Yelling from the sidelines? How German parties employ populist and crisis-related messages on Facebook

Abstract: The possibilities of unfiltered communication in social media provide the perfect opportunity structure for spreading populist ideas. Generally, populist communication features an antagonistic worldview that blames elites for betraying the people and promises to reverse a ‘downward societal trend’ by bringing the people's 'real' interests back into politics. Although populist success is often attributed to crisis-induced dissatisfaction, research remains unclear on whether and how political actors foster such negative societal perceptions. Building on the German case, our paper accomplishes two things: It explores the use of populist social media communication and relates it to the exploitation of crisis-related messages among political parties. Conducting a manual content analysis of 3,500 Facebook posts by German parties and leading politicians, we find that the outsider parties AfD and the Left use and combine populist and crisis-related messages by far the most. Insider parties

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• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Political Research Exchange ; 4 (2022) 1 ; 1-26

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Politik

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (who): SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
• (when): 2022
• Creator: Schürmann, Benjamin ; Gründl, Johann

Further information

• DOI: 10.1080/2474736X.2021.2021095
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2023052314482447681010
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.