The effects of populist identity framing on populist attitudes across Europe: Evidence from a 15-country comparative experiment

Autor(en)
Michael Hameleers, Desiree Schmuck, Anne Schulz, Dominique Stefanie Wirz, Jörg Matthes, Linda Bos, Nicoleta Corbu, Ioannis Andreadis
Abstrakt

We investigate the effects of populist messages that (a) stress the centrality of “ordinary” people, (b) shift blame to the “corrupt” elites, or (c) combine people centrality and antielitist cues on 3 dimensions of populist attitudes: anti-elitism, homogeneous people, and popular sovereignty. We conducted an extensive 15-country experiment in which we manipulated populist communication as social identity frames (N = 7,271). Multilevel analyses demonstrate that messages stressing the centrality of the ordinary people activate all dimensions of populist attitudes. In contrast, anti-elite messages activate anti-elitism attitudes only for those individuals with lower levels of education and extreme positions on the ideological left–right spectrum. Our findings suggest that populist political communication plays a key role in activating populist attitudes across Europe.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft
Externe Organisation(en)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Université de Fribourg, University of Amsterdam (UvA), University of Oxford, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, National School of Political Science and Public Administration, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Journal
International Journal of Public Opinion Research
Band
33
Seiten
491–510
Anzahl der Seiten
20
ISSN
0954-2892
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edaa018
Publikationsdatum
2021
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
508007 Kommunikationswissenschaft
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Sociology and Political Science
Link zum Portal
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/the-effects-of-populist-identity-framing-on-populist-attitudes-across-europe-evidence-from-a-15country-comparative-experiment(3726341d-6595-428c-98ea-1a02455154b4).html