Twitter and Facebook: Populists’ double-barreled gun?
Abstract
Social media are said to be a core driver of populists’ current success. Yet, our knowledge of how populist politicians use social media is limited. We argue that they can use Twitter and Facebook, politically the most important platforms, as a “double-barreled gun,” each serving a different target. Based on the architecture of the platforms and the populist ideology, we expect that Twitter is used to name and shame journalists publicly, Facebook to activate anger among citizens. Both types of use are examined by studying the Members of Parliament (MPs) of Austria, The Netherlands, and Sweden. We collected 9852 tweets for the 475 MPs on Twitter and 10,355 Facebook posts from the 287 MPs with a Facebook Page. Using negative binomial regression and content analyses, we find that populists seem eager to activate anger. They are not more likely to @-mention media accounts, but “shame” them roughly three times more often.
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Biographies
Kristof Jacobs is associate professor in Comparative Politics at Political Science Department of the IMR, Radboud University. His research focuses on the challenges to democracy (e.g., populism) and how political actors solve these (e.g., by using social media or implementing institutional reforms). He has published, among others, in the Information, Communication & Society, Electoral Studies and Political Behavior and the European Journal of Political Research.
Linn Sandberg is PhD candidate at the Department of Media and Communication at University of Oslo. Sandberg’s research interest mainly include party politics and social media. Sandberg’s work has previously been published in journals such as Journal of Information Technology and Politics.
Niels Spierings is assistant professor in Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Radboud Social Cultural Research, Radboud University. His research interests include political inequalities; the social implications of technological developments, such as social media; the political parties-voters connection, and the rise of populism in European politics. On these issues he has published, among others, in the Information, Communication & Society, Patterns of Prejudice, Political Behavior and West European Politics.
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Article first published online: April 2, 2020
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