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The Expression of Right-Wing Populism in the Netherlands across Facebook Posts

Author

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  • Fischer, Agneta
  • Brands, Charlotte
  • Abadi, David

    (University of Amsterdam)

Abstract

When it comes to political communication on social media, Facebook has arisen as one of the most important platforms. Recent research on populist discourses provides evidence for populist ideology fragments emerging across Facebook posts. Moreover, the level of populist language styles and the adoption of typical populist rhetoric appears to be ‘endemic' across political actors across the whole political spectrum, even among non-populist ones. In total, 51 posts from Geert Wilders were analyzed before and 71 in the period after the 2019 Dutch elections (N = 122). This study tackles the use of the founding elements of populist communication strategies: references to the people, references to the elites, and references to the others. For a populist leader, Wilders’ Facebook posts do not contain many references to the people. Instead, he focuses on the elites (e.g., the EU) and on the others (e.g., Muslims or asylum seekers). The clearest difference between the pre- and post-election period seems to be that Wilders gradually changes his populist communication strategies from a focus on the elites, to a focus on the others. In doing so, he uses more references to religion and blaming the others. He also refers more to people within the country (asylum seekers and immigrants) in the post-election period (36,6%) than in the pre-election period (23,5%). His posts show clear examples of populist nativism, while he paints a picture of a battle between the Netherlands and the EU (the elites), Muslims or asylum seekers (the others).

Suggested Citation

  • Fischer, Agneta & Brands, Charlotte & Abadi, David, 2019. "The Expression of Right-Wing Populism in the Netherlands across Facebook Posts," OSF Preprints 35puf, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:35puf
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/35puf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Cas Mudde, 2009. "Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe Redux," Political Studies Review, Political Studies Association, vol. 7(3), pages 330-337, September.
    2. Gianpietro Mazzoleni & Roberta Bracciale, 2018. "Socially mediated populism: the communicative strategies of political leaders on Facebook," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-10, December.
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