Abstract
Electoral contests around the world are suffering from an increasing distrust triggered by the dissemination of conspiracy theories. Extant research on political communication has largely studied this phenomenon, but, in some cases, it has neglected the relationship between social and legacy media in the breakthrough of a radicalized populism. Based on a wide literature review of liberal democracy and the roots of populism, this study addresses the right-wing populist communicative actions as one of the causes of the fragmentation of the democratic system, defining a journalistic and fact-checking standard to promote a well-informed society. Specifically, our research focus is to illustrate the impact of populist rhetoric on the traditional media system through a multiple-case study applied in European countries affected by right-wing populist discourse following the last United States elections (2020). The results show a connection among the strategies (game frames) used on Twitter, being less clear in the number of retweets and the presence on the front pages of newspapers. These data serve as a guide to build a journalistic indicator, arguing that high-quality information could be the key for democratic systems to minimize populist rhetoric and tackle the disinformation that endangers their future.
Highlights
The crisis of Western democracies is a recent finding that lies with the proliferation of disinformation among voters (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Mounk 2018)
These data serve as a guide to build a journalistic indicator, arguing that high-quality information could be the key for democratic systems to minimize populist rhetoric and tackle the disinformation that endangers their future
Social media sites are considered relevant spaces to understand the dissemination of falsehoods, as they have become central to political communication
Summary
The crisis of Western democracies is a recent finding that lies with the proliferation of disinformation among voters (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Mounk 2018). One of the reasons for this trend is that social media sites are the main channels for populism (Rivas-de-Roca et al 2020), allowing for quick communication with the people. Their messages are specially adapted to the digital era, becoming well-known and setting up their agenda within society (Gainous and Wagner 2014). News coverage plays a role in the shaping of disinformation that remains unexplored. Populist political parties and leaders usually enjoy wide news coverage since their actions are shocking and, newsworthy (Bos et al 2010; Alonso-Muñoz and Casero-Ripollés 2016). This concept is here associated with journalism and legacy media
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