Le populisme comme phénomène de communication : une comparaison transversale et longitudinale des campagnes politiques sur Facebook

Abstract

In this paper, we adopt the notion of populism as a communication phenomenon that includes typical elements of content (i.e. people, anti-elitism, and the exclusion of out-groups) and of style (i.e. evoking fear, oversimplification, and style of language). We thus move away from actor-centric approaches towards a content-centric approach of studying populism. Empirically, our study measures populism to varying degrees and forms in 3,564 Facebook posts of political parties in France, Germany and the United Kingdom during the 2014 EU election campaigns, the 2017 national parliamentary election campaigns, and a non-electoral period in 2018 in each country. The results show that populism is not a marginal phenomenon but that it is present in about one-fourth of all posts in some form; that there is variance between countries, party types, policy fields, and over time. While radical parties are very exclusionary towards out-groups on the right and very anti-elitist on the left and the right, this observation provides only a partial view of the multifaceted phenomenon of populism.