{"title":"Populist alone, but harmless together? Analysing inter- and transnational populism of EP parties ID and ECR on Facebook","authors":"Yannik Peters, Jakob Schlußmeier","doi":"10.1177/02673231241271905","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Right-wing populist parties are highly successful in online communication and have made electoral gains in a wide range of European countries. In the European Parliament, until the recent European elections in 2024, the majority of them were distributed between the two party alliances and parliamentary groups Identity and Democracy (ID) and European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). To analyse their communicative strategies, we collected all Facebook posts of the party and parliamentary group accounts of ID and ECR ( N = 616) within one year (08/21–08/22). Subsequently, structural topic modelling (STM), sentiment analysis and manual content analysis were applied to determine their communication strategies. Overall, the results indicate that ECR and ID are communicating rather moderately online. However, while ECR differs significantly from its national member parties, ID seems to reproduce right-wing populist narratives. Overall, this paper argues for a stronger focus on European party alliances, not only national parties, when researching right-wing populist communication in the EU.","PeriodicalId":47765,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Journal of Communication","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231241271905","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Right-wing populist parties are highly successful in online communication and have made electoral gains in a wide range of European countries. In the European Parliament, until the recent European elections in 2024, the majority of them were distributed between the two party alliances and parliamentary groups Identity and Democracy (ID) and European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). To analyse their communicative strategies, we collected all Facebook posts of the party and parliamentary group accounts of ID and ECR ( N = 616) within one year (08/21–08/22). Subsequently, structural topic modelling (STM), sentiment analysis and manual content analysis were applied to determine their communication strategies. Overall, the results indicate that ECR and ID are communicating rather moderately online. However, while ECR differs significantly from its national member parties, ID seems to reproduce right-wing populist narratives. Overall, this paper argues for a stronger focus on European party alliances, not only national parties, when researching right-wing populist communication in the EU.
期刊介绍:
The European Journal of Communication is interested in communication research and theory in all its diversity, and seeks to reflect and encourage the variety of intellectual traditions in the field and to promote dialogue between them. The Journal reflects the international character of communication scholarship and is addressed to a global scholarly community. Rigorously peer-reviewed, it publishes the best of research on communications and media, either by European scholars or of particular interest to them.