COVID-19: a Political Virus? VOX's Populist Discourse in Times of Crisis
ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 18 June 2021 doi: 10.3389/fpos.2021.678526 COVID-19: A Political Virus? VOX’s Populist Discourse in Times of Crisis José Javier Olivas Osuna 1,2* and José Rama 3 1Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain, 2The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, United Kingdom, 3Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Madrid, Spain Spain has been one of the hardest hit countries by the COVID-19 pandemic, and this crisis presented a window of opportunity for VOX, as it has for other far right parties, to raise its visibility as opposition force. This paper investigates whether the discourse of VOX has evolved during the pandemic and affected the political dynamics in Spain. This article proposes a new multidimensional strategy to measure the degree of populism in political communications, via quantitative and qualitative content analysis. It dissects the parliamentary speeches of the leader of VOX, Santiago Abascal, in the debates for the Edited by: approval and extension of the “state of alarm” to fight against COVID-19 between March Régis Dandoy, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, and June 2020. In order to assess the changes and relative intensity of populist features in Ecuador Abascal’s parliamentary speeches we compared them with his speech during Pedro Reviewed by: Sánchez’s investiture session as the Spanish President of the Government, in January Laura Alonso-Muñoz, ’ — University of Jaume I, Spain 2020, and VOX s latest political manifestos 2019 European and Spanish General Raul Gomez, Elections—, as well as with speeches of the representatives of the five main parties University of Liverpool, and coalitions during the COVID-19 debates in the Spanish Congress.Our paper shows United Kingdom ’ *Correspondence: that populists discourses are context-dependent and that their performances are not only José Javier Olivas Osuna shaped by crisis but also constitutive of crisis.
[Show full text]