Aligning populist worldviews of citizens to media preferences: peculiarities of an illiberal political context

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article we look at how people’s relations to the media shape their anti-establishment, people-centrist and exclusionist populist worldviews. We propose to establish the relation between the media and populist attitudes by measuring media consumption with citizen’s attitudes towards a democracy-related function of the media, and we postulate that research should consider the peculiarities of political situations. The results of a representative public opinion survey in Slovenia confirmed a relation between tabloid media consumption, negative media attitudes and populist worldviews – however, with differences according to specific dimensions of populism, reflecting characteristics of an illiberal political landscape in the country.