Work

Hitting a Nerve: Populist News Articles Lead to More Frequent and More Populist Reader Comments

Year: 2019

Type: article

Abstract: Although research on effects of populist communication has increased, it is still unclear how populism in news articles affects the readers’ manifest behavior, such as whether and how they comment on online news. To address these issues, we conducted a content analysis of online news articles (N = 332) and corresponding reader comments (N = 2786) during election campaigns in France, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. We find that populist key messages by political and media actors in news articles do not only provoke more reader comments but also prompt citizens to use populist key messages themselves in their comments – regardless of how journalists contextualize these statements.

Source: Political Communication

DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2019.1637980

Authors: Sina Blassnig, Sven Engesser, Nicole Ernst, Frank Esser

Institutions: University of Zurich, Technische Universität Dresden

Language: English

Topic: Populism, Right-Wing Movements

Subfield: Political Science and International Relations

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung

Award: G2797832645