The global rise of anti-pluralist and antidemocratic forces that occurs within contextual and structural challenges increases the discontent with the political system and democratic institutions such as political parties. Political polarization has traditionally been approached in terms of ideology, but recent literature has taken into account its affective side that focuses on identity (Iyengar et al., 2012; McCoy et al., 2018; Torcal, 2023). Affective polarization relies on a perceived division of "us versus them" (Schedler, 2023), hence being fruitful for populist discourse, which explores polarization to oppose people versus the elite. Authors affiliated with this theoretical approach underscore the promotion of polarization as a modus operandi of the populist politician (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017; Laclau, 2005; Engesser et al., 2017; Sáes & Morales, 2023). When employed as a political strategy, it engenders a symbolic division between social groups (Olaniran & Williams, 2020), while the beliefs of polarized groups tend to become more extreme over time (Tewksbury & Rittenberg, 2012). Extreme polarization is connected to a crisis of democracy and makes a fertile ground for the rise of populist actors. It leads to strong consequences such as weakening social cohesion and fostering political intolerance, increasing the chance of citizens to trade off democratic principles for partisan interests and support extremist politicians and parties. Similar to what has been happening in other European countries, there has been electoral growth of an extreme-right populist political party (CHEGA - "Enough") in Portugal in recent years, becoming the third main force in parliament in the 2022 elections. After the resignation of the former prime minister amidst corruption accusations, parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place in March 2024. The latest polls place CHEGA as the third political force, reflecting this upward trend. This crisis scenario in the country gives momentum for the consolidation of the far-right in Portugal.
Meanwhile, with the rise of the internet and social media, populist and authoritarian actors have been trying to master these technologies in order to reach their political goals, facilitated by the active role of audiences. Without the traditional gatekeeping of legacy media, politicians are able to communicate directly with their electorate and take advantage of the affordances of social media platforms. Therefore, political leaders and parties have been able to expand the reach of their discourses online. This paper aims to measure and analyze the use of polarization and populism in social media during the 2024 Portuguese parliamentary elections. By combining text mining and Natural Language Processing (NPL) techniques, we will analyze social media data from the main Portuguese political leaders and parties during the 2024 official campaigning period. We will use a comparative perspective with other southern European countries like Spain and Italy. First, based on the discursive nature of populism, we will observe how the duality between the elite and the people has been operationalized in online political communication. Second, by assessing the references to the major political oppositions, we will analyze the polarization between parties and the use of affective polarization.
