Populist Political Communication across Europe: Contexts and Contents  

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This publication was financially supported by the National Science Centre, Poland.
(grant no. 2015/18/M/HS5/00080).

ISSN 2191-3269

ISBN 978-3-631-83565-4 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-84133-4 (E-PDF)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-84134-1 (EPUB)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-84135-8 (MOBI)

DOI 10.3726/b17824

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About the editors

The Editor
Agnieszka Stępińska is a Professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland).

About the book

Agnieszka Stępińska (ed.)

Populist Political Communication across Europe:
Contexts and Contents

While most of the scholarship on populism and populist political communication is focused on Western European countries with a long tradition of populist parties’ appearance on the political scene (such as Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, or Sweden), this volume offers an insight into populist political communication in countries less frequently covered in the English-language literature, namely Bosnia and Hercegovina, Bulgaria, France, Israel, Poland, and Romania. With the main focus on Eastern and Southern Europe, this book contributes to answering key questions regarding the relations between populist actors, media, and citizens. The publication represents an interdisciplinary approach to the populist political communication. The co-existence of different research methods and tools in that book allows us to capture the multi-dimensional nature of populism.

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Editor’s Introduction

Part I: Contexts of Populism

Nedžma Džananović & Valida Repovac Nikšić

Populism in Bosnia and Herzegovina – Horizontal Traditions and Vertical Novelties

Agnieszka Hess & Dominika Kasprowicz

Social Factors Conducive to Popularity of Grass Roots Populist Communication Moderators in Poland

Delia Cristina Balaban

Understanding Populism. Views from Romanian Politicians and Journalists

Lilia Raycheva & Dobrinka Peicheva

Reappraising the Political Populist Milieu in Bulgaria

Agnieszka Stępińska

Populism According to the Polish Print Media

Part II: Content of Populist Political Communication

Nicolas Hubé & Claire Ruffio

It’s All About the Elite! Populism in French Media During the Presidential Campaign

Dorota Piontek

Populist Style in Political Election Broadcasting. A Case of the Parliamentary Election Campaigns in Poland

Naama Weiss Yaniv, Tamir Sheafer & Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt

The Populist Rhetoric of Individual Political Actors on Social Media: Revealing an Elitist Aspect

A Transformist Populism: the President of the French Populist Party Rassemblement National Multiplies the Roles on Her Twitter Account

Artur Lipiński

Anti-communism, the People and Discursive Strategies of Mediated Populism in Contemporary Poland

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Images

Notes on Contributors

Editor’s Introduction

The recent electoral success of populist actors across Europe has been accompanied by an increased interest in the varied facets of the phenomenon of “populism” and, more recently, its relationship with the media. The success of populist parties has resulted in publications seeking to determine and understand the characteristics of populist political actors and their views on the one hand, and how voters respond to them on the other. While much attention has been paid to populist parties and political leaders, their link to the media was less in the focus until last few years. Nevertheless, analyzing the relationships between populist political actors, the media (journalists) and society (voters) is key to explain the success of populist parties and populist discourse in general.

Adopting the perspective of political communication in populism studies makes it possible to focus not only on ideology but also on how it is packaged into messages, and the role that different media play in disseminating them. In fact, there is a complex relationship between populist actors and the media. On the one hand, populist parties are said to be dependent on the media for communication and they heavily feed on public attention through various forms of publicity. On the other hand, populist actors are eager to contest the traditional media, considering them as the appanage of the establishment. However, their maneuvering space has been widened thanks to a more and more sophisticated use of social media channels. The proliferation of social media has provided new space for political communication, where populist actors exercise their voice and interact with citizens who are no longer just receivers of the populist messages, but also active participants in the communication process. Insofar as populist parties usually contest the narratives of established political actors, social media may provide them with a welcome opportunity to avoid journalistic framing and contextualization.