Populism, Twitter and the European Public Sphere - Social Media Communication in the EP Elections 2019

This volume approaches the relationship between European public sphere and political communication in the framework of establishing populism and social media. The empirical analysis focuses on the comparison between different EU countries during the 2019 EP elections campaign. The data for the analysis was collected real time from Twitter in the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Italy, Spain, Ireland and the UK. during a month period and are analyzed with both computerized quantitative and manual qualitative methods.

The book introduces a new perspective in conceptualizing populism in comparative analysis, in which populism is understood rather as an antagonist logic of political identity formation than pre-defined political ideologies, movements or party cleavages. We approach implications of populist construction of ‘us’ and ‘not us’ in national contexts of 2019 EP election campaigns to find out the relationality between different political actors and parties. A special attention is paid to national/transnational and European/Eurosceptic tendencies in campaign rhetoric. By using a unique idea of ‘hashtag publics’ we approach the common Twitter discussions around the elections and ask: what particular topics and themes did different political actors distribute over Twitter during the 2019 EP elections, how were various topics and actors linked to each other, and how were campaign agendas and actors linked to populism?

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Chapter #1 (Introduction: Data and Methodology in the Twitter EP2019 Analysis), Chapter #4 (Finland: Populist Polarisation of the Finnish Political Communication), and Chapter #8 (Conclusion: The UK: Brexit and Competing Populism) are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Table of contents (8 chapters)

Data and Methodology in the Twitter EP2019 Analysis
Pages 1-22, Open Access 

Democratic Corporatist Countries

The Netherlands: Populism from Margins to the Mainstream
Carola Schoor, Reeta Pöyhtäri, Tuija Saresma
Pages 25-56

Germany: Transnationalisation of Populist Radical Right
Kimmo Elo
Pages 57-83

Finland: Populist Polarisation of the Finnish Political Communication
Juha Herkman, Laura Sibinescu, Emilia Palonen
Pages 85-113, Open Access

Polarised Pluralist Countries

Italy: Mixed Populism and Agenda Setting in Election Campaign
Saija Räsänen, Roberto De Rosa, Dario Quattromani
Pages 117-143

Spain: Rising Right-Wing Populism
Dolors Palau-Sampio, Virpi Salojärvi
Pages 145-173

Liberal Countries

Ireland: Emerging Right-Wing Populism
Niamh Kirk
Pages 177-207

The UK: Brexit and Competing Populism
Dayei Oh, Olli Castrén
Pages 209-237, Open Access

Editors and Affiliations

Juha Herkman
Media and Communication Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Emilia Palonen

Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH); Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
IPSA Executive Committee member