Communicating Populism on Social Media: Comparing Facebook Communicative Patterns of Parties and Politicians in Taiwan and Germany

The main research question tackled in this dissertation is as follows: How is populism communicated by political parties and politicians on social media? Drawing from current literature, this research extracts three theoretical drawbacks. First, although most state-of-the-art research on populist communication has conceptually equated populist rhetoric to populist style, this dissertation distinguishes rhetorical and stylistic roles and investigates relationships between both. Second, previous studies have mostly accentuated communicative patterns of specific populists from cross-sectional analyses. However, this dissertation provides a comprehensive and interactive analysis that scrutinizes political actors' rhetorical and stylistic uses of populist communication. Third, different from most populism literature emphasizing European and Latin American viewpoints, this dissertation provides a unique Asian-European perspective to compare populist communication patterns in different social contexts. Following the communication-centered approach, this dissertation focuses on populist communication patterns of political actors (i.e., political parties and politicians) on Facebook in Taiwan's 2020 legislative election and Germany's 2017 federal election. This dissertation covers four empirical studies. On the one hand, we systematically sketches the merits and omissions of the current research on populist communication. On the other hand, we investigates populist communication from three dimensions, including party types, campaign stimulus, and stylistic devices. Methodologically, multiple methods for data acquisition and analysis are employed. We conclude with four main contributions, 1) initially theorizing relationships between populist rhetoric and style, 2) highlighting that the association between the campaign stimulus and the use of populist communication is context-dependent, 3) indicating similarities and discrepancies among populist communication in different social contexts. Keywords: populist communication, communication-centered approach, populist rhetoric, populist style, campaign stimulus, 2020 Taiwanese legislative election, 2017 German federal election (Bundestagswahl), Facebook communication

Jaar van publicatie:2022

Toegankelijkheid:Open