Abstract
This article analyses the communication content by the Latvian populistic party KPV LV (LETA; Re: Baltica) and the audience’s reaction, with a focus on the daily updates and live videos that were posted on Facebook (FB) prior to the 13th elections of the Saeima (Parliament of Latvia). The aim of the research is to determine the type of populism that KPV LV employed (de Wreese, 2018).
 The research data was collected during the pre-election period in August – September 2018, when the popularity and social media activity of the party increased. The methods employed were qualitative and quantitative content analysis. In order to identify the structure of emotions expressed in audience-created content, the online data analysis tool “Emotion Recognition Model” was used. Given that populist ideology manifests itself in specific discursive patterns (Kriesi, Papas, 2015), the data interpretation was based on theoretical findings about populism as a political communication style (Jagers, Walgrave, 2007). In order to analyze the interrelations between populist communication and its audience, this study employed theoretical literature on social media use in populist communication and on expressions of emotions in social networking sites.
Highlights
June 20 and 21, 2018 were unusual both on Latvia’s political stage and in media experience
He speaks to the Russian minority in the context of the party’s political position, and mentions the ‘people’ in connection with the criticism directed at the media
Qualitative content analysis of the most commented posts reveals that the audience is more likely to react to a video or text where a politician touches upon controversial issues: criticises the media (36% of comments), explains his political position (27%), criticises the establishment (17%), criticises his political rivals (10%)
Summary
KPV LV won the second place in the 2018 parliamentary elections and 16 seats (16%) in the Parliament One year later, it seems that the party might soon disappear from the political scene of Latvia. The dynamic development of populist parties, their usually quite short life cycles, and the differences in electoral cycles in each country might be the main reasons why most populism studies are single-case studies (see: Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008; Boss and Kees, 2014; Lees, 2018; Suiter et al, 2018) with a few exceptions of comparative studies (see: Schmidt, 2017, Kasprowicz and Hess, 2019). 2015), but until now there has not yet been any study analysing the interaction between the populist parties’ communication and the reaction of their audience
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