ECREA16-Abstract

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Saturday, November 12

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POL15

Populist Political Actors, theMedia andVoters

PP 588

Podemos Party Outside Their Median Voter: Spanish Regional Elections in Castile and León

D. Calvo

, E. Campos-Domínguez

, M. Redondo-García

University of Valladolid, Journalism, Valladolid, Spain

The emergence of Podemos party in Spanish politics, which has been previously monopolized by two major parties (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and

People’s Party) has aroused scholarly interest in their strategies of campaign in digital media. Recent researches agree that the presence of Podemos party

is higher than in the rest of political organizations. This factor may partially explains its success in elections (López García, 2015). However, it has been

also analyzed that their messages on the Net are focused on a public with specific socio-demographic characteristics: followers in Twitter and Facebook

correspond to a young and overqualified population who lives in urban cores (Jerez, D’Antonio Maceiras & Maestu, 2015). In this study, it is discussed how

Podemos’ online strategies is in a specific Spanish territory with a population far from their target group. Specifically, we study their campaign in Spanish

regional elections in Castile and León. This autonomous community is formed by rural areas with an elderly population which tends to vote right-wing

parties: People's Party has been in Government since 1987. Furthermore, according to post-election survey of regional elections in Castile and León (2011),

conducted by the Center for Sociological Research, only 57.1% of the population had accessed the Internet in the last three months. Taking into account this

context, it is presented a main objective: to assess if Podemos online strategy in Castile and León is different from the other parties from this community.

To reach this aim, it is proposed an analysis of content of webs of parties in Castile and León during regional elections (2015), in order to measure their

usability, aesthetics, interactivity and information. It is also addressed an analysis of content of their Facebook fanpage with the intention to examine

content of the posts, activity of users and type of communication (personalized or depersonalized). Parties included in this study are People’s Party; Spanish

SocialistWorkers’Party; Citizens; United Left; Union, Progress and Democracy and Leonese People's Union. After recollecting data, it is obtained the general

tendency of these political organizations, and it is compared to Podemos’score. Results, even tentative, show that Podemos does not used web better than

the rest of the parties as it reaches a score in interaction and information lower than most of other parties. In addition, their webpage was only launched

after the beginning of this elections campaign. Much different is the case of Facebook, where Podemos show greater activity in relation to number of likes,

shares, comments and commentators. This could be translate in better engagement of their voters, that allow it to be third most voted organization, with

ten seats in Cortes of Castile and León.

PP 589

Don’t Shoot the Messenger? The Media’s Role in Covering and Framing Populist Attributions of Blame

M. Hameleers

, L. Bos

, C. de Vreese

University of Amsterdam, ASCoR, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Populist parties are on the rise all over Europe, and the media are said to be partially responsible for it (e.g., Mudde, 2004). Is this really the case? And if

so, are the media passively conveying the viewpoints of populist actors or are journalists actively using populism as a framework to cover news events?

The jury is still out. To shed more light on the media’s role in disseminating populist ideas, this paper empirically investigates both sets of assumptions

regarding the relationship between populism and the media: populism for the media and populism by the media. In its core, populism revolves around

the construction of a blameless in-group opposed to culprit out-groups (e.g., Canovan, 1999; Mudde, 2004). The in-group is commonly referred to as

the innocent people who belong to the imagined community of the heartland.The out-group, which is blamed for causing the heartland’s problems, can be

constructed both vertically as the elites, and horizontally, as societal-out-groups. Against this backdrop, this paper argues that attributing blame to elites

and societal out-groups should be considered as an important populist communication strategy. Although empirical research has provided initial insights

into the effects of this communication strategy on citizens’political opinions, little is known about its actual presence in media content and party manifes‑

tos.To advance this knowledge, this paper draws on an extensive content analysis (N= 2,672) of different Dutch media outlets published between 2002 and

2014 to provide insights into how populist attributions of blame are present in media content, both communicated by politicians and framed by journalists.

The content analysis was conducted on four levels of analysis: the text, the speaker, the target, and the issue. The results indicate that blame attribution to

elites is a salient populist communication strategy. These attributions were mostly targeted at political and economic elites. Populist blame attributions to

societal out-groups, however, were scarce. This paper also aimed to disentangle who attributes blame to these targets. Journalists, politicians, economic

elites, experts and ordinary citizens all participated in the mediatized blame game. In journalists’framing of blame, blame attributions were mostly articu‑

lated in conjunction with conflict, cynicism, and negativity. In line with extant literature, we found that tabloid media were overall more likely to engage in

blame attributions than quality media outlets. The insights of this study provide valuable insights for the literature on mediatized populist communication.

First, this study has demonstrated that populist attributions of blame articulated by political and non-political actors succeed in gaining media attention.

Second, this paper provided empirical evidence for the presence of populism by the media: journalists activities contribute to the dissemination of populist

worldviews by framing the divide between the innocent people and culprit others. References Canovan, M. (1999). Trust the people! Populism and the two

faces of democracy. Political Studies, 47, 2–16. Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39, 542–564.