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Saturday, November 12
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PP 515
Populist Communication in the Self-Presentation of Politicians. A Comparative Content Analysis of Talk-Shows, Facebook, and Twitter
in Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States
S. Blassnig
1
, S. Engesser
2
1
University of Zurich, IPMZ – Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research, Zurich, Switzerland
2
University of Zurich, IPMZ - Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research, Zurich, Switzerland
Which parties are most prone to populism? Are populist communication strategies used differently along the political spectrum? And is their use dependent
on the media setting?While research on populism– especially in Europe – has often focused on right-wing parties, recent studies have shown that populist
communication is not an exclusive feature of the political right. Results by Landerer (2014) and Steenbergen & Weber (2015) indicate that parties from
both political extremes are drawn to populist ideas and strategies. Jagers &Walgrave (2007) suggest that parties which fundamentally oppose the current
government or political system are more likely to embrace populist strategies. This study seeks to build on current literature on populist ideology and
populist communication to assess how politicians of different party types employ populist strategies in their self-presentation. Furthermore, it advances
Cranmer’s (2011) findings on populism’s context-dependency by investigating newmedia channels and by taking an international comparative perspective.
H1: Right-wing politicians are more populist than middle or left-wing politicians. H2: Pole-party politicians are more populist than moderate/middle party
politicians. H3: Opposition party politicians are more populist than governing party politicians. A quantitative content analysis of talk-shows, Facebook
posts, andTweets was conducted in four countries: Switzerland, Germany, the UK, and the US.These countries were chosen because they are broadly similar
but distinguish themselves in several dimensions of their political and media systems. Many studies have investigated populism in the mass media. Yet,
only very few have examined populist communication in talk-shows (Cranmer, 2011) or social media (Groshek & Engelbert, 2012). These communication
channels are, however, suitable to investigate politicians’self-presentation because they are hybrid forms of mediality: They combine different media logics
and provide different degrees of freedom for politicians’self-presentation (Chadwick, 2013). Three dimensions of populism were explored (Cranmer, 2011;
Jagers & Walgrave, 2007): people-centrism, anti-elitism (vertical differentiation), and exclusion of specific social groups (horizontal differentiation). For
each country, four routine time episodes of two talk-shows were analyzed March through May 2014. Selection criteria were their market share, frequency,
and focus on political topics. For each of the appearing politicians in these shows a random sample of 20 Tweets and 20 Facebook posts was drawn for
the same time period. Intra-coder reliability was satisfactorily high (κ > 0.60; agreement above 90%). The data set comprises 926 statements by 74 politi‑
cians in talk-shows, 648 Facebook posts, and 880 Tweets (N=2454). In compliance with H1, right-wing politicians were found to speak more populist than
middle resp. left-wing politicians in the chosen countries. H2 and H3 could not fully be confirmed by this investigation; pole parties’and opposition parties’
communication was not more people-centrist. Yet, vertical and horizontal exclusion were employed more often by these party types. Overall, the results
suggest that populist strategies are used by parties on the far right and left but in varying forms. Furthermore, populism was found to be higher in talk-
shows than in social media for all party types. This indicates that populist communication is also dependent on the media context.
PP 516
Nordic Political Scandals – Blurring the Distinction Between the Important and the Trivial?
E. Pollack
1
, S. Allern
2
, A. Kantola
3
, M. Ørsten
4
1
Stockholm University, Department for Media Studies, Stockholm, Sweden
2
University of Oslo, Department of Media and Communication, Oslo, Norway
3
Helsinki University, Department of Social Research- Media and Communication Studies, Helsinki, Finland
4
Roskilde University, Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde, Denmark
Political scandals in their modern form are inextricably linked with news media and mediated forms of communication (Ludwig, Schierl & Sikorski, 2016;
Thompson, 2000; Lull & Hinerman, 1997). Investigating powerful institutions and public figures, holding leaders to account, plays an important role in
the professional ideology of journalism. Journalistic investigations sometimes also provide us with new insights that strengthen open, democratic debates.
A society without any revelations that voters interpret as scandalous may be symptomatic of authoritarian control and a lack of press freedom. As Ettema &
Glasser (1998) notes, journalists maintain the norms of public life and the values of political conduct. It would, however, be naïve to interpret any mediated
scandal as strengthening democratic processes. Sometimes scandal reports reveal transgressions of norms that, from a political point of view, are quite
trivial and after some time are easily forgotten by the public. The distinction between the important and the irrelevant may then be blurred, and journalists
deserving to be characterized as the“petty conscience controllers”of our times (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 63). An analysis of national political scandals in Sweden,
Norway, Denmark and Finland covering the period 1980–2009 (Allern, Kantola, Pollack & Blach-Ørsten, 2012), confirm that political scandals, often result‑
ing in intense media coverage, have gradually become a regular feature in Nordic news media coverage. The significant increase came in 2000–2009, with
a level nearly three times higher than in the first two decades of the 1980–2009 period. In this paper, we present and discuss new data concerning political
scandals in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden in 2010–2015. The minimum requirement to be included in this ‘Nordic Scandal Register’has been that
the scandal was reported as ‘scandalous’and given broad media coverage in at least two leading national news media organizations for five days or more.
The main source for information about the different scandals, and their outcome, has been national news text archives, supplemented by other factual and
interpretive information. The study shows a further increased incidence of political scandals – even compared with the 2000–2009 period. The increase
is especially high for scandals linked to personal acts, i.e. norm violations outside the realm of political institutions, however, with political consequences.
The scandals are of quite different societal importance and magnitude, and the echo chambers of social media platforms seem to have made public life
more prone to morality panics. However, social media has also given accused politicians a platform for publishing outside the control of legacy media. A few
of the scandals are based on journalistic revelations of large corruption cases and abuse of power. The majority are, however, ‘small scale scandals’, many
of them related to personal acts performed privately, but with political implications and reactions. They quickly arouse public interest, but are also quickly
forgotten. The paper discusses how some types of market-oriented scandal coverage may undermine democracy instead of strengthening public debate.