Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2019 Comparing populist communication across media channels: how political actors utilize populist messages and styles Neumann-Ernst, Nicole Abstract: Populism is one of the most pressing and thriving political issues in current democracies, as populist actors are extremely successful around the globe and increasing in importance. This has raised scholarly concerns to discuss this development also from a communication science perspective and ex- plain the relation of political actors and their utilization of populist communication elements. This thesis answers two major research aims by first providing a conceptualization and operationalization of populist communication that combines and integrates both ideology-centered and discourse-centered definitions of populism and arguing that populist communication is a combination of ideology and style. By comparing the utilization of populist communication across different media channels, a variety of political actors and different political issues, this thesis secondly investigates and explains who expresses the populist messages and styles and to what extent populist communication is spread. With five comparative studies and the overarching synopsis, this thesis demonstrates that populist communication is especially depen- dent on certain opportunity structures and flourishes when populism affine factors, such as social media communication, party extremism or a high affinity to populism related issues, are combined. Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-170929 Dissertation Published Version Originally published at: Neumann-Ernst, Nicole. Comparing populist communication across media channels: how political actors utilize populist messages and styles. 2019, University of Zurich, Faculty of Arts. Comparing populist communication across media channels: How political actors utilize populist messages and styles Thesis (cumulative thesis) presented to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Zurich for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Nicole Neumann-Ernst Accepted in spring semester 2019 on the recommendation of the doctoral committee: Prof. Dr. Frank Esser (main supervisor) Prof. Dr. Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw Zürich, 2019 Abstract Populism is one of the most pressing and thriving political issues in current democracies, as populist actors are extremely successful around the globe and increasing in importance. This has raised scholarly concerns to discuss this development also from a communication science perspective and explain the relation of political actors and their utilization of populist communication elements. This thesis answers two major research aims by first providing a conceptualization and operationalization of populist communication that combines and integrates both ideology-centered and discourse-centered definitions of populism and arguing that populist communication is a combination of ideology and style. By comparing the utilization of populist communication across different media channels, a variety of political actors and different political issues, this thesis secondly investigates and explains who expresses the populist messages and styles and to what extent populist communication is spread. With five comparative studies and the overarching synopsis, this thesis demonstrates that populist communication is especially dependent on certain opportunity structures and flourishes when populism affine factors, such as social media communication, party extremism or a high affinity to populism related issues, are combined. Zusammenfassung Populismus ist eine der dringlichsten und relevantesten politischen Fragen in zeitgenössischen Demokratien, da populistische Akteure weltweit äusserst erfolgreich sind und immer mehr an Bedeutung gewinnen. Dies hat wissenschaftliche Bedenken aufkommen lassen, diesen Anstieg auch aus einer kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Perspektive zu diskutieren und das Verhältnis politischer Akteure und deren Nutzung populistischer Kommunikationselemente zu erklären. Diese Dissertation beantwortet zwei wichtige Forschungsziele, indem sie zunächst eine Konzeptualisierung und Operationalisierung der populistischen Kommunikation anbietet, die sowohl ideologiezentrierte als auch diskurszentrierte Definitionen von Populismus kombiniert und integriert, und argumentiert, dass populistische Kommunikation eine Kombination aus Ideologie und Stil ist. Durch den Vergleich der Nutzung populistischer Kommunikation über mehrere Medienkanäle, verschiedene politische Akteure und unterschiedliche politische Themen untersucht und erklärt die Dissertation zweitens, wer populistische Botschaften und Stile verwendet und inwieweit populistische Kommunikation verbreitet wird. Mit fünf vergleichenden Studien und der übergreifenden Synopse zeigt diese Dissertation, dass populistische Kommunikation von bestimmten Opportunitätsstrukturen abhängig ist und besonders floriert, wenn Populismus- affine Faktoren, wie Social Media Kommunikation, Parteiextremismus oder eine hohe Affinität zu populistischen Themen kombiniert werden. Acknowledgments This dissertation would certainly not have been possible without all the persons I was fortunate to work with and receive support from during my PhD. First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Frank Esser, for his support, encouragement, trust, and interest in my project throughout my work towards my PhD. He not only enabled me to be part of the massive NCCR project but he also gave me the freedom and autonomy to work on my own projects. During my time, I have grown professionally and personally and learned a lot from him about comparative political communication research and the academic process, and I learned a lot about myself. I would also like to express my profound and sincere gratitude to Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw for her co-supervision; I am especially thankful for the possibility to visit and work with her and her team during my research stay at the University of Hamburg. During my time as a visiting scholar and our weekly meetings, she provided valuable feedback and support and enabled me to completely focus on my own dissertation project. This study was supported by the National Center of Competence in Research on “Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century”, initiated by the Swiss National Science Foundation. This dissertation project was conducted in the framework of Module 2: “Populism in the context of globalization and mediatization”. Within the module, the project was embedded in project IP 8: “Populism and the news media”, led by Frank Esser. I am grateful for the excellent collaboration with all the module members and would like to thank all project leaders, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students. I am also extremely thankful to the NCCR and the SNFS for funding my travels to conferences, summer schools, and workshops. I am especially grateful for the collaboration, teamwork, guidance, and support of my project members Frank, Sven and Florin. This module would not have been successful without the great work of my fellow PhD students Dominique, Anne, Caroline, Edward and Luca. Together, we managed to organize five coding schools with more than 80 international student coders and participated in and survived several NCCR Thun conferences, research colloquiums and method schools. Additionally, I am grateful to Martin for the coding tool ANGRIST and his coordination and organization of the semi-automated multinational content analysis. I would also like to thank the many student coders, without whom this project would not have been possible. An essential part of the NCCR was the doctoral program democracy studies (DPDS) in which I was enrolled. During these years, I sincerely appreciated and valued the endless support and organization efforts by Doreen Spörer-Wagner. I would also like to thank all involved PhD students for interesting and thought provoking workshops and research colloquiums. I especially appreciated being part of the NCCR peer group WIDE and enjoyed the group support, interesting workshops, lunch meetings and discussions. This dissertation was composed in the Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ) at the University of Zurich. I am thankful to these institutions for giving me the opportunity to conduct this research. I also wish to thank all my colleagues at the IKMZ for providing an exceptional research environment. I am particularly grateful to my (former) colleagues at the Division of International and Comparative Research. It was a pleasure working with Andrea, Ben, Desiree, Edda, Florin, Laia, Michael, Sina, and Sven. I especially valued and appreciated the teamwork, support and guidance by Sven Engesser and Edda Humprecht. I am appreciative to all the team members for interesting lunch breaks, after- work drinks, problem solving discussions and collegial support. They helped to make this work the pleasant experience that it was. A special thank you also goes to friends and former office colleagues at the institute for moral support, entertaining discussions and often-needed breaks: Isabelle, Yuvviki, Marcel, Julian, Konstantin and many more. The experience would not have been same without my populism support group and Yoga buddies Sina, Dominique and Anne. During our time at the IKMZ, we shared our high and lows, supported each other during difficult