Affective antagonistic mobilisation and what it is not populism in contemporary communication (also with a case of short videos)

This paper investigates political mobilisation and differentiation and the logic of populism in this. The paper introduces a heuristic use of populism where the affects and antagonisms play an important role. Politics is not void of passions but a field where claims of rationality is engaged and enhanced with passions. The paper gives examples of affective mobilisation, and shifting antagonisms. Attention is paid to a media where passionate populism appear the most: audiovisual communication in short videos, where the author has been leading a multi-country, multi-platform study of the EP elections 2024 offering a comparative platform for a variety of political actors. The paper connects this thematic to the core of Laclaudian theory of populism, where populism is seen as an antithesis of institutionalism, and can be conceptualised in a form, capturing affective and antagonistic communication. These have been seen as offering heuristic value - but what about their antithesis? What would be the difference in practice of non-populist and populist communication in the short videos?