Science-related populism referring to Europe: narratives of dominance and sovereignty

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2021–2022, the European Commission held the Conference on the Future of Europe, aiming to provide a platform for EU citizens to voice their visions for the Union's future. Simultaneously, concerns about the rise of populism and mis(dis)information have grown, significantly affecting the daily lives of Europeans and challenging democracy. This prompts the question: do cohesive populist visions for Europe exist? This article delves into a subset of populist narratives that express distrust in mainstream knowledge production frameworks and explores their connection to depictions of Europe through discourse analysis of 24 publicly available online documents opposing vaccination and 5G technology. It is argued that these narratives can be understood through science-related populism (Mede, N. G., & Schäfer, M. S. (2020). Science-related populism: Conceptualizing populist demands toward science. Public Understanding of Science, 29(5), 473–491). The analysed narratives consistently depict an antagonistic dichotomy between the noble people and corrupt elites, and they perform crisis in the face of the perceived dominance of illegitimate elites. However, both science and the EU do not unequivocally align with the contested elites. Their position in this dichotomous vision is influenced by the perceived morality of the scientists and a nationalist framework for interpreting Europe.