Understanding Media Populism: An international and intermedia comparison

Transcription

1 Understanding Media Populism: An international and intermedia comparison Nicole Ernst, M.A. University of Zurich IPMZ Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research Andreasstrasse 15 CH-8050 Zürich Tel +41 (0) Paper for NCCR Doctoral Program Democracy Studies First Research Colloquium Fall 2014 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank Esser University of Zurich IPMZ Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research Andreasstrasse 15 CH-8050 Zürich Discussant: lic. phil. Florin Büchel University of Zurich IPMZ Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research Andreasstrasse 15 CH-8050 Zürich

2 Introduction Populism is a term or even a phenomenon that has not only a large research tradition in the academic debate it is also often used in the society and the mass media to talk about politics. As Bale, van Kessel, and Taggart (2011) showed, the term populism is one that is even thrown around with abandon (p. 127) and especially in vernacular language the label populism and being populist is almost randomly used to describe a wide range of individuals and political parties (from left- as well as right-wing spectrum). By looking at the usage of the term in the British print media, the study moreover revealed that the tem is often used pejoratively and as a synonym for popular and there exists a tendency to label something from the opposing side of the political spectrum as populist (p. 127). The popularity of the label populism is further closely connected with the success populist parties gained in the recent years all around Europe. As Mudde (2004) already argued ten years ago, populism was nothing anomalous and had become mainstream in the politics of Western democracies (p. 542) and he therefore coined the notion of a populist Zeitgeist (p. 542). One good example is the success of the right-wing populist Swiss People s Party (SVP) in Switzerland. Since their foundation in the early 1970ties, where they stared out as a small party with less than 10 percent of the votes, the party constantly gained in their voters share and since more than 10 years, the SVP is the strongest faction in the Swiss parliament (Bundesamt für Statistik, 2014). In the recent ballot from February 2014, the Swiss electorate voted for putting a ceiling on mass immigration, which was only one of the ballots that the SVP could win in their favor in the last years. This election result was likewise widely discussed in the European media and it was interesting to see, how other European populist parties referred to the Swiss example while campaigning in the forefront of the European Elections in May The leader of the populist Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) Geert Wilders for example expressed in an interview in a Swiss newspaper that Switzerland serve as a paragon for democratic sovereignty and that he is tremendously jealous of its direct democracy elements which results in peoples vote for a restrict immigration referenda (Laube, ). And by looking at the results of the recent European Election in 2014, a lot of populist parties throughout the European Union were tremendously successful, and the French Front National, the United Kingdom Independence Party as well as the Danish People s Party all even became the biggest party in their respective countries (European Parliament, 2014). 1

3 In the literature about political populism, different arguments are discussed why populist parties especially right-wing - are as successful as they are in Europe in the last decades. Swank and Betz (2003) for example conclude that international integration, or the notable increases in transnational flows of trade, capital and people in recent decades, has contributed to the electoral success of new far-right parties in Western Europe (p. 238). Other important and often in the literature discussed supply factors of successful populist parties is the charisma and the authoritativeness of the party leader with mass appeal (e.g. Taggart, 2000; van der Brug, Wouter & Mughan, 2007) or the successful campaigning of thematic issues like immigration or Euro-skepticism (e.g. Heinisch, 2003; Ivarsflaten, 2008; Oesch, 2008), just to give some typical examples. One other important consideration why populist Parties are effective and popular, which has so far not been as widely investigated, is the role the mass media play in this process. Although populist parties and populist issues seem to become increasingly successful, to date, little is known about how the mass media carry, shape or transform populist issues, frames or arguments. Which is even more surprising, since especially in the age of mediatization, where modern mass media is constituted as the main communicative infrastructure through which politics is represented to the public and through which politics presents itself to the public. Therefore, this dissertations project focuses on the on hand how mass media report about populist actors and is on the other hand also interested in the question, if mass media themselves can be populist actors, by publishing viewpoints that fulfil the defining points of populist communication. Hence the main research interest of this dissertation is to pursue media populism by looking at politics-generated populism in the media as well as media-generated populism. To gather both of these phenomena, this research paper firstly defines political populism to further discuss the role of the mass media in this process and the two existing conceptions of media populism. Further, an overview of studies about populism in the mass media is presented. The fourth chapter presents the main research questions, followed by a method and data source overview. This dissertation project is part of the NCCR Democracy project IP8 Populism and the news media. A comparative and multi-issue approach, which is embedded in the NCCR phase III module 2 The Appeal of Populist Ideas and Messages. Understanding populism in the context of de-nationalization and mediatization. 2

4 Political Populism The oldest attempt to define populism as a uniform phenomenon goes back almost sixty years when the sociologist Edwars Shils (1956) defined two crucial criteria: primate of people s will and the direct relationship between the people and the leader (as cited in Priester, 2012a). More than ten years later Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Gellner (1969) perceived populism spectre haunting the world (p. 1) but called into question whether populism can even be defined as an uniform phenomenon. Although populism is part of the academic debate over more than sixty years now already, populism is still a highly contested concept and very difficult to define. It has been attributed with a constitutional ambiguity (Taguieff, 1997, p. 11) resulting in a notoriously vague term (Canovan, 1999, p. 3) which entails a certain conceptual slipperiness (Taggart, 2000, p. 1). Accordingly, most definitions of populism suffer from inherent incompleteness (Taggart, 2004, p. 275). One of the reasons why there does not exist one universal definition of populism is the fact that populism was manifested in different periods of time and in areas all over the world (Priester, 2007). Especially the cases of populism in Latin America (e.g. Juan Perón in Argentina, Getúlio Vargas in Brazil or Chavéz in Venezuela) or the movement of the Narodinks in Russia can hardly be compared with the rise of new populist movements and parties in Western democracies. Due to the various differences this dissertation project only focuses on contemporary forms of populism in Western democracies. But even with this small area of application, populism still can take on many form and facets and to be enable to include all various manifestations populism, it is defined as a set of ideas (Hawkins, 2009, p. 1045; Priester, 2012b, p. 3; Rooduijn, 2013, p. 3). These definitional elements can be described by emphasizing three core actors: the people, the elite/others and the populist. Additionally it is argued that sovereignty plays a key role within the populist ideology, since the people have the right to sovereignty, the elite or the others (threaten to) deprive the people of this right, and the populist (protects or) restores the sovereignty of the people (Abts & Rummens, 2007, p. 408). Accordingly, a natural antagonism between the people and the elite or others is established (Abts & Rummens, 2007, p. 408; Mudde, 2004, p. 543; Panizza, 2005, p. 4) and the populist maintains a positive or close relation to the people and a negative or distant relation to the elite or others (Barr, 2009, p. 37; Weyland, 2001, p. 14). In the literature 3

5 exists a wide range of different opinions and concepts what the inherent elements of populism are. In the recent years scholars like Mudde (2004), Hartleb (2014) or Albertazzi and McDonnell (2008) just to name some of them developed comprehensive and proficient definition of populism. Although this progress, there is still a disagreement how to label populism exactly: Some scholars describe it simple as an (thin or thick) ideology (e.g. Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2008; Canovan, 2002; Hartleb, 2014; Jagers & Walgrave, 2007; Mudde, 2004; Taggart, 2000), other argue that populism should be understood as a political strategy (Kriesi, 2013; Mény & Surel, 2002; Meyer, 2006; Rooduijn, 2013; Weyland, 2001), while other purely define populism as a political communication style (e.g. Bos, van der Burg, W., & de Vreese, C. H., 2011; Cranmer, 2011; Jun, 2006) or a political rhetoric (e.g. Betz & Johnson, 2004; Hawkins, 2009). Since all of those aspect are neither to neglect nor to ignore, the module as well as the dissertation project is interested in analyzing the phenomenon as a whole, by considering populism as an ideology, strategy and style element that build on one another. Hence within the NCCR module 2 a definition of populism is compiled by all members: Populism is defined as a thin ideology, which considers in a Manichean outlook - society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, the pure people versus the corrupt elite and postulates unrestricted sovereignty of the people. On the one hand, this implies a populist self-perception in which the actor perfectly embodies a monolithic people. On the other hand, the ideology leads to populist communication strategies through which the actor transports ideological values into the public. The populist self-perception and communication strategy result in a populist communication style employing a set of rhetorical means. Populism and the Mass Media This chapter focus on the role the mass media plays within the populism debate. In contrast to concepts about political populism, there exist only few concepts, that focus on the interaction between the three core elements of populism the people, the elite and the populist actor and the news media and therefore in this area of research there still exist a lot of blind spots. Following Mazzoleni (2003) especially the knowledge about how the 4

6 media work as initiators or catalysts of populist sentiments or how media content may voice sectional populist claims (p. 2) is very scare. Before presenting the concepts, this paper firstly focuses on the questions, why the media play a crucial role within society. Building upon that, in a second step the existing theoretical conceptions about the relation between the core elements of populism and the media are examined, followed by an overview of the existing research results of populism and the news media. Importance of media within populism Mass media play a crucial role in the political arena and in the age of mediatization, they have become an integral part between politics and the society. The mass media cannot only set the political agenda, they can also frame issues and prime sometimes even persuade the recipients. Mediatization investigates how mass media has become more and more independent from the political arena and how political actors have been effected by this development. The mediatization of politics is defined by Esser and Strömbäck (2014) as a long-term process through which the importance of the media and their spill-over effects on political processes, institutions, organizations and actors have increased (p. 9). The key aspect of mediatization lies in the fact that modern mass media constitute the main communicative infrastructure through which politics presents itself to the public. Nowadays politicians need to know how to express and perform in the mass media, for example in interviews or talk shows, how to bargain with journalist or must also be able to use the media to their advantages by setting its agenda. A successful strategy most media outlets tend to use to make political issues more attractive to the public, is the orientation towards entertainment formats like dramatization, personalization, focus in human interest issues or visualization. Mediatization therefore broach the issue how political actors can be impaired in a mediatized democracy (as victims of mediatization) but also how they can profit from these changes (as beneficiaries of mediatization). Two exemplary evident effects of the mediatization of politics which are especially relevant in relation with populism are the transformation of political language into spectacle and the personalization of political leadership (Mazzoleni, 2008). Political actors and organization who are able to adapt to these new logics, which are ubiquitous in mediatized democracies, are more likely to be privileged. Especially populist actors and parties can benefit from mediatization and its effects and Diehl (2012) argues 5

7 that mass media even promotes populism or as Plasser and Ulram (2003) argued: mass media provide a necessary and permanent soundboard for neo-populism (p. 40). Populist actors are attractive for the media because they tend have news value: They have charisma, express emotions or are typically outsiders who have not been part of the traditional political elites. On the other hand, populist parties, especially in their emergence phase, depend to some extent on their media presence and performance. Plasser and Ulram (2003) for example argue that the populist Austrian Freedom Party had to try much harder than mainstream parties to guide the media agenda in an active way to direct the public attention to their own framing of problems and issues. Populist as well as mainstream political actors need use strategic communication and news management to exploit the media logic for their own propose. Mazzoleni (2014, p. 9) describes this as only those who adopt a mediagenic style of communication become media darlings. Concepts of media populism in the literature In the academic literature only fey arguments and conceptualization about the interaction of political populism and the mass media exists. Gianpietro Mazzoleni and Benjamin Krämer are the few exceptions who have published in English (also see Meyer (2006) or Diehl (2011; 2012) for general thoughts about populism and the media in German). For over a decade now Mazzoleni is investigating populism in the media. In his earlier work he refers to media populism or populist media by simultaneously describing it as a highly commercialized media production and/or news coverage that on one side favour scandalism, sensationalism, and negative or socially threatening event, but at the same time bow to the general popular tastes (Mazzoleni, 2006, p. 187), which is especially true in the case of tabloid media (Mazzoleni 2008, p. 54). Based on this understanding of media populism or populist media, Mazzoleni (2003, pp ; 2008, pp ; 2014, pp ; see also Stewart, Mazzoleni, & Horsfield, 2003, pp ) present three central arguments. Firstly he argues that there exist some kind of media complicity between popular, tabloid media and populist actors. Because of the tendency of popular media to appeal to mass audiences, to crave sensationalism, scandalism and conflicts these media tend to have an affinity towards populist actors, since they tend to be newsworthy and emphasize certain hot or top issues like anti-immigration or anti-corruption over a long period. Secondly in contrast to tabloid media, established quality news media reflect the 6

8 values and views of the elite, to which they belong themselves, tend to adopt a law-andorder attitude and defend the status quo when it comes under attack from antiestablishment forces like populist movements. They therefore take on a sacerdotal attitude towards the ruling political elite and consequently engage in active resistance to populist, by either treat them in a hostile way or completely ignore them. Elite media appear to play the role of paladins of the establishment. Thirdly he argues that all mass-orientated media outlets and populist actors depend on each other. On the one hand the mass media need newsworthy stories but on the other hand populist also need the media for their publicity. Mazzoleni calls this a concurrence of needs. Mazzoleni (2008, pp ; 2014, pp ; Stewart et al., 2003, pp ) further states that the rise and sometimes also fall of populist actors is highly influenced by the way the media have covered populist events and messages but also how successful the own media management strategies of the actors actually were. The frame analysis of Stewart, Mazzoleni, and Horsfield (2003) introduced four distinct phases, in which the relationship between mass media outlets and populist actors differ over the time (for more information see Stewart et al., 2003, p , Mazzoleni, 2008, p ; 2014, p ). With the term media populism Mazzoleni refers to the relationship between media and populist politics. Krämer (2014) on the other hand introduces media populism as a distinct phenomenon by looking at populism among the media organizations themselves, independent of any relationship to populist actors. He argues that media populism is not a common feature shared by all media and introduces it as a matter of degree by defining media populism as the use of stylistic and ideological elements by some media (p. 48). These elements can be summarized as the construction and favouritism of in-groups, hostility toward, and circumvention of the elites and institutions of representative democracy, reliance on charisma and (group-related) common sense, and appeal to moral sentiments (thus on an emotionalizing, personalizing, and ostentatiously plainspoken discourse) (p. 48). In this sense the structural position of mass media yields conditions that are favorable as well as unfavorable to populist positions and successful populist mobilization. Krämer (2014 p. 49) introduces four conditions: Firstly, the media may serve for politicians as one channel circumvent the political systems and speak directly to the people. Media organizations may thus try to present themselves as an affiliate of such a movement in order to gain populist appeal. Secondly, journalists use several news criteria 7

9 to select their stories, which are prone to certain forms of populism. For instance, news coverage is often ethno-centrist insofar as it favors events that are close to their audience (culturally, geographically, politically, etc.). Furthermore, they domesticate international events by placing them into the national reception prisms of their local audiences, thereby co-creating a sense of community (including ingroup and outgroup sentiments) similar to what political populist may do. Thirdly, the media s position as a countervailing power to party politics (watchdog function) may facilitate an anti-institutional mindset that is fundamentally critical of any actions by established elite actors, similar to the kind of antielitism found among political populists. This adversarial spirit against elites can turn against populist politicians too if journalists perceive them as actors just as established and deficient as all the other politicians who deserve critical scrutiny. Lastly, similarly to the second point, mass media might use other communicative, stylistic and rhetorical techniques that are provocative or stir up emotion, thus serving not only the economic goals of the news organizations but also play in the hands of a populist movement. In his most recent work, Mazzoleni (2014) includes the theoretical implementation of Krämer s concept of media populism and briefly introduces two different conceptions of media populism. The first deals with the inner character of contemporary mass communication as a whole, while the second relates more to the ideological outlook and conduct of news media which can be identified as populist media themselves (Mazzoleni, 2014, p. 68). This difference between the two types of media populism is very crucial for this dissertation project. Sometimes media populism will be related to populism in the political field, but at other times it will occur independently of any ideological loyalties to political actors. Media populism in the understanding of the dissertation project (and the NCCR module 2) always refers to two sides of the same coin: On one hand media populism examine how mass media outlets deal with politics-generated populism, which for examples looks at how prominent political actors are presented in the media or how the media frame their leaders or discussed issues. On the other hand media populism analyzes mediagenerated populism which explores if media outlets themselves are populist actors. Within the NCCR module 2, seven political strategies as well as thirteen populist and mediatized communication styles have been deduced from the above presented definition of political populism. Since these strategies and styles only play a subordinate role within this particular dissertation project, they will not be presented in detail. The core interest of this research 8

10 paper is media populism and therefore the definition as well as the media strategies which were developed within the module will be presented in the following chapter. Definition of media populism and media strategies On the foundation of Mazzoleni s and Krämer s theoretical work, a definition which includes both sides of media populism (media-generated as well as politics-generated populism) was elaborated within the whole NCCR module. In the following five constituents of media populism are presented, by introducing four ideological and one stylistic element. The occurrence of all five elements in one article or by one media organization at the same time would be the ideal realization of media populism. However it is more realistic that media outlets will display only incomplete realizations of some of these constituents in characteristic combinations. Therefore as well as in the definition of political populism, the phenomenon is understood as a matter of degree, which give the opportunity to rank media outlets according to their closeness to the ideal type of media populism. The first ideological element describes the constructing of in-groups and out-groups and favoring the perspective of the majority in-group by using ethnocentric schemata and domesticating transnational issues. The second ideological constitute characterizes the hostility toward elites by taking a skeptical stance toward established institutions and presenting the media as a fourth estate. Thirdly media populism is defined as circumventing institutions of representative democracy by assuming the role of mouthpiece of the people or public representative and supporting plebiscitary elements. The last ideological element addresses the reliance of media outlets on charisma and common sense by considering charismatic leaders newsworthy, using common people knowledge and real life examples as evidence, and considering popular votes, polls and reader comments as expressing the wisdom of the crowd. The stylistic element argues that populist media outlets use a discursive style that attracts ordinary citizens attention by sensationalizing political issues, emphasizing conflict, evoking emotion, or eliciting moral outrage. As said above, media populism is considered as a gradual phenomenon but it is crucial to emphasize, that the occurrence of merely stylistic elements without the presence of any of the ideological element are insufficient to promote media populism. If style elements like personalization, popularization, emotionalization, negativism or dramatization would be sufficient enough to label media organizations as populist, one would have to 9

11 conclude that all media are populist to some extent, which is not the propose of this project. Moreover is the simple usage of style elements already established and heavily investigated in communication science (e. g. infotainment or politainment). In the presented theoretical definition, both types of media populism are included, and all five elements contain both aspects of the same coin. For example the reliance of media outlets on charisma and common sense (forth element). Media organizations can decided to report in a positive or negative way about charismatic populist leader, therefore either promoting or denouncing the populist leader, his party and ideas. This would be a clear example of politic-generated populism in the media. In case of the media-generated populism, media outlets themselves can try to express closeness to the people, by relying on common sense arguments and including common people knowledge and real life examples as evidence. With this strategy media outlets try speak directly to their audience by using daily routine example and a simple language, which is per definition a typical political strategy used by populist actors. Building on the theoretical definition of media populism, the NCCR module further deduced eight media strategies. To examine the phenomenon as a whole, the module identified four strategies of media-generated populism and four strategies of politicsgenerated populism as reflected in the media. The first four strategies focus on how media organizations can deal with politicsgenerated populism: First, media can serve as passive, neutral transmitter of political populism. The author disseminates political messages that contain populist elements in a descriptive and passive way, hence the reporting about populist actors or their ideas is only according to news value without any further interpretations or evaluations by the media or the journalist. This strategy is motivated by the journalistic role function of neutral dissemination of newsworthy events. However, the media can of course not only neutrally transmit information about political populism; it can also portray populism in a either positive or negative way. Hence, the second strategy defines media as being critical of political populism, by demonstrating distance, skepticism or a desire to expose political ideas or actors. This is motivated by the journalistic role function of educator, analyst or scrutinizing watchdog and is done by emphasizing unfavorable characteristic of populist issues or actor or by using elements like humor or irony. Generally this strategy denies the relevance or significance of populist actor or issue. By contrast the media can on the other 10

12 hand also function as a positive endorser of political populism, by demonstrating political sympathy, favorability and partisanship toward populist ideas or actors. This third strategy can be motivated by press or party parallelism, partisanship or ideological allegiance of media outlets. Additionally media can not only endorse populism directly, they can also critic the political establishment, by taking a critical stance toward mainstream political actors, parties or institutions and questioning their intensions or capabilities and demonstrating distance or skepticism towards them. This strategy is motivated by skepticism toward mainstream politics, which is considered a cynical game of self-interested actors. By criticizing the establishment media outlets can thereby forming an implicit, unintended complicity with populists, which we defines as the fourth politic-generated populism strategy. The next four presented strategies focus on media-generated populism, by examine if various media outlets are populist themselves and can therefore be labelled populist media. The first strategy investigates, if media outlets promote a special single issue only for subjective reasons, independent of existing political parties or movements. This strategy is motivated by the media outlet s interest itself to instrumentalize certain hot or loaded issues (like immigration or welfare abuse), without any reference of party involvement in those issues. Secondly, the media can be driven by commercial considerations to spice up political affairs coverage to make it more attractive to ordinary people in their role as consumers by adding entertainment-values to their stories. This reporting style more extreme and scandalous aspects, contains drastic or sensationalist language, uses dramatized associations, or moralizes political manners. The motivation behind this strategy is to increase the market share of the media outlet and can be described as economically motivated opportunism. Within the third strategy, media outlets take the role as advocate of the people by including their audience in their role as citizens. As a platform of the people s voice, the media outlet lets ordinary people express their views, wants to ensure that the preferences of the people are heard and serves as representative of the people. The media outlets can also advocate for particular political programs and perspectives and motivates people to get involved on behalf of certain issues. This strategy is motivated by the journalistic role function of serving as mouthpiece or platform of the people s voice in politics, thereby supporting participatory democracy. The last media-generated populism strategy is engaged with the social responsibility media have for the society. Through high 11

13 quality reporting styles media outlets can promote enlightened understanding of politics and enables the public to informed judgments on relevant issues. It brings independent scrutiny to bear on the forces of power in society, including the conduct of populists and all other power-holders in society. Media outlets provide in stories multiple perspectives, address serious issues in a substantive way, and are driven by commitment to explicate politics including populist politics in a responsible way. Therefore the media is promoting a distinct form of plebiscitary democracy that believes in wise decisions of the majority of the people, if they have been given the ability to participate directly and access to enough relevant information. After outlining the module s own definition of media populism and its connected eight media strategies, in next step the research overview of populism political as well as media in the news media is presented by discussing the reported results. Research overview of populism in the Mass Media First the focus lies on the side of media populism which has been investigated more intensively, by looking at the seven existing studies which investigated how media deal with politics-generated populism. The focus of the studies lies on two aspects: On the one hand, they investigated how the media can contribute to the success of populist parties or their emphasized issues and on the other hand, they analyze how populist leaders, politicians or parties are presented in the media or how they present themselves. Regarding the first aspect, the two studies by Walgrave and Swert (2004) and Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart (2007) examine if newspapers and TV stations can contribute to the success of the populist parties in Belgium and the Netherlands. Both studies verified a positive impact of immigration issues (and crime issues only for the Vlaams Blok in Belgium). In addition Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart showed, that the more the media reported on immigration-relevant topics, the higher the aggregated share of vote for Dutch populist parties was. In both studies, the dependent variables were typical populist issues in the media and their effect on the success of selected populist parties in the respective country. The other studies focus on the analysis of the prominence of populist actors in the media and which communication strategies or style the investigated actors are using. Since the depended variables of those studies were not only the presentation or prominence of 12

14 populist actors, the authors had to clarify, how these populist strategies and styles were operationalized, which will be outlined in the following. Jagers and Walgrave (2007) define populism above all as a communication style by dividing the three core elements of populism (people, anti-establishment and exclusion) in a thin and a thick conceptualization of populism. The thin definition of populism is considered as a political communication style of political actors that refer to the people (p. 322). If the thin concept of populism is combined with anti-establishment and exclusion, the populist communication style is defined thick (p. 323). Thick populism comprises a more classic and restrictive meaning of populism and as Jagers and Walgrave argued, fill in the empty shell of thin populism (p. 324). Building on this conceptualization, Cranmer (2011) defined populist communication as a communication style that refers to the people and can be employed by different political actors for different proposes. In contrast to Jagers and Walgrave (2007) who coded all reference to the people, Cranmer considered these references only as populist if a political actor claims that he or she defends the will of the people, is accountable for the people and/or legitimacies his or her claim by referring to the people. For the thick concept of populism, she also identified anti-establishment references and the exclusion or denunciation of certain societal groups. Additionally, Cranmer added a homogeneity indicator to the concept of thick populism which measured if an ingroup or its value were portrayed as being attacked by an outgroup. In contrast, Bos, van der Burg, and de Vreese (2010; 2011) define populism as the combination of style elements (e.g. highly emotional, slogan-based and tabloid-style language) and substantive rhetoric (hostility towards representative politics/established order and identification with the people). The substantive rhetoric was measured by the two core aspects of populist ideology: Anti-establishment appeal and the celebration of the homeland. The populist style was operationalized with three aspects: Referring to a crisis situation (1), straightforwardness, simplicity and clarity (2), and emphasis on strong (charismatic) leadership as problem manager. From those three operationalization to measure populism in the media, it can be concluded that populism when measured in the mass media is so far either conceptualized as a communication style or a combination of style elements and rhetoric. After clarifying the operationalization, in the following the results of studies focusing on politics-generated populism are presented. 13

15 Jagers and Walgrave (2007), Cranmer (2011) and Bos, van der Burg and de Vreese (2010) showed that that all investigated parties refer to the people to some extent: hence references to the people (thin populism) has to be considered as a political communication style that all parties, not only populist actors, use. Nevertheless, Jagers and Walgrave (2007) found the populist party Vlaams Blok to be the one party with the highest percentage of people references. These results were confirmed for various investigated media outlets, from party broadcast channels, newspapers, news programs to political talk shows. The studies further state a significant difference between the use of exclusion and anti-elitist strategies (thick populism) by populist parties in contrast to mainstream parties. Jagers and Walgrave (2007) demonstrate that the Vlaams Blok was the only political party who heavily criticized the elite and excluded specific parts of the population, which lead the authors to the conclusion that the Belgium extreme-right party is a textbook example of thin and thick populism. Cranmer (2011) showed that the populist Swiss People s Party used populist communication strategies most in comparison with other parties. Bos, van der Burg and de Vreese (2010) verify that in general the populist leaders score higher on the populism scale than mainstream politicians, but the difference is statistically not significant. However, the famous populist leader Geert Wilders, appeared to score highest on the populism scale. Wilders was further investigated by Van der Pas, de Vries and van der Burg (2011) by examine if his electoral success was affected by the extent to which he was portrayed in the media as a convincing leader. The results showed that Wilder s high visibility and selfconfident image in the media and his articulation of a better vision of the future did not won over any more voters. Additionally, Bos, van der Burg and de Vreese (2011) investigated how the media can shape perceptions of populist leaders in relation to their electoral success and found no significant difference between populist and mainstream party leaders. Hence the authors concluded that leaders of right-wing populist parties are just as dependent upon the media as leaders of other parties (Bos et al., 2011, p. 182). In a second step, the existing studies which focus on the other side of media populism media-generated populism or what Mazzoleni (2014b) calls populist media are presented. Both Akkerman (2011) and Rooduijn (2013) investigated if debates in popular, tabloid newspapers are more populist than in quality, elite newspapers. Both studies found no difference between the two newspaper type. Akkerman (2011) stated that tabloid newspapers do not have an anti-elitist bias, which was confirmed by Rooduijn (2013) 14

16 who concluded that overall, the debates in tabloid media were not more populist than the debates in quality, elite newspapers. Hence both studies could find no empirical evidence for Mazzoleni s complicity and paladin theory. Rooduijn (2013) further detect that in general the debates in the newspapers have become more populist over the last two decades and that the degree of populism is strongly related to the success of populist parties. However, there was no significant differences between tabloid and quality newspapers and also Akkerman concluded that tabloid newspapers did not provide more favorable discursive opportunity structure for populist parties than quality newspapers did. In line with these results Bos, van der Burg, and de Vreese (2010) found no significant difference within the two media types concerning the prominence of populist versus mainstream politicians. Research Questions Based on the theoretical basis as well as the empirical findings, in this chapter presents the main research questions. The focus is on two main research interest: The first research questions examines how close news organizations are in terms of their closeness to the ideal definition of media populism whereas the second analyzes the actual use of media strategies by various news organizations. The first main interest investigates the vicinity of various news organizations (print media as well as TV stations) in different Western democracies to the ideal definition of media populism. For a news organization to be an ideal example of media populism, it would has to incorporate all five components of the presented definition at the same time. However, it is much more likely that the elements of the definition occur in characteristic combinations. Whereas some of the components can be used to some extent by all media organizations, others will only be applied by some news organization and the characteristics of these combination should lead us to rank news organizations according to their closeness to our definition of media populism. Hence, the first research questions is interested in the various combination of the use of ideological as well as stylistic elements and reads as follow: RQ 1: What are characteristic combinations of ideological as well as stylistic elements in political news coverage, and can we rank news organizations according to their closeness to the ideal type of media populism based on their use of these elements? 15

17 Further it is expected that the combinations will be different depending on other factors: Firstly generally television newscast are expected to use other combinations than newspapers. These two types are different in many ways: form the content perspective side, newspaper articles contain more detailed information and background context than typical stories in television newscast. Furthermore is the overall amount of information especially in quality newspapers higher than in one evening newscast. From the entertainment perspective, television is a highly visual medium with spotlight function, whereas newspapers rely mostly on verbal information (pictures as an exception). Further differences like variation in coverage, type of usage or information transfer make it plausible, that overall the use combinations of media populism elements differ between newspapers and television newscast: RQ 1.1: What kind of different combination of media populism elements exist between TV newscast and newspapers? If the focus lies only on newspapers, anticipated is that there are differences between quality, elite newspapers in contrast to more popular, tabloid newspapers and the combination of media populism elements. Following the theoretical assumptions of Mazzoleni, popular tabloid media are expected to rank much closer towards the ideal typical understanding of media populism and from some kind of media complicity with populist actors. However as the results of Akkerman (2011), Rooduijn (2013) and Bos et al. (2010) indicated that there is no significant difference in the use of anti-elitism frames, populist debate structure and prominence of populist actors between the two media types. Therefore this project is very interested to examine whether different combination of media populism elements occur between the two news types and if factors could influence these characteristics: RQ 1.2: What kind of different combination of media populism elements exist between tabloid and quality newspapers? A third factor within this first main research interest focus on the effects various media systems may have on the combination of media populism elements in different countries. Since this dissertation project only focuses on populism in Western democracies (Europe and USA) the use of Hallin and Mancini (2004) typology of media systems appears 16

18 suitable. It is expected that the dimensions of the media-politics relationships within the three models (polarized-pluralist, democratic corporatist and liberal model) will have an effect on the combination of media populism elements in the media as well as their general closeness to the ideal type of media populism. It will be interesting to examine what effect the various dimension like the newspaper industry and its development, political parallelism, professionalization or the role of the state and its interventions will induce: RQ 1.3: What kind of different combination of media populism elements exist between different media system in Western democracies? The second main research interest focus on the actual use of the eight promoted media strategies. Examine whether news organizations on the one hand merely transmit, positively amplify, implicitly support or critically deconstruct political populism (politicsgenerated populism in the media), or if news organizations engage in their own form of media populism (media-generated populism) and therefore can be called populist media lies in the focus. The overall research question therefore read as follow: RQ 2: Which media strategies do news organization use when confronted with political populism or when engaging in their own form of populism? Again it is expected, that usage of media strategies will vary along various factors. As mentioned above, to project investigates if television newscast and newspapers use different strategies to deal with politics-generated populism and which media type uses more media-generated populism strategies: RQ 2.1: Which media strategies are used to deal with political populism by television newscast in comparison to newspapers? RQ 2.2: Does the usage of media-generated populism differ between television newscast compared to newspapers? Regarding media strategies, one very interesting questions is the difference between tabloid and quality newspapers. Do tabloid media really tend to be more populist, by implicitly supporting populist actors and act as critics of the political establishment? On the other hand, do quality media really tend to be more critically deconstructive towards 17

19 political populism than tabloid newspapers? In addition, the project investigates which media type can per se be labeled as a populist media: RQ 2.3: Which media strategies are used to deal with political populism by tabloid newspapers in comparison to quality newspapers? RQ 2.4: Does the usage of media-generated populism differ between the two types of newspapers? Thirdly the international comparison between the selected countries is of interest. The project argues that dimensions of politics-media-relationships in Western democracies will have an effect on how media in general deal with populism in the media. Furthermore, depending on the various factors of the media systems, media organizations tend to be more populist in some countries than in others: RQ 2.5: Can the dimensions used to differentiate types of media systems also explain how media organizations report on political populism? RQ 2.6: Does membership to a certain type of media systems correlate with the level of populism found in media organizations of that country? Methods This dissertation project is part of IP8 in the NCCR democracy Phase III and will use this collected data to answer the above presented research questions. The module realizes a content analysis in eleven Western democracies during the period of one year. Included in the analysis are in each country six newspaper (two upmarket, two mass-market and two weeklies) and two television newscasts (a commercial and a public one). For further details about the chosen media in all eleven countries, please see table 1. The focus lies on a routine phase (not elections phases) during one year (from March 2013 and March 2014). The module selected two different debate issues, which appear to be typical for populism on both sides of the political spectrum. On one hand immigration issues are prone to be applied by right-wing populist actors, on the other hand labor market issues tend to be more used by political actor from the left-wing. The five components of media populism as well as the eight media strategies have been translated into codebook categories. 18

20 Table 1: Overview of newspapers and television newscast per country Country Switzerland (German part) Switzerland (French part) Quality newspapers Tabloid, commuter newspapers Weekly news magazines Television newscasts Neue Zürcher Blick Weltwoche SRF 1 - Tagesschau Zeitung Tagesanzeiger 20 Minuten WOZ SRF1 10 vor 10 Le Temps Le Matin RTS le journal Germany FAZ Bild Spiegel ARD Tagesschau Süddeutsche B. Z. Focus RTL - RTL Aktuell Austria Standard Kronenzeitung Profil ORF2 - Zeit im Bild Die Presse Heute News ATV - ATV Aktuell United The Times The Sun The Spectator BBC1 BBC news at ten Kingdom The Guardian The Daily Mirror The Economist IVT1 ITV news at ten USA New York Times USA Today National Review NBC Nightly News Wall Street Journal New York Daily News Time FOX News Bill O Reilly PBS News hour Italy Corriere della Serra Leggo Panorama Rai1 TG1 La Repubblica Metro L Espresso Canale5 TG5 France Le Monde Metro L Éxpress TF1 Le20h Figaro 20 Minutes Le Point F2 Le journal Netherland De Volkskrant De Telegraaf Elsevier Ned1 NOS NCR Handelsblad Algemeen Dagblad Vrij Nederland RTL4 RTL Nieuws Sweden Dagens Nyheter Aftonbladet Fokus SVT1 - Rapport Svenska Dagbladet Expressen Dagens TV4 - Nyheterna Samhälle Poland Gazeta Wyborcza Super Express Uważam Rze. TVN Fakty Inaczej pisane Rzeczpospolita Fakt Polityka TVP1 - Wiadomości Bulgaria Dnevnik Telegraph Capital BNT1 - По света и у нас Standart Dneven Trud Ataka btv - Новините 19

21 References Abts, K., & Rummens, S. (2007). Populism versus Democracy. Political Studies, 55(2), Akkerman, T. (2011). Friend or foe? Right-wing populism and the popular press in Britain and the Netherlands. Journalism, 12(8), Albertazzi, D., & McDonnell, D. (2008). Introduction: A New Spectre for Western Europe. In D. Albertazzi & D. McDonnell (Eds.), Twenty-first century populism: the spectre of Western European democracy (pp. 1 11). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bale, T., van Kessel, S., & Taggart, P. (2011). Thrown around with abandon? Popular understandings of populism as conveyed by the print media: a UK case study. Acta Politica, 46(2), Barr, R. R. (2009). Populists, Outsiders and Anti-Establishment Politics. Party Politics, 15(1), Betz, H., & Johnson, C. (2004). Against the current stemming the tide: the nostalgic ideology of the contemporary radical populist right. Journal of Political Ideologies, 9(3), doi: / Boomgaarden, H. G., & Vliegenthart, R. (2007). Explaining the rise of anti-immigrant parties: The role of news media content. Electoral Studies, 26(2), Bos, L., van der Burg, W., & de Vreese, C. H. (2011). How the Media Shape Perceptions of Right-Wing Populist Leaders. Political Communication, 28(2), Bundesamt für Statistik. (2014). Wahlen Detaillierte Daten. Retrieved from Canovan, M. (1999). Trust the people! Populism and the two faces of democracy. Political Studies, 47(1), Canovan, M. (2002). Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy. In Y. Mény & Y. Surel (Eds.), Democracies and the populist challenge, pp Basingstoke: Basingstoke : Palgrave. Cranmer, M. (2011). Populist Communication and Publicity: An Empirical Study of Contextual Differences in Switzerland. Swiss Political Science Review, 17(3), Diehl, P. (2011). Populismus, Antipolitik, Politainment: Neue Tendenzen der politischen Kommunikation. Berliner Debatte Initial, 22(1), Diehl, P. (2012). Populismus und Massenmedien. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (APuZ), 5-6, Esser, F., & Strömbäck, J. (2014). Mediatization of Politics: Towards a Theoretical Framework. In F. Esser & J. Strömbäck (Eds.), Mediatization of Politics: Understanding the Trasnformation of Western Democracies (pp. 5 43). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 20