Dimensions, Speakers, and Targets

Abstract

European media systems have been affected by major changes in the last few decades that have facilitated the dissemination of populist messages, including increased media ownership concentration, increased commercialization, and a stronger orientation towards news values (Esser, Stepinska, & Hopmann, 2017). At the same time, Europe has faced several political crises, such as the European sovereign debt crisis, the refugee crisis, and ‘Brexit’. Against this background, we analyze populist communication in immigration news coverage as well as in opinion pieces within two time periods (2016 & 2017) across twelve European countries. We define populism as a ‘thin’ ideology (Mudde, 2004) and derive four dimensions of populist communication: people-centrism, anti-elitism, the exclusion of specific out-groups, and restoring sovereignty (Meny & Surel, 2002; Reinemann, Aalberg, Esser, Stromback, & de Vreese, 2017). This chapter provides a theoretical introduction to populist communication in the media, and a detailed description of the methodological approach, as well as first descriptive results of the study.