Shoot the messenger? The media’s role in framing populist attributions of blame

Abstract

Attributing blame to elites is central to populist communication. Although empirical research has provided initial insights into the effects of populist blame attribution on citizens’ political opinions, little is known about the contextual factors surrounding its presence in the media. Advancing this knowledge, this article draws on an extensive content analysis ( N = 867) covering non-election and election periods to provide insights into how populist blame attributions are embedded in journalistic reporting styles. Using Latent Class Analysis, we first identified three distinct styles of reporting: neutral, conflict, and interpretative coverage. In line with our predictions, we find that populist blame attributions are present most in conjunction with an interpretative journalistic style and least when a neutral journalistic style is used. Populist blame attributions are more likely to be used by journalists of tabloid newspapers than journalists of broadsheet newspapers. These results provide valuable insights for understanding the intersections between journalism and populist communication.