Social Media and the Emergence, Establishment and Transformation of the Right-Wing Populist Finns Party
Social Media and the Emergence, Establishment and Transformation of the Right-Wing Populist Finns Party Tuukka Ylä-Anttila Author’s version. Published in Populism (2020). Abstract This paper assesses the significance of social media for the Finns Party and the related anti- immigration movement from 2007 to the present day, in light of theories on the relationship of populism and social media. These include people-centrism, disenfranchisement, homoph- ily, the attention economy, media elitism, and (lack of) communicative resources. Tracing the historical trajectory of the Finnish anti-immigration movement and the Finns Party, I argue that the Finnish case is an example of a movement being born online and using social media to build a political identity and strategically gain influence through a party, eventually trans- forming it from the inside out – rather than the party strategically using social media for its purposes, as is sometimes assumed in party-centric literature. While acknowledging the con- tinued importance of parties, research on contemporary populist movements must take into account the political engagement of citizens facilitated by online media. Keywords: populism, Finns Party, social media, online media, countermedia, alternative media, anti-immigration, right-wing populism Introduction Online communication has been identified as a central theme in the study of populism, and the rise of social media – with its various effects on the public sphere – has at times even been argued to be a central cause of the success of (right-wing) populist parties (see Engesser, Fawzi and Larsson 2017; Groshek and Koc-Michalska 2017; Krämer 2017).1 Populists are claimed to be particularly adept at using online media for electoral gains and to benefit from the simplification and polarization fostered by social media.
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