In a comprehensive study, researchers have found that populist parties deliberately choose divisive issues as part of their digital communication strategy. The study looked at over 8,748 Facebook posts by political parties across 13 different countries. It exposes the ways in which these parties use polarizing issues to sell their messages and energize their bases. The journal Media and Communication recently released the full findings. More importantly, they expose the playbook on which all these parties based their election campaigns.
Melanie Magin, a professor of media sociology at NTNU, was the study’s principal investigator. It shows that propagandistic, populist parties borrow from the playbook of the other side by using issues such as the complexity of migration policy, the war and climate change to sow division among the people. In doing so, they seek to create a false “us versus them” narrative that will exclude potential outsiders and turnout angry insiders to support their cause. This strategy is extraordinarily impactful. In our modern times, social media alters the manner in which politics is discussed and scrutinized.
The Role of Social Media in Populist Rhetoric
In recent years, populist parties have favored platforms like Facebook for bombastic electioneering over traditional political campaign strategies. The researchers noted that these parties leverage the platform’s capabilities to evoke strong emotions and instill doubt regarding other political entities’ ability to address pressing societal issues. At worst, they shift public discourse away from any kind of productive problem-solving. Rather, they catalyze conversations about the key liberal democratic ideals that uphold our fragile polity.
Recent substantial global occurrences have really altered the landscape for our release time period. The war in Ukraine, matched with a backdrop of heated discussions around immigration and climate change, contributed to a resurgence of dangerous populist rhetoric. First, populist actors often shape the narrative around issues in a highly effective divisive manner. This strategy functions as a sort of “Trojan horse,” redirecting political conversations to their platforms and delegitimizing the credibility of traditional parties.
The other research team members—among them Jörg Haßler in addition to Magin—closely recorded these populist parties’ online self-presentations. Their analysis revealed that the choice of topics correlates with a clear pattern in the digital communication strategies employed by these parties. The research findings point to a calculated approach in which divisive issues play a central role in shaping public opinion.
Implications for Democratic Society
The deliberate choice of these incendiary issues has more far-reaching consequences for democratic societies. When they prioritize the most sensational topics instead of fostering substantive discussions about important policy tradeoffs, populist parties jeopardize the longer-term objectives of maintaining stable democratic governance. This strategy makes public opinion even more polarized, while undermining any possibility of consensus-building between left and right or other political factions.
Magin and her team’s findings vocationalize the conversation around the future of political discourse as we increasingly migrate to an online world. Populist, far-right and far-left parties are sweeping the world — oftentimes winning the social media battle. In rebuttal, traditional political parties need to reconsider how they’re operating. As we’ve said before, engaging with voters on emotional and divisive culture-war topics is a losing play. It’s all the more important to encourage that discourse to center identify shared issues and responses to them.
This study highlights the importance of educating voters about the strategies used by populist parties. Knowing how these parties flip issues is key to helping regular people cut through the noise of political messaging and make smarter voting decisions.