Abstract
Existing research into nativist populist (NP) rhetoric has shown that elite outgroups can be used by politicians to further anti‐immigration agendas. The social identity functions of elite outgroups outside of cultivating anti‐immigrant prejudice, however, remain poorly understood. In addition, whether populist news media can be considered social identity entrepreneurs in their own right remains an underexplored topic. This study examines the rhetorical use of elite outgroups in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia from a social identity perspective, focusing on political leaders and newspapers op‐eds. Our findings demonstrate shared strategies across the countries and source types: (1) NPs depict elites as working through collusion to undermine trust in information production within society and vie for control of the ingroup informational influence; (2) NPs present themselves as nonelite and more ingroup prototypical on dimensions relevant to the elite collusion (being under attack and equally susceptible); (3) NPs contest ingroup norms through constructions of an anti‐immigrant consensus which is suppressed by elites. We conclude that social identity researchers should pay more attention to the rhetorical functions of elite outgroups in addition to cultivating anti‐immigrant prejudice, and that the media‐as‐identity‐entrepreneur is an important aspect of constructing shared social realities, and mobilizing support, within populism.
Highlights
Existing research into nativist populist (NP) rhetoric has shown that elite outgroups can be used by politicians to further anti-immigration agendas
This study examines the rhetorical use of elite outgroups in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia from a social identity perspective, focusing on political leaders and newspapers op-e ds
We conclude that social identity researchers should pay more attention to the rhetorical functions of elite outgroups in addition to cultivating anti-immigrant prejudice, and that the media-as-identity-entrepreneur is an important aspect of constructing shared social realities, and mobilizing support, within populism
Summary
As our concern was for the effects on liberal democracies, we sought democratic country cases with significant NP successes. Hanson depicts a combination of intra and international collusion, where a previous administration worked with the United Nations to remove people’s freedom and, subsequently, that “the media and politicians” have continued to conceal this from the public These extracts demonstrate that collusion enables a greater expansion of the boundaries for who is categorized as belonging to elite outgroups. Any social entity which criticizes NP positions, whether mainstream political parties, large social institutions, or even other “ordinary” ingroup members, can be construed as part of elite outgroups That these constructions were deployed by both the politician and media source in each country is important in understanding these as attempts at creating a more generalized shared understanding of the social context. This is an issue to which the theme explicitly turns
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