Titel
Populist ideas on social media: A dictionary-based measurement of populist communication
Autor*in
Abstract
This article presents a dictionary-based measurement of populist communication that reaches citizens directly through social media in German. The studied populist messages reflect ideational definitions of populism. Thus, populist messages appeal to the people, dismiss the elites as appalling, or highlight the people’s right to unfettered rule. Despite German-speaking countries offering a variety of populist parties, existing automated approaches are rarely applicable to German texts. Furthermore, they are not tailored to social media and often focus only on anti-elitism. I vastly improved existing dictionaries by analyzing populist ideology in its entirety, including people-centrism and the demand for people’s sovereignty. The article showed how known populist parties in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland spread these messages to a great extent on social media. Furthermore, I was able to highlight intra-party differences. Finally, the article discusses different aspects of validity and shows that the proposed approach offers high convergent validity and split-half reliability.
Stichwort
automated content analysisautomated measurementdictionaryFacebookGermanypolitical communicationpopulismpopulist communicationsocial mediaTwitter
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Persistent identifier
Erschienen in
Titel
New Media & Society
ISSN
1461-4448
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Publication
SAGE Publications
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Zugänglichkeit
Rechte
Rechteangabe
© The Author(s) 2020
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