Populist Style Research Articles

Perpetuating Civil Martyrdom: Exploring Erdoğan’s National Addresses on Historical Events

The piece of research investigates Turkish President Erdoğan’s addresses to the nation between 2014-2020, focusing on how they reflect a necropolitical populist style. The study aims to analyse how Erdoğan uses language to maintain control, particularly through necropolitical narratives that invoke civil martyrdom and historical events to fortify his position of power. The chosen period encompasses Erdoğan’s presidency, marked by a shift in Turkey’s domestic policies, transitioning from democratic values to an authoritarian regime. The theoretical framework is based on critical discourse analysis, specifically focusing on the populist style as described by Benjamin Moffitt and others. This style is characterized by bad manners, an appeal to the people, and the performance of crises. Furthermore, the research connects Erdoğan’s statements to necropolitics, where the idea of martyrdom, especially in the context of national historical events, is used to galvanize support and legitimize authoritarian governance. Necropolitical discourse serves to reinforce Erdoğan’s image as a defender of the nation, merging populism with historical narratives to create a cohesive and potent political discourse. Hence Erdoğan’s discourse in national addresses is instrumental in perpetuating his control, manipulating both the past and present to align with his authoritarian objectives, and resonating deeply with the public through emotional and moral appeals.

Narrating the nation, embracing Europe: Populist markers in Albanian political discourse

This study explores the evolution of populist discourse in the political communication of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama between 2013 and 2024. It examines how populist rhetoric is adapted in the context of a transitional democracy committed to European integration. The research is based on a purposive sample of 96 speeches, press conferences, interviews, and international addresses. It employs a mixed-method design combining holistic grading of populist intensity with itemized content coding. The analysis captures five dimensions of populist rhetoric: ideational, strategic, emotive, pluralism (reverse-coded), and migration. The results reveal a moderate and adaptive populist style, where anti-elitist and people-centered appeals are framed within a consistent pro-European stance. Rama’s discourse frequently emphasizes national unity and moral leadership, particularly through references to Albanian hospitality during migration crises. While his rhetoric includes emotional and personalized elements especially during national or geopolitical emergencies, it rarely undermines pluralist or democratic norms. The European Union is framed not as an adversary but as a partner in reform and modernization. The Albanian case demonstrates that populism can be mobilized in inclusive, internationally aligned ways. Rama’s discourse exemplifies a form of Europhilic populism that coexists with institutional legitimacy and normative alignment with the EU. This study challenges the notion that populism is inherently anti-democratic or anti-European. It suggests that in semi-peripheral states like Albania, populism may serve as a rhetorical bridge between domestic legitimacy and international aspiration.

War Populism? Volodymyr Zelensky’s Visual Transformation on Instagram after Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

This study examines Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visual transformation on the social media platform Instagram after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While the populist style often involves politicians artificially triggering perceptions of crises to underscore their unique leadership qualities, the crisis Zelensky faced was undeniably real. Therefore, I argue the existential threat to Ukraine that Russia’s invasion posed provided the context for Zelensky to present a more authentic version of himself on Instagram than before. Nevertheless, features of Zelensky’s Instagram strategy after Russia’s invasion can be traced back to the populist style he employed on the platform beforehand.

Agentic but Not Aggressive: Assessing the State of Televised Debate Styles in Latin America

This study assesses the state of political candidates’ verbal and nonverbal expressive behaviors during televised debates in four Latin American countries (Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina), a region largely overlooked in debate studies where uncivil behavior driven by populism and related ideologies is on the rise. Using human annotation for both descriptive analysis and training and validation of machine learning classifiers, we analyzed 900 10-second segments from recent debates in each country to detect behaviors associated with a populist style, including adversarial rhetoric and verbal attacks, an aggressive or threatening tone, angry facial expressions, and defiant gestures. We also identified agentic behaviors characterized by assertive, dynamic, and physically energetic actions, lacking the aggressive or threatening markers. Findings reveal distinct communication styles across countries coalescing around a core tendency. Although aggressive and adversarial behaviors were anticipated, the predominant style observed was agentic, characterized by assertive and dynamic gestures absent displays of anger, defiance, or hostility. Agentic behavior was common despite the diversity in debate formats and party systems. The study underscores the importance of multimodal analysis in understanding political communication cross-nationally and provides insights into the political styles and performative strategies employed by Latin American candidates in the countries observed.

Populist styles and eanings in Acun Medya reality shows

Populist styles and eanings in Acun Medya reality shows

When Articulating Populist Dichotomies Is Paramount: Exploring the Effects of Explicit and Implicit Populist Styles on User Engagement in Turkish Election Tweets

This paper analyzes whether articulated populist dichotomies or fractured populist styles attract more user engagement on social media focusing on the 2023 Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections via Twitter, considering the tweets of individual candidates and parties ( n = 4,139). Negative binomial regressions revealed that the explicit populist style, which articulates “the people” and “the harmful others” in the same message unit, predicts user engagement. The study shows that explicit populism triggers more favorites, retweets, and replies than any other populist style. Although implicit people-centrism has positive associations with retweets and replies, implicit antagonism has no effect on user engagement data.

Is rooting for the US Women’s National Team un-American? Populism and popular misogyny within conservative digital sports media

Following Megan Rapinoe’s statement that she would not attend a White House visit under former president Donald Trump, she and the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) have become focal points of right-wing online abuse. To explore the connection between populist style common within right-wing media and the misogynistic treatment of women in sport, this study analyzes the intertwining logics of populist style and popular misogyny within media coverage of the USWNT on two conservative sports media outlets, Barstool Sports and OutKick . The findings indicate that the outlets utilize populist style to construct a cultural identity of their ideal American sports fan that stands at odds with the progressive ideals encompassed within the USWNT, making the team particularly susceptible to popular misogynistic treatment and attacks. As such, a critical analysis of gender must be incorporated into analyses and understandings of populist style.

Political party building in populist style

This article assesses the local organisation of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in its first participation in South Africa’s local government elections in 2016. Drawing on original interviews with local party activists, it explains how the EFF’s brand of populism mobilised at the grassroots level during its formative years. The study argues that the party’s populist style was effective because it helped appropriate existing diverse networks of political activists by positioning itself as the voice of ‘ordinary black people’ against business and government ‘elites’. This orientation of the EFF appealed to youth, activists, and mineworkers who felt excluded from the African National Congress (ANC); while the protests and regalia of its populist style nurtured feelings of collective identity and efficacy among local party organisers. The article indicates how a populist style can be effective in exploiting generational cleavages to build a viable opposition party within the constraints of a dominant party system.

Styles of Political Populism: Plain Languages for Ordinary People

The report draws attention to the lack of a single and exclusive populist style, as populism can manifest itself on both the left and the right political spectrum. The existence of more than one populist style is defended by arguing that in different sociocultural contexts meanings are produced by mobilizing a range of different stylistic resources. The styles of political populism are analyzed in the text as discourse practices in different contexts of interaction, i.e. Linguistic and contextual analysis is applied. The paper examines the use of various stylistic resources in the core and periphery of stylistic fields. A distinction is made between styles of good manners and styles of bad manners. Each of these fields is filled with different stylistic devices of populist speaking, since the influence of the sociocultural context is essential in the selection of alternative semiotic resources.

Let's talk populist? A survey experiment on effects of (non‐) populist discourse on vote choice

Abstract Populism research has found much scholarly and public attention alike in recent years. Most research has focused on how populism can be defined, assessed or even measured. Even though there are emerging studies on populist messages, few of them have paid attention on causally identifying ways in which discourse can affect support for populist actors. This article positions itself within this gap and aims to answer which discursive elements make (non‐)populist messages appealing to varying groups of people. To answer this research question, I conducted a novel survey experiment on vote choice in Germany from December 2020 to January 2021 with N = 3325. Respondents were asked to choose between two candidate statements that displayed varying discursive elements. Thus, the experiment causally tested whether people‐centric rhetoric, blame attributive languages or populist style focusing on language complexity drive the populist vote. Results show that a neutral form of blame attribution, namely towards politicians, had the highest probability of driving vote choice, irrespective of respondents' underlying ideological preferences or populist attitudes. Simple language nearly always has a negative effect on vote choice, whereas people‐centrism adds a positive touch. These results show that there may be an increasing dissatisfaction with democracy that is voiced by blaming political elites for the malfunctioning of society.

The Securitization of Migration in Hungary through Conspiracy Theories

This study examines the securitization of migration in Hungary and its connection to conspiracy theories and populist rhetoric. The Copenhagen School's concept of securitization suggests that security issues are constructed through discourse, where certain topics are elevated to existential threats, justifying extraordinary measures. In Hungary, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has framed migration as a significant threat to Hungarian identity, culture, and values. This framing frequently relies on conspiracy theories, such as the Great Replacement and Eurabia, which claim that there is a deliberate plan to alter the demographic and cultural makeup of Europe. The study analyses Orbán's speeches and the policies his government has implemented, demonstrating a pattern where migration is portrayed as a severe danger, legitimizing strict responses such as border fences, anti-migrant legislation, and the targeting of institutions associated with liberal ideals. These securitization processes resonate with populist ideologies that create a dichotomy between "us" and "them," fostering division and fear. To understand these processes the article defines securitization, the interplay between conspiracy theories and populist style of politics and examines the Eurabia and Great Replacement conspiracy theories and the speeches of Orbán.

ПОПУЛІЗМ У ПОЛІТИЧНІЙ КОМУНІКАЦІЇ: ОЗНАКИ ТА МЕТОДОЛОГІЯ ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ

The article presents a communicative approach to the study of populism. It is based on the features of the populist style of political communication, as well as methods that can be used to assess the intensity of its use. According to the communicative approach, almost every political actor becomes a suspect in attempts to turn to populism. It is proved that the communicative approach does not contradict other approaches to the study of populism, such as the ideological one, but complements them. The author provides clear signs of style that make it possible to identify populism in political communication using the communicative approach: secrecy, negative attitude to the actions and decisions of the state elite, opposition of ‘people’ and ‘elite’, as well as appeal to the will of the people. The only thing left to do is to determine which keywords to associate with each of these features. The methods that make it possible to measure the intensity of the use of populist style in political communication based on the above features are also considered. These methods include classical content analysis, computer content analysis and holistic grading. Three subtypes of computer content analysis — nonautomated, semi-automated and automated — are distinguished with their features and scenarios of application.

Social Media and the Fragmentation of Religious Authority among Muslims in Contemporary Indonesia

This study examines the massive use of social media, its role, and its influence on splitting religious authority among internal Muslims in contemporary Indonesia. There are two research questions raised in this study: how is the existence and reality of the popularity of Indonesian Muslims amid the rapid development of social media? How does religious authority within Indonesian Muslims experience fragmentation and the massive use of social media? This study is a netnographic research based on qualitative research. Two types and sources of data are used: primary data in the form of text, visual videos, and images obtained from several social media, especially Instagram and YouTube. In addition, there is also secondary data in the form of statistical data and literature. After analysing field data based on the perspective of Max Weber’s authority theory, this study found that the massive use of social media among Indonesian Muslims today has triggered the birth of various new religious realities, one of which is the division of religious authority. In Indonesia, this fragmentation is marked by the weakening of the existence and influence of earlier Islamic clergy groups and, simultaneously, the emergence of contemporary clergy members with stronger allure and influence. The latter are popular as millennial ustadz, have a populist style, and are known to be quite active in campaigning for religious activities on online-based social media channels.

Adventures in populist discourse: Could a solution to penal populism in New Zealand be hiding in plain sight?

Contemporary discussions on the role of populism in criminal justice reform have centred around its potential for more punitive outcomes i.e., longer sentences, less hospitable prison conditions and a lack of meaningful support for integration back into the community. Reflecting on this legislative trend, Julian V. Roberts et al. (2002) opined that a change of posture might be required by proponents of penal reform, going on the offensive and pointing to the negative actions taken by politicians in the name of penal populism. This paper asks whether politicians advocating for less punitive criminal justice reforms in New Zealand could themselves draw from a more populist style of politics. We hypothesise that research participant support for a free-market populist-style argument on decarceration will be higher than for a status quo-style argument. This is examined through a quantitative approach involving the development of an experimental tool that distils the theoretical conceptualisations of populism and tests them on the New Zealand voting-age public. We find through sub-group analysis that a statistically significant number of participants who self-identified as “right” on the political spectrum or voted for either the National party (a major centre-right political party) or the New Zealand First party (a minor conservative political party) in the 2017 New Zealand general election were more inclined to support arguments for less punitive sentences when pitched using a populist-style argument.

Protection of Christian values – penal populism or a rational decision on criminalization?

Arguments referring to natural law, (public) morality, religion or Christian values are very often put forward in debates on the existing or planned criminal law provisions criminalizing specific behavior. A prohibition on behavior contrary to the scriptures or the teaching of the Church on pain of criminal penalties encompasses not only abortion, but also euthanasia, (paid) surrogate motherhood, paid donation of organs for transplantation, sterilization, contraception, prostitution and bigamy. The arguments presented for the protection of Christian values are oftentimes correlated with the protection of human dignity. This article seeks to address the issue whether such a "pre-legislative" measure (reliance on the protection of Christian values) is a form of penal populism. Parliamentary and non-parliamentary discussions conducted during work on the particular provisions of the Criminal Code were form the basis for analysis, with particular emphasis placed on arguments in favor of criminalization of the aforementioned behavior. The findings were confronted with the concept of legal interest in criminal law and the concept of human dignity in the Polish legal system (and its place in repressive law). The said "religious values" and the need to protect them were subject to analysis conducted against this background and underpinned by the constitutional principle of proportionality of the limitation of human rights and freedoms. The operational tools were not only established definitions of populism, including penal populism, and a Weber’s ideal type, i.e. a set of empirically perceived properties of populist style and perspective, sometimes called "the populist syndrome." The ultimate objective of this article was to establish whether the cases under analysis involve religious populism or a rational decision on criminalization.

Knock, Knock! The Next Wave of Populism Has Arrived! An Analysis of Confirmations, Denials, and New Developments in a Phenomenon That Is Taking Center Stage

Giorgia Meloni has long been one of the most important figures on the political scene. Her strength has been, from the very beginning, clear and effective communication, combined with a populist style based on the credibility of her path. Our contribution will attempt to highlight the interweaving that links this discipline to the complex and varied representation of populism. The analyses are based on extensive documentation of data for a period from July 2020 to September 2022, the month in which the vote was held in Italy. This periodisation allowed us to have a broad view of the phenomenon and a consequent linear picture of the state of the art. Moreover, in this way, we were able to cover three years of particularly intense political debate, allowing us to outline the underlying motivations that led to electoral success. Based on existing research, the phenomena are described and then framed in relation to the social and political context in which they were experienced, taking into account the interconnection with communication. In this sense, this contribution aims to introduce a perspective that corrects most analyses in this field, which assume that populist parties have lost ground in Europe with the advent of the pandemic. In fact, this study argues that the communication strategies linked to some of Giorgia Meloni’s political choices, including all forms of populism, have generally succeeded in attracting greater public interest while maintaining the characteristics of a phenomenon with pop traits that favoured its rise.

Extend the context! Measuring explicit and implicit populism on three different textual levels

Abstract This paper focuses on a methodological question regarding a content analysis tool in populism studies, namely the explicit and implicit populism approach. The study argues that scholars adopting this approach need to conduct content analysis simultaneously on different coding unit lengths, because the ratio of explicit and implicit messages varies significantly between units such as single sentences and paragraphs. While an explicit populist message consists of at least one articulated dichotomy between the “good” people and the “harmful” others, implicit populism implies that only one of the core features of the populist style is present: either people-centrism or antagonism. Due to the often fractured and occasionally dichotomous nature of populist styles, this research revolves around the idea that the explicit and implicit populist content analysis method should be performed on coding units of different lengths, as these units can yield significantly different results in the detection of populist styles. Hybrid content and statistical analyses were operationalized to scrutinize to what extent explicit, implicit, or non-populist styles change in three coding unit types with diverging lengths. The outcome supports the following suggestion: Explicit and implicit populism demand scrutiny simultaneously on one narrow and one extended textual unit.

Populism in Internet Memes. An Investigation with Analytical Approaches from Discourse Analysis and Multimodality

This article explores if and how populist elements are expressed in Internet memes within German-language political discourses. This is done by conducting a data-based investigation rooted in the discourse historical approach and multimodality theory. Memes with varying political alignments are analysed with regards to how they express either of the following features of populist style: the appeal to the people vs. the elite, the use of bad manners, and the performance of crisis. Special focus is given to the political context as well as the semiotic resources used to convey populist themes. The findings of this study show that in order for populism to be analysed within memes a gradational perspective on populism is necessary. Applying this method, a diverse variety of populist characteristics can be found in memes, revealing the many possibilities of populist expression in this format.

Bread and Plots: Conspiracy Theories and the Rhetorical Style of Political Influencer Communities on YouTube

Based on the assumption that social media encourages a populist style of politics in online communities and the proposition that populism and conspiracy theories tend to co-occur, this article investigates whether this holds true for YouTube influencers, particularly on the less investigated left-wing spectrum. The article provides qualitative case studies of four different groups of political content creators on YouTube whose content makes use of or analyzes popular culture. The article concludes that a populist style plays a far less central role in left-wing communities on YouTube than on other platforms or within right-wing communities.

The populist body in the age of social media: A comparative study of populist and non-populist representation

Populist representation is the process by which a body or set of bodies become the signifier of a powerful act of political transgression of the social order. We call this specific type of representative linkage ‘synecdochal representation’. In it, the leader’s body performs three key functions: it mirrors certain popular traits that are characterized as ‘low’, it displays marks of exceptionality, and it appropriates symbols of institutional power. These tasks are performed through particular ways of acting, dressing, talking, eating, and the like, in public. Social media has become a key locus for bodily self-presentation because it is used to create the appearance of intimacy and spontaneity through the distribution of ‘candid’ pictures and videos. This paper will analyze how the self-presentation of populist and non-populist leaders are established through Twitter, what images they choose to disseminate, and how they are re-signified by the audience. To do so, we will focus on the two Latin American politicians: Cristina Fernández (with a populist style) and Mauricio Macri (with a technocratic one).