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Who are the people? : A qualitative study investigating populist motives across AfD’s popular topics and their appearance in the public discourse.

Albersmann, Jonas (2024) Who are the people? : A qualitative study investigating populist motives across AfD’s popular topics and their appearance in the public discourse.

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Abstract:Populism, especially from the far right, has been on the rise around the globe for the past years and continues to gain more power. This presses the urgency of understanding these parties and their mechanisms. Especially from a communication perspective, populist motives and how they are used across different topics have been underrepresented in literature. This study aims to find ways, and differences in how the Alternative for Germany (AfD) uses populist communication styles across different topics that are popular in the public discourse. The 5 most important topics of the party were assessed in a quantitative analysis of the topics within the main social media accounts of the party. Populist communication style was investigated in traditional news media, analyzing 113 different articles, and in the party manifesto. The latter was conducted qualitatively. All populist motives are present in the ways of communication by the AfD although they are used in different ways for different topics. Messages include emotionalizing and threatening claims directed to specific ingroups, outgroups, and elites while tying them to individual issues. Thus, the populist communication style is topic-based rather than all-encompassing. Populism should be seen as something that can be adapted, changed, or assimilated based on the topic it is used for. Consequently, populism should be seen as topic-specific, acknowledging different issues within them, instead of defining and investigating it as a complete concept.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:05 communication studies
Programme:Communication Studies BSc (56615)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/100660
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