Gone with Populism: Ideational and Performative Dimensions of Anti-Populist Communication on Social Networking Sites

Populism has gained significant attention in recent years, yet there is limited understanding of effective measures to confront and address it (Malkopoulou, Moffitt 2023). This study investigates the construction of anti-populist discourses employed by political parties and their leaders on two social networking sites (Facebook and Instagram) before the 2021 Czech general elections. Anti-populist discourse characterized by a combination of stances presented in opposition to populism manifests as a specific communication strategy of political actors in reacting to populist challenges (Stavrakakis et al. 2018). In doing so, the anti-populist actors, presenting themselves as a viable alternative to the danger of populism, construct two specific identities: anti-populist identity ('us') and populist identity ('them'). These identities can be identified through ideational and performative dimensions, emphasizing what content and style the anti-populists claim to represent (Havlík, Kluknavská 2022). For instance, anti-populists claim that their politics is rational and civil while populist politics is emotional and irrational. Besides these self-claimed communication dimensions, anti-populists utilize specific stylistic elements in their communication; this actual performative presentation of anti-populism, however, remains underexplored in empirical research. To fill this gap, this study examines the association of anti-populist discourses with specific stylistic elements related to populist/anti-populist divide. We explore to what extent negative tonality, emotions, references to knowledge and references to populism and democracy are present in anti-populist constructions of populist and anti-populist identities. Our results suggest that while self-constructed anti-populist identity is positively associated with knowledge-based claims, populist identities are often accompanied by emotional language and references to democracy. This means that even though anti-populist actors themselves might put forward claims stressing their rational and fact-based approach to politics, the performativity of their communication reveals an emotional component along the lines of populist and anti-populist divide. Our study is based on an original dataset of social media posts created by Czech anti-populist politicians. First, we use automated frequency analysis (2017-2021, n = 44,877) to account for the communication dynamics regarding the mentions of populism/anti-democracy and anti-populism/democracy by anti-populist actors in their social media messages. Second, we employ manual quantitative content analysis to analyze their communication in the period of two weeks before the 2021 general election (n = 1,291; out of which Facebook = 890 and Instagram = 401) to capture variances in anti-populist communication strategies. Overall, our results speak to the broader debate on countering populism and the potential of social media for promoting anti-populist discourse. The study is among the first attempts to analyze anti-populism systematically using data from two different social media platforms.