Online Streams of Populism? A Cross-Country Analysis of Portrayals of the EU through Twitter and Facebook

Having in mind the recent spread of populist discourses focusing on the European Union (EU), the election of Eurosceptic politicians and more broadly their impact on the ongoing debates about the legitimation and delegitimation of the EU in different member states, this paper investigates whether and how Twitter and Facebook are being used by different types of actors (e.g., political parties, political leaders, journalists, pundits, interest groups, citizens) to discuss matters related to the EU functioning and to influence perceptions of the EU. It aims at answering the following questions: How is the EU perceived and referred to/portrayed in Twitter and Facebook across countries? What are the patterns of populist rhetoric focusing on the EU in different European countries? The methodological approach is based on a mixed methods approach that includes digital methods and content analysis of user-generated content in three countries: France, Portugal, and Spain. The rationale behind the choice of these three countries signals the intention of studying cases with different types of populist politicians and political parties, which also have different levels of electoral success. The analysis of populist rhetoric addresses specific elements that have been linked to populism in extant literature, namely: reference to ‘the people’ and/or expression of closeness and belonging to the people; anti-elitism (addressed to any type of elite); anti-system and anti-establishment; division between “us and them”; other expressions of dichotomous views (e.g., good vs. bad, right vs. wrong; evil vs. pure, etc.); blame frame; and other expressions of blame shifting and scapegoating. This paper is part of the ongoing research project ‘Politics, Policy and Populism in the New Media’ that was awarded funding by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Reference: IF/01451/2014/CP1239/CT0004).