Linda Bos
Biographic Data
| ID | 316722 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Linda Bos |
| GIVEN NAMES | Linda |
| FAMILY NAME | Bos |
| SIGNATURE | BOS L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0160-3490 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 613 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Governmental fact-checking or ‘ fact-washing ’? Assessing the (un)biasedness and (im)partiality of the Centre for Countering Disinformation in Turkey
This study investigates the fact-checking practices of Turkey’s Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), a particularly revealing case of governmental fact-checking in a competitive authoritarian setting, asking whether and how it engages in ‘fact-washing’, the propagandistic misuse of fact-checking to legitimise governmental narratives. Through a mixed-method analysis of 1,165 fact-checks across 146 disinformation bulletins, the findings reve…
Constructing representation: Political actors’ representative style on Facebook during European and national election campaigns
This study investigates contemporary forms of political representation by analyzing the Facebook communication of 110 political leaders from eight European countries during both national and 2024 European Parliament (EP) election campaigns. Based on constructivist theories of representation, we introduce the concept of ‘representational style’, defined as the specific combination of six communicative elements: policy focus, personalized communica…
Understanding Audience Threat Perceptions of Misinformation: Insights from Focus Group Discussions with German Media Users
Perceiving misinformation as a threat can have broad implications for society, yet how audiences arrive at such perceptions is not well understood. Using focus groups in Germany ( N = 30), we examine perceived consequences, origins, and signals of misinformation threats. Participants view misinformation as abstract and multifaceted. Perceived consequences span personal to societal harms, while origins are often attributed to distant actors or tec…
Feeling represented yet? How populist and non-populist cues in references to the people affect people’s perceived representation
Ambient Amplification: Attention Hijacking and Social Media Propaganda
Over the last decade, the rise of memetic media in combination with multimodal platform environments have radically transformed our experience of digital culture. On TikTok, gestures and sounds go viral. Twitter (X) @tags operate as bonding tools and ignite ‘supercharged’ critical publics. Coordinated link-sharing and attention-hijacking drive cross-platform engagement. Narratives promoted by state institutions become part of the global digital c…
Says who? The role of party cues in explaining the positive and negative consequences of political moral appeals in western Europe
Literature focusing on the impact of moral rhetoric suggests that the moral justification of a party position can convince and polarize voters. Thus far existing work pays little attention to the role of partisan sources in explaining these effects. This study looks at the interaction between moral rhetoric and party cues in three Western European multiparty systems: Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. Making use of two studies, combining autom…
Turning up and down the partisan heat. Voters’ psychological profile and changes in negative radical partisanship over the course of an election
Who is more likely to get “heated up” against their political rivals during the course of the campaign, as election day draws near? And for whom is such aggressive stance more likely to “cool down” in the aftermath of the election? Leveraging novel evidence from a four-wave longitudinal survey fielded in the weeks leading to – and the aftermath of – the Dutch national elections of November 2023 ( N = 5500 in wave 1, N = 1770 in wave 4), we test f…
Violence Against Politicians Drives Support for Political Violence Among (Some) Voters: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
We investigate whether a real-world episode of physical violence committed in October 2023 against Thierry Baudet, leader of the Dutch far-right FvD, conditioned a differential support for political violence among different voters: voters ideologically close to the target of the attack (in-group) and voters experiencing partisan Schadenfreude toward the party of the target (out-group). The unexpectedness of the attack makes it an excellent case o…
Virtue or passion? How moral frames in climate change appeals elicit emotions and change opinions
Political climate change debates make use of different moral frames of climate change diagnoses and solutions. While it is argued that moral frames are more effective when they invoke strong moral emotions, thus far the relationship between real‐world political moral viewpoints on climate change and the arousal of related emotions, behavior, and attitudes has not been studied. In this paper, we raise the question of whether existing moral climate…
The Moral Foundations of Populist Communication: A Semantic Network Analysis of Political Parties' Social Media Discourse in a Multiparty System
Social media have transformed political campaigning by enabling direct interaction between politicians and voters, becoming a key tool for shaping public opinion. Moral language is pivotal in this dynamic as it captures attention in an overly information-saturated social media environment and wields significant influence over political opinions. Populists thrive on social media by fostering distrust in elites, using emotional language, and reduci…
A Passion for Virtue? Appeals to Morality and Emotions in European Parliament Climate Change Debates
Although it is well acknowledged that moral foundations have an emotional component, little is known about the relation between moral foundations and emotions in current political and public debates. The analysis of this relation is crucial to better understand causal pathways from affect and emotion to climate change action and behavior. Employing Emotion Discourse Analysis, this study analyzes appeals to moral foundations in European Parliament…
The Fleeting Allure of Dark Campaigns: Backlash from Negative and Uncivil Campaigning in the Presence of (Better) Alternatives
More aggressive campaigning styles focusing on criticizing opponents (negativity) or using inappropriate language to vilify opponents (incivility) tend to be disliked by voters, and remain thus risky for parties facing off in competitive elections. Backlashes against attackers often cancel out any dent the attacks may leave in the support for the targets. Yet, research on the conditions under which these backlashes are more likely to happen remai…
Short but Critical: How “Fake News” and “Anti-Elitist” Media Attacks Undermine Perceived Message Credibility on Social Media
Citizens increasingly turn to social media for information, where they often rely on cues to judge the credibility of news messages. In these environments, populist politicians use “fake news” and “anti-elitist” attacks to undermine the credibility of news messages. This article argues that to truly understand the impact of these criticism cues, one must simultaneously consider additional contextual cues as well as individual-level moderators. In…
Appeals to the people: A content analysis of references to the people in traditional media, social media, and parliamentary materials
Political representation lies at the heart of representative democracy. In order to signal their connection to the people they are representing, politicians often refer to “the people.” In this study, we focus on how politicians refer to the people and how this varies across three main platforms of communication differing in access and formality: news media, social media, and the parliament. Through an in-depth content analysis of news articles, …
Pop populism: Ethno-traditionalism beyond national borders and the populist radical right
Are Populists Politically Intolerant? Citizens’ Populist Attitudes and Tolerance of Various Political Antagonists
Political tolerance—the willingness to extend civil rights to political antagonists—is a key democratic norm. We argue that because voters with populist attitudes have an ambiguous relationship with democracy and keep a narrow definition of the people, they are more likely to be politically intolerant. We study the Netherlands, a less likely case to find political intolerance. Using data from a representative household panel survey ( n = 1999), w…
The Ideological Predictors of Moral Appeals by European Political Elites; An Exploration of the Use of Moral Rhetoric in Multiparty Systems
Moral rhetoric is a powerful tool for any politician. Yet knowledge on the actual use of political moral appeals is scarce and mostly limited to two‐party systems. This study is the first to systematically investigate the use of moral appeals in formal and informal political elite communication in the multiparty systems of Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands. This allows us to look beyond the unidimensional left‐right axis, instead investigatin…
The Effects of Populist Identity Framing on Populist Attitudes Across Europe: Evidence From a 15-Country Comparative Experiment
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 de…
The effects of populism as a social identity frame on persuasion and mobilisation: Evidence from a 15‐country experiment
This article investigates the impact of populist messages on issue agreement and readiness for action in 15 countries (N = 7,286). Specifically, populist communicators rely on persuasive strategies by which social group cues become more salient and affect people's judgment of and political engagement with political issues. This strategy is called ‘populist identity framing’ because the ordinary people as the in‐group is portrayed as being threate…
On Behalf of the People: The Use of Public Opinion and the Perception of “the People” in Political Communication Strategies of Dutch MPs
This study investigates the role of public opinion for members of parliaments (MPs) in a time in which communication about the will of “the People” is high on the political agenda. By means of face-to-face elite interviews with Dutch MPs, we explore who politicians perceive as “the People,” how they assess “the will of the People,” and how this translates into their communication strategies. We find that MPs distinguish between listening to indiv…
Effects of issue and poll news on electoral volatility: Conversion or crystallization
Start Spreading the News: A Comparative Experiment on the Effects of Populist Communication on Political Engagement in Sixteen European Countries
Although populist communication has become pervasive throughout Europe, many important questions on its political consequences remain unanswered. First, previous research has neglected the differential effects of populist communication on the Left and Right. Second, internationally comparative studies are missing. Finally, previous research mostly studied attitudinal outcomes, neglecting behavioral effects. To address these key issues, this paper…
The Role of Implicit Attitudes in Populist Radical‐Right Support
Previous research on the populist radical right (PRR) has focused exclusively on explicit measures in explaining support for these contested political players. In this study, we explore the role of implicit attitudes in predicting vote likelihood for a PRR party. We use an online survey (n = 773) among Dutch respondents in which we measured implicit attitudes towards the Dutch PRRPartij voor de Vrijheid(PVV) with a Single‐Target Implicit Associat…
Selective Exposure to Populist Communication: How Attitudinal Congruence Drives the Effects of Populist Attributions of Blame
Although it has been argued that populist communication only appeals to a specific audience, extant research has exclusively studied the effects of populist communication in forced-exposure media environments.Responding to this discrepancy, we conducted two experiments (N = 562 and N = 558) in which we manipulated the core idea of populist messages-attributing blame-in forced and selective exposure media environments.Our results demonstrate that …
“ They Did It”: The Effects of Emotionalized Blame Attribution in Populist Communication
How can we explain the persuasiveness of populist messages, and who are most susceptible to their effects? These questions remain largely unanswered in extant research. This study argues that populist messages are characterized by assigning blame to elites in an emotionalized way. As previous research pointed at the guiding influence of blame attributions and emotions on political attitudes, these message characteristics may explain populism’s pe…
How the Media Shape Perceptions of Right-Wing Populist Leaders
It is often argued that right-wing populist party leaders are dependent on the media for their public image, which in turn is key for their electoral success. This study tests this assumption by comparing the effects of the media coverage of 2 Dutch right-wing populist leaders with the effects of the coverage of leaders of established parties, in a real-life setting, by tracking campaign developments in the Dutch 2006 national election campaign. …
An experimental test of the impact of style and rhetoric on the perception of right-wing populist and mainstream party leaders
The effects of populism as a social identity frame on persuasion and mobilisation: Evidence from a 15‐country experiment
This article investigates the impact of populist messages on issue agreement and readiness for action in 15 countries (N = 7,286). Specifically, populist communicators rely on persuasive strategies by which social group cues become more salient and affect people's judgment of and political engagement with political issues. This strategy is called ‘populist identity framing’ because the ordinary people as the in‐group is portrayed as being threate…
Public images of leaders of anti-immigration parties: Perceptions of legitimacy and effectiveness
In the last two decades several anti-immigration parties have risen in Western Europe. Some of these parties have been very successful in elections, whereas others have been rather unsuccessful. Some scholars have argued that this success depends in part on the extent to which voters perceive these parties (and their leaders) as legitimate (not violent or undemocratic) and as effective. However, no studies exist that test the effect of these publ…
The Appeal of Media Populism: The Media Preferences of Citizens with Populist Attitudes
Although a growing body of literature points to the particular media diet of populist voters, we know too little about what specific media preferences characterize citizens with populist attitudes. This article investigates to what extent citizens with antiestablishment and exclusionist populist attitudes are attracted to attitudinal-congruent media content. We collected survey data using a nationally representative sample (N = 809) and found tha…
Linking Survey and Media Content Data: Opportunities, Considerations, and Pitfalls
In media effects research a fundamental choice is often made between (field) experiments or observational studies that rely on survey data in combination with data about the information environment or media coverage. Such studies linking survey data and media content data are often dubbed “linkage studies.” On the one hand, such designs are the state of the art in our field and on the other hand, they come with a long list of challenges and choic…
Selective Exposure to Populist Communication: How Attitudinal Congruence Drives the Effects of Populist Attributions of Blame
Although it has been argued that populist communication only appeals to a specific audience, extant research has exclusively studied the effects of populist communication in forced-exposure media environments.Responding to this discrepancy, we conducted two experiments (N = 562 and N = 558) in which we manipulated the core idea of populist messages-attributing blame-in forced and selective exposure media environments.Our results demonstrate that …
The Ideological Predictors of Moral Appeals by European Political Elites; An Exploration of the Use of Moral Rhetoric in Multiparty Systems
Moral rhetoric is a powerful tool for any politician. Yet knowledge on the actual use of political moral appeals is scarce and mostly limited to two‐party systems. This study is the first to systematically investigate the use of moral appeals in formal and informal political elite communication in the multiparty systems of Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands. This allows us to look beyond the unidimensional left‐right axis, instead investigatin…
The Role of Implicit Attitudes in Populist Radical‐Right Support
Previous research on the populist radical right (PRR) has focused exclusively on explicit measures in explaining support for these contested political players. In this study, we explore the role of implicit attitudes in predicting vote likelihood for a PRR party. We use an online survey (n = 773) among Dutch respondents in which we measured implicit attitudes towards the Dutch PRRPartij voor de Vrijheid(PVV) with a Single‐Target Implicit Associat…
Populist rhetoric in politics and media: A longitudinal study of the Netherlands
Many claim that populism in the Netherlands has grown over the last 10 years; that it spreads among mainstream parties; that its success has to do with the media, who pay more and more attention to populist parties and immigration issues; but that it is difficult to distinguish between political populism intended for the media and populism by the media. In a longitudinal content analysis of newspapers, television news, talk shows and party politi…
Shoot the messenger? The media’s role in framing populist attributions of blame
Attributing blame to elites is central to populist communication. Although empirical research has provided initial insights into the effects of populist blame attribution on citizens’ political opinions, little is known about the contextual factors surrounding its presence in the media. Advancing this knowledge, this article draws on an extensive content analysis ( N = 867) covering non-election and election periods to provide insights into how p…
Priming Issues, Party Visibility, and Party Evaluations: The Impact on Vote Switching
Voter volatility has become a hallmark of Western democracies in the past three decades. At the same time short-term factors—such as the media’s coverage of issues, parties, and candidates during an election campaign—have become more important for voters’ decisions. While previous research did look at how campaign news in general affects electoral volatility in general, it has omitted to explicitly test the mechanisms underlying these effects. Bu…
The Effects of Populist Identity Framing on Populist Attitudes Across Europe: Evidence From a 15-Country Comparative Experiment
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 de…
Start Spreading the News: A Comparative Experiment on the Effects of Populist Communication on Political Engagement in Sixteen European Countries
Although populist communication has become pervasive throughout Europe, many important questions on its political consequences remain unanswered. First, previous research has neglected the differential effects of populist communication on the Left and Right. Second, internationally comparative studies are missing. Finally, previous research mostly studied attitudinal outcomes, neglecting behavioral effects. To address these key issues, this paper…
Media Cues and Citizen Support for Right-Wing Populist Parties
Right-wing populist parties are thriving across Europe. Usual explanations for the success of these parties are based on notions related to economics, national identity or cultural alienation. Some authors, however, have shown that the mass media also play a significant role. Whereas these studies provide evidence drawing on macro-level data resources and/or qualitative accounts, there is little systematic evidence about how mass media coverage m…
Are Populists Politically Intolerant? Citizens’ Populist Attitudes and Tolerance of Various Political Antagonists
Political tolerance—the willingness to extend civil rights to political antagonists—is a key democratic norm. We argue that because voters with populist attitudes have an ambiguous relationship with democracy and keep a narrow definition of the people, they are more likely to be politically intolerant. We study the Netherlands, a less likely case to find political intolerance. Using data from a representative household panel survey ( n = 1999), w…
It's the frame that matters: Immigrant integration and media framing effects in the Netherlands
The impact of mediated party issue strategies on electoral support
Based on agenda-setting, priming and issue ownership theory, we know that issue ownership and party visibility in the news can be used as strategies to affect electoral support. Thus far, it is, however, unclear whether these effects are independent or work interactively. This study aims to fill this gap. We focus on the Partij voor de Vrijheid, the prominent Dutch right-wing populist party, and draw upon an experimental design in which we expose…
The Fleeting Allure of Dark Campaigns: Backlash from Negative and Uncivil Campaigning in the Presence of (Better) Alternatives
More aggressive campaigning styles focusing on criticizing opponents (negativity) or using inappropriate language to vilify opponents (incivility) tend to be disliked by voters, and remain thus risky for parties facing off in competitive elections. Backlashes against attackers often cancel out any dent the attacks may leave in the support for the targets. Yet, research on the conditions under which these backlashes are more likely to happen remai…
On Behalf of the People: The Use of Public Opinion and the Perception of “the People” in Political Communication Strategies of Dutch MPs
This study investigates the role of public opinion for members of parliaments (MPs) in a time in which communication about the will of “the People” is high on the political agenda. By means of face-to-face elite interviews with Dutch MPs, we explore who politicians perceive as “the People,” how they assess “the will of the People,” and how this translates into their communication strategies. We find that MPs distinguish between listening to indiv…
Violence Against Politicians Drives Support for Political Violence Among (Some) Voters: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
We investigate whether a real-world episode of physical violence committed in October 2023 against Thierry Baudet, leader of the Dutch far-right FvD, conditioned a differential support for political violence among different voters: voters ideologically close to the target of the attack (in-group) and voters experiencing partisan Schadenfreude toward the party of the target (out-group). The unexpectedness of the attack makes it an excellent case o…
A Passion for Virtue? Appeals to Morality and Emotions in European Parliament Climate Change Debates
Although it is well acknowledged that moral foundations have an emotional component, little is known about the relation between moral foundations and emotions in current political and public debates. The analysis of this relation is crucial to better understand causal pathways from affect and emotion to climate change action and behavior. Employing Emotion Discourse Analysis, this study analyzes appeals to moral foundations in European Parliament…
Pop populism: Ethno-traditionalism beyond national borders and the populist radical right
Virtue or passion? How moral frames in climate change appeals elicit emotions and change opinions
Political climate change debates make use of different moral frames of climate change diagnoses and solutions. While it is argued that moral frames are more effective when they invoke strong moral emotions, thus far the relationship between real‐world political moral viewpoints on climate change and the arousal of related emotions, behavior, and attitudes has not been studied. In this paper, we raise the question of whether existing moral climate…
Appeals to the people: A content analysis of references to the people in traditional media, social media, and parliamentary materials
Political representation lies at the heart of representative democracy. In order to signal their connection to the people they are representing, politicians often refer to “the people.” In this study, we focus on how politicians refer to the people and how this varies across three main platforms of communication differing in access and formality: news media, social media, and the parliament. Through an in-depth content analysis of news articles, …
Public images of leaders of anti-immigration parties: Perceptions of legitimacy and effectiveness
In the last two decades several anti-immigration parties have risen in Western Europe. Some of these parties have been very successful in elections, whereas others have been rather unsuccessful. Some scholars have argued that this success depends in part on the extent to which voters perceive these parties (and their leaders) as legitimate (not violent or undemocratic) and as effective. However, no studies exist that test the effect of these publ…
How the Media Shape Perceptions of Right-Wing Populist Leaders
It is often argued that right-wing populist party leaders are dependent on the media for their public image, which in turn is key for their electoral success. This study tests this assumption by comparing the effects of the media coverage of 2 Dutch right-wing populist leaders with the effects of the coverage of leaders of established parties, in a real-life setting, by tracking campaign developments in the Dutch 2006 national election campaign. …
An experimental test of the impact of style and rhetoric on the perception of right-wing populist and mainstream party leaders
Populist rhetoric in politics and media: A longitudinal study of the Netherlands
Many claim that populism in the Netherlands has grown over the last 10 years; that it spreads among mainstream parties; that its success has to do with the media, who pay more and more attention to populist parties and immigration issues; but that it is difficult to distinguish between political populism intended for the media and populism by the media. In a longitudinal content analysis of newspapers, television news, talk shows and party politi…
The Mediating Role of Emotions: News Framing Effects on Opinions About Immigration
Emotions play an important role in explaining why news framing has effects on opinions about immigration. Yet, our knowledge regarding which emotions are relevant for different types of news frames is limited. This survey experiment ( N = 715) determines to what extent positive and negative emotions mediate framing effects about immigration, and whether mediation depends on the type of frame at stake. We exposed participants to one of four preest…
Media Cues and Citizen Support for Right-Wing Populist Parties
Right-wing populist parties are thriving across Europe. Usual explanations for the success of these parties are based on notions related to economics, national identity or cultural alienation. Some authors, however, have shown that the mass media also play a significant role. Whereas these studies provide evidence drawing on macro-level data resources and/or qualitative accounts, there is little systematic evidence about how mass media coverage m…
It's the frame that matters: Immigrant integration and media framing effects in the Netherlands
“ They Did It”: The Effects of Emotionalized Blame Attribution in Populist Communication
How can we explain the persuasiveness of populist messages, and who are most susceptible to their effects? These questions remain largely unanswered in extant research. This study argues that populist messages are characterized by assigning blame to elites in an emotionalized way. As previous research pointed at the guiding influence of blame attributions and emotions on political attitudes, these message characteristics may explain populism’s pe…
Linking Survey and Media Content Data: Opportunities, Considerations, and Pitfalls
In media effects research a fundamental choice is often made between (field) experiments or observational studies that rely on survey data in combination with data about the information environment or media coverage. Such studies linking survey data and media content data are often dubbed “linkage studies.” On the one hand, such designs are the state of the art in our field and on the other hand, they come with a long list of challenges and choic…
The Appeal of Media Populism: The Media Preferences of Citizens with Populist Attitudes
Although a growing body of literature points to the particular media diet of populist voters, we know too little about what specific media preferences characterize citizens with populist attitudes. This article investigates to what extent citizens with antiestablishment and exclusionist populist attitudes are attracted to attitudinal-congruent media content. We collected survey data using a nationally representative sample (N = 809) and found tha…
Shoot the messenger? The media’s role in framing populist attributions of blame
Attributing blame to elites is central to populist communication. Although empirical research has provided initial insights into the effects of populist blame attribution on citizens’ political opinions, little is known about the contextual factors surrounding its presence in the media. Advancing this knowledge, this article draws on an extensive content analysis ( N = 867) covering non-election and election periods to provide insights into how p…
Priming Issues, Party Visibility, and Party Evaluations: The Impact on Vote Switching
Voter volatility has become a hallmark of Western democracies in the past three decades. At the same time short-term factors—such as the media’s coverage of issues, parties, and candidates during an election campaign—have become more important for voters’ decisions. While previous research did look at how campaign news in general affects electoral volatility in general, it has omitted to explicitly test the mechanisms underlying these effects. Bu…
The impact of mediated party issue strategies on electoral support
Based on agenda-setting, priming and issue ownership theory, we know that issue ownership and party visibility in the news can be used as strategies to affect electoral support. Thus far, it is, however, unclear whether these effects are independent or work interactively. This study aims to fill this gap. We focus on the Partij voor de Vrijheid, the prominent Dutch right-wing populist party, and draw upon an experimental design in which we expose…
Start Spreading the News: A Comparative Experiment on the Effects of Populist Communication on Political Engagement in Sixteen European Countries
Although populist communication has become pervasive throughout Europe, many important questions on its political consequences remain unanswered. First, previous research has neglected the differential effects of populist communication on the Left and Right. Second, internationally comparative studies are missing. Finally, previous research mostly studied attitudinal outcomes, neglecting behavioral effects. To address these key issues, this paper…
The Role of Implicit Attitudes in Populist Radical‐Right Support
Previous research on the populist radical right (PRR) has focused exclusively on explicit measures in explaining support for these contested political players. In this study, we explore the role of implicit attitudes in predicting vote likelihood for a PRR party. We use an online survey (n = 773) among Dutch respondents in which we measured implicit attitudes towards the Dutch PRRPartij voor de Vrijheid(PVV) with a Single‐Target Implicit Associat…
Selective Exposure to Populist Communication: How Attitudinal Congruence Drives the Effects of Populist Attributions of Blame
Although it has been argued that populist communication only appeals to a specific audience, extant research has exclusively studied the effects of populist communication in forced-exposure media environments.Responding to this discrepancy, we conducted two experiments (N = 562 and N = 558) in which we manipulated the core idea of populist messages-attributing blame-in forced and selective exposure media environments.Our results demonstrate that …
On Behalf of the People: The Use of Public Opinion and the Perception of “the People” in Political Communication Strategies of Dutch MPs
This study investigates the role of public opinion for members of parliaments (MPs) in a time in which communication about the will of “the People” is high on the political agenda. By means of face-to-face elite interviews with Dutch MPs, we explore who politicians perceive as “the People,” how they assess “the will of the People,” and how this translates into their communication strategies. We find that MPs distinguish between listening to indiv…
Effects of issue and poll news on electoral volatility: Conversion or crystallization
The Effects of Populist Identity Framing on Populist Attitudes Across Europe: Evidence From a 15-Country Comparative Experiment
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 de…
The effects of populism as a social identity frame on persuasion and mobilisation: Evidence from a 15‐country experiment
This article investigates the impact of populist messages on issue agreement and readiness for action in 15 countries (N = 7,286). Specifically, populist communicators rely on persuasive strategies by which social group cues become more salient and affect people's judgment of and political engagement with political issues. This strategy is called ‘populist identity framing’ because the ordinary people as the in‐group is portrayed as being threate…
The Ideological Predictors of Moral Appeals by European Political Elites; An Exploration of the Use of Moral Rhetoric in Multiparty Systems
Moral rhetoric is a powerful tool for any politician. Yet knowledge on the actual use of political moral appeals is scarce and mostly limited to two‐party systems. This study is the first to systematically investigate the use of moral appeals in formal and informal political elite communication in the multiparty systems of Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands. This allows us to look beyond the unidimensional left‐right axis, instead investigatin…
Short but Critical: How “Fake News” and “Anti-Elitist” Media Attacks Undermine Perceived Message Credibility on Social Media
Citizens increasingly turn to social media for information, where they often rely on cues to judge the credibility of news messages. In these environments, populist politicians use “fake news” and “anti-elitist” attacks to undermine the credibility of news messages. This article argues that to truly understand the impact of these criticism cues, one must simultaneously consider additional contextual cues as well as individual-level moderators. In…
Appeals to the people: A content analysis of references to the people in traditional media, social media, and parliamentary materials
Political representation lies at the heart of representative democracy. In order to signal their connection to the people they are representing, politicians often refer to “the people.” In this study, we focus on how politicians refer to the people and how this varies across three main platforms of communication differing in access and formality: news media, social media, and the parliament. Through an in-depth content analysis of news articles, …
Pop populism: Ethno-traditionalism beyond national borders and the populist radical right
Are Populists Politically Intolerant? Citizens’ Populist Attitudes and Tolerance of Various Political Antagonists
Political tolerance—the willingness to extend civil rights to political antagonists—is a key democratic norm. We argue that because voters with populist attitudes have an ambiguous relationship with democracy and keep a narrow definition of the people, they are more likely to be politically intolerant. We study the Netherlands, a less likely case to find political intolerance. Using data from a representative household panel survey ( n = 1999), w…
Political science (30 works) · Politics (26 works) · Social Media and Politics (25 works) · Populism, Right-Wing Movements (24 works) · Law (23 works) · Law (22 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Social Psychology (14 works)