall in line with Mudde’s (2004) suggestion that whilst the role of charismatic leadership is relevant to some populist movements, it is not relevant to all, therefore I suggest further research should explore the relationship between the personality type of political leaders and the adoption of populist communication. In order to test the conceptualization of populism, hypothesis two tested the adoption of populism communication, to varying degrees, by all political parties. Overall, the results demonstrate that the core dimensions of populist communication were employed, to some extent, by all accounts. All accounts showed at least two core dimensions, which supports the concept of a “populist Zeitgeist” (Mudde, 2004; Hameleers and Vliegenthart, 2020) suggesting that populist communication has become more mainstream in Western democracies (Stanley, 2008). The employment of two core dimensions by all political parties supports Blassning et al’s (2018) suggestion that in Britain populist communication can be employed by any politician (p.357). Additionally, three accounts of the Labour Party, Nigel Farage and the Scottish National Party, all employed three core dimensions. Firstly, this is to be expected of Nigel Farage, he is Britain’s populist politician (Gonawela, Thawani, van der Vlugt and Chandra, 2018) therefore it is likely that his account would display higher levels of populist communication than other
accounts. Additionally, this links to hypothesis one, as whilst overall party leader accounts demonstrated less populism than party accounts, Nigel Farage demonstrated the highest percentage (5.4%) of use of three core dimensions of populism per tweet. Therefore, further supporting Mudde (2004) that whilst the role of a leader is not relevant every populist movement, it is relevant to some, as Nigel Farage demonstrates. Labour and the SNP also demonstrated three core dimensions, whilst this further proves the theory that populist communication is adopted across the political spectrum, it also links well with the idea of populism as a thin ideology that is “present in mixed iterations with other ideologies” (Moffit and Tormey, 2014, p.383). Both parties, during the 2019 election, were considered to be based upon two other strong ideologies. The Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn is associated with socialism (Crines, 2015), whilst the SNP is associated with nationalism (Mccrine, 2012), which demonstrates that populism can be easily combined with other ideologies (Mudde, 2004). All four core dimensions do not appear in conjunction with each other, with only three core
dimensions occurring for three accounts, which further supports the thin ideational approach and echoes Engesser et al (2017) and Ernst et al’s (2017) findings that “populism on social media is a fragmented phenomenon” (p.1359) as a complete set of core dimensions does not occur.
Additionally, the overall results show that two communication strategies (discrediting and blaming outgroups) were not found at all within the sample, and the overall amount of outgroup exclusion found was 0.3%. Outgroup exclusion was a dimension used by Jagers and Walgrave (2007) in defining thick and thin populism, and included in this studies conceptualization of populism, however, I would suggest further studies to amend this to not include outgroup exclusion as a core dimension. Rather, further research should follow the three core dimensions as used by Ernst et al (2017) and Schmuck and Hameleers (2019), that address populist
communication as consisting of people centrism, anti-elitism and popular sovereignty.
Furthermore, it was not surprising that people-centrism was the most frequented core dimension as this is a political communication strategy the stretches across ideologies, especially during campaign periods.
The results for hypothesis three are displayed in Figure 2, interestingly, they show that the parties on the right of the spectrum displayed less populist communication than parties on the left and the centre. The findings therefore disprove the hypothesis, as the right of the spectrum demonstrates lower populism overall than the left and the centre, with the centre having the highest overall mean, and the relationship between the left and the centre being not significant. These results demonstrate different findings to Ernst et al (2017), Jagers and Walgrave (2007) and Schmidt (2018) who all found populism to be more pronounced on the fringes of the
political spectrum. Additionally, it stands in contrast to the belief that populism within European democracies exists mostly on the right of the political spectrum (Bale et al, 2011, p.115; Taggart, 2017, p.253). Whilst this could indicate that populism as we know it in Europe is changing, I would suggest that other studies perhaps explore this relationship further in countries that have a broader political spectrum. As whilst the UK does have parties on the fringes of the spectrum, they are not necessarily classed as extreme, and it can be argued that they are in fact part of the mainstream, especially Labour and Conservative. However, the results link with the findings from hypothesis two, which tested the adoption of populist communication by all parties, it confirms Stanley’s (2008) statement that populism is “a kind of common currency into which the concerns of most brands of politics can be converted” ( p.96). This further links with the theory of populist contagion (Berezin, 2009 as cited in Gidron and Bonikowski, 2013 p.26), that populist communication has migrated to the core of the political spectrum, additionally
supporting Bale et al’s (2011) findings that populism is connected to varying political causes. Overall, it can be determined that a populist communication style was adopted throughout the political spectrum, by parties and leaders alike. The results demonstrate, perhaps, that there is a shift in the traditional third wave populism that has been experienced in Western Europe thus far. It is often classed as a right-wing phenomenon (Gil de Zúñiga, Koc Michalska and Römmele, 2020, p.587; Bale et al, 2011, p.112; Roberts, 2017, p. 295), yet the results show that may be changing, supporting the idea of populist contagion (Berezin, 2009 as cited in Gidron and Bonikowski, 2013 p.26). Therefore it appears that populism as a communication style is easily adaptable to be used by all parties, it appears in fragmented ways, and whilst all four defined core dimensions were not found in one single party, three were, and across the political
spectrum, with the communication strategies residing most frequently in those classed as being in the ‘centre’ ground.
Limitations and Conclusion
Despite this, the research does have some limitations; firstly as previously discussed, outgroup exclusion was significantly absent from the Tweets, therefore I would suggest that it should not be included in further research as a core dimension. Regarding the other core dimensions, the themes within the communication strategies could have been explored to
understand further the ways in which populist communication is used, such as the types of elites that are seen in anti-elitism, or the type of popular sovereignty that is being demanded. The research also only addresses UK politics, therefore the external validity of the results outside of the UK is questionable, and as the study focuses on one election campaign it may not give a full nuanced picture of the depth of adoption of populist communication. Consequently, I would
suggest that further research looks at comparing the levels of populist communication before and after elections as well as during, to understand if parties are using populist communication simply as a campaign tool. Additionally, as Twitter is not an ‘official’ campaign tool, it was not used by every account to the same degree. This meant that there were varying sample sizes, which overall affected assumptions during the testing, it would be interesting to include the same sample size for each account to determine if the results would vary. Twitter is an elite medium (Jacobs et al, 2020), which mostly consists of opinion leaders, such as journalists and political activists (Jacobs and Spierings, 2016 as cited in, Jacobs et al, 2020, p.614). Therefore it could be suggested that Tweets are curated to reflect the audience, and do not provide a clear overview of a political campaign. Adding another campaign tool such as manifestos or television debates to compare with Tweets could give a clearer overview and validate the findings more. Moreover, this study does not make full use of Twitter as a medium, as audience attitudes towards political actors and political parties campaign Tweets could be measured. I would recommend further studies to explore the levels of interactivity of populist communication on Twitter, to determine whether Tweets that contain populism receive higher interactivity. To conclude, the research has provided a clear and adaptable conceptualization and measurement of populist communication, especially on the medium of social media. Finding key trends within the adoption of populist communication in the UK 2019 general election, that suggest perhaps politics is changing and we are moving towards an era of populist communication that is people-centric, and demands popular sovereignty, without the exclusion of others.
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Appendix 1 – Codebook
This codebook is to be used as the coding instructions for a master thesis about the use of populist communication during election campaigns on Twitter. The aim is to code the text of populist communication in tweets, to be used for an empirical study at the Graduate School of
Communication at University of Amsterdam.
General Coder Instructions
● There are 13 accounts to be coded from over a 5 week period beginning November 7th 2019 (07-11-2019) and ending December 11th 2019 (11-12-2019). Two days from each week have been randomly selected (displayed in the table below). For each account code a maximum of 10 tweets per selected day, starting from the earliest tweet posted. If the account has not posted any tweets on that day then the tweets posted by the account on the following day are to be coded, and so on.
Week 1 (7th-13th Nov) 9th 12th Week 2 (14th-20th Nov) 14th 17th Week 3 (21st-27th Nov) 21st 25th Week 4 (28th-4th Nov-Dec) 28th 4th Week 5 (5th-11th Dec) 7th 9th
● The unit of analysis is the tweet, therefore code the entire text of the tweet including hashtags.
● Only code original tweets made by the account, do NOT code replies to other accounts. ● Do NOT code text of any attached media such as images, videos, articles, or another
accounts tweets.
● Variable section 1 refers to administrative variables. Variable section 2 refers to the account information. Variable section 3 refers to each individual tweet. Variable sections
Administrative variables V1.1 Coder 1 = Imani White 2 = Second Coder Account Information V2.1 Account Name
Document the account holder 1 = Labour 2 = Jeremy Corbyn 3 = Conservative 4 = Boris Johnson 5 = Liberal Democrats 6 = Jo Swinson 7 = Green Party 8 = Jonathan Bartley 9 = Sian Berry 10 = Brexit Party 11 = Nigel Farage
12 = Scottish National Party 13 = Nicola Sturgeon
V2.2 Account Username
Document the username of account 1 = @UKLabour
2 = @jeremycorbyn 3 = @Conservatives 4 = @BorisJohnson
5 = @LibDems 6 = @joswinson 7 = @TheGreenParty 8 = @jon_bartley 9 = @sianberry 10 = @brexitparty_uk 11 = @Nigel_Farage 12 = @theSNP 13 = @NicolaSturgeon V2.3 Account type
Document the type of account 1 = Party Account
2= Party Leader Account
V2.4 Party
Document the political party associated with the account 1 = Labour 2 = Conservative 3 = Liberal Democrats 4 = Green Party 5 = Brexit Party 6 = SNP V2.5 Followers
Document the total number of accounts following the account (in numbers) - open answer -
V2.6 Following
V2.7 Total number of tweets
Document the total number of tweets the account has made (in numbers) - open answer -
Individual Tweet V3.1 Date
Document the date of the tweet in the format DAY-MONTH-YEAR (dd-mm-yyyy) - open answer-
V3.2 Time
Document the time of the tweet in the format HOUR:MINUTES PM /AM (hh:mm) pm/am (using the 24 hour clock)
- open answer -
V3.3 Replies
Document the total number of replies to the tweet (in numbers) - open answer -
V3.4 Re-tweets
Document the total number of retweets of the tweet (in numbers) - open answer -
V3.5 Likes
Document the total number of likes of the tweet (in numbers) - open answer -
V3.6 Characters
Document the total number of characters of the tweet (in numbers) - open answer -
V3.7 Word Count
Document the total number of words in the tweet (in numbers) - open answer -
V3.8 Text
Copy the full text of the tweet -open answer-
V3.9 Media attached?
This unit refers to if there is any media attached to the tweet: this can include a photo, video or link
0 = No 1= Yes
V3.10 Type of Media
If answered yes (1) to V4.8 then indicate what type of media is attached 1 = Photo
2 = Link 3 = Video
4 = RT of another tweet in which the account has added a response quoting the tweet 5 = GIF
6 = Poll
V3.11 Second Type of Media
If there are two types of media attached to the tweet, indicate the second type 1 = Photo
2 = Link 3 = Video
6 = Poll
Text Coding
Populism Content
Overall there are four core dimensions of populist communication with twelve communication elements, this conceptualization has derived from Ernest et al (2017) and Schmuck and
Hameleers (2019) and in part from Jagers and Walgrave (2007), Schmidt (2007) and Rooduijn and Pauwels (2011). Each core dimension of populist communication has elements attached, this demonstrates how this dimension will be communicated and therefore can be identified within the text. An explanation will be provided for each dimension and communication element for coders to accurately identify them within the unit of analysis.
People centrism
V4.1 Overall People-Centrism
Is there any overall reference to the people within the text?
- This refers to ‘the people’ in political terms, meaning the political entity, therefore “a group of people having in common a constant feature that is of electoral interest” - Therefore include any references to the people, this includes word and phrases such as:
“people, citizen(s), community, society, public, population, nation(al), all of us, each of us, everyone, our, we, voter(s), electorate, referenda, direct democracy, public opinion, country” (Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011, p.1280).
- This can also be country specific references such as: British, Britons, United Kingdom, English/England, Scottish/Scotland, Irish/Ireland, Welsh/Wales.
- Also it can be ‘women’, ‘men’, ‘children’, ‘families’ if it refers to all within that group. - It can also refer to workers and professions, for example ‘firefighters’, ‘nurses’ as these
are monolithic categories within the public setting.
- It does not refer to groups of people in the private setting, such as ‘people who own dogs’.
- Do not include reference to small groups of people that are outside the general cohort of ‘people’ for example, referencing ‘experts’ or ‘campaigners’
