Tweeting Populist Sentiment A study of Forum voor Democratie’s use of emotional language on Twitter Written by Dunja Lacroix 1044581 MSc Student Political Theory Graduate School of Social Sciences University of Amsterdam Supervised by dhr. dr. G. Schumacher Assistant Professor in Political Science Social and Behavioral Sciences University of Amsterdam August 31, 2018__.__ Abstract: Social media have been praised for bringing political actors in direct touch with the electorate. This direct linkage provides opportunities for actors new to the political landscape, that can now bypass traditional media. The characteristics of social media such as Twitter line up with the ideology of political populists. However, not much research focuses on the way populist politicians use social media and its effects. Generally, Tweets with positive emotions are more likely to be spread. However, populist parties are expected to be more negative online, especially toward elites and the establishment. This negativity may lead to further balkanization of the Twittersphere, thereby influencing an increasingly important political news source. In this research, sentiment analysis is used to answer the question how and to what result the Dutch populist party Forum voor Democratie uses emotional language on Twitter. The findings show that sentiment is present in a majority of Tweets, and that the presence of positive sentiment in Tweets and a lower popularity of said Tweets are correlated. These findings should provide the necessary spark for further, comparative analysis to establish whether Forum voor Democratie and their use of sentiment in Tweets are anomalies in the political Twittersphere or not. 1 Content 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3 2. Theory ...................................................................................................................................................... 6 2.1 SOCIAL MEDIA AND POPULISM ........................................................................................................... 6 2.1.1 Social Media and Populism in the Netherlands ......................................................................... 10 2.2 EMOTIONS AND IDEOLOGY ON SOCIAL MEDIA ................................................................................ 12 2.3 FRAGMENTATION AND ECHO CHAMBERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA ......................................................... 14 3. Research Questions And Hypotheses .................................................................................................. 17 4. Research Design .................................................................................................................................... 18 4.1 CASE .................................................................................................................................................. 18 4.1.1 Forum voor Democratie............................................................................................................. 18 4.1.2 Twitter ........................................................................................................................................ 19 4.2 DATASET ........................................................................................................................................... 21 4.3 METHOD & ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................................... 22 4.3.1 Sentiment analysis check ............................................................................................................ 23 5. Results .................................................................................................................................................... 26 5.1 SENTIMENT ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................................... 26 5.2 CORRELATION TEST .......................................................................................................................... 27 6. Discussion............................................................................................................................................... 28 7. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 30 8. Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 32 9. Appendix ................................................................................................................................................ 36 9.1 SENTIMENT ANALYSIS CHECK .......................................................................................................... 36 9.1.1 Tweet 1 ....................................................................................................................................... 36 9.1.2 Tweet 2 ....................................................................................................................................... 37 9.1.3 Tweet 3 ....................................................................................................................................... 38 2 1. Introduction The Dutch political party Forum voor Democratie surprised many with their electoral success. A mere year after its introduction, the party was elected to two seats in the Dutch parliament and counted over seventeen thousand members. And according to polls, if elections were held now, they could expect up to sixteen seats, making it the third largest party in the Netherlands (de Hond, 2018). On a party congress in November 2017 Henk Otten, co-founder of the party, explained the key to the party’s success: social media. “Forum voor Democratie has emerged to be the biggest online movement of the Netherlands. That is the reason we managed to get elected.” In this paper I will research whether and how the use of emotional language contributed to the success of the online Twitter presence of the Dutch populist party Forum voor Democratie (FVD). Over the last decade, social media have become an integral part of millions of people’s daily lives. More and more people rely on social media to get their news and trust it more than news found through traditional news sources (Krasodomski-Jones, 2016). Trust in the mainstream news has fallen, and mainstream politicians have seen their majorities deteriorate (Krasodomski- Jones, 2016). In response, old and new political parties have taken to the internet for their campaigns. Because politics are a polarizing topic, political communication often features emotional language. Recent studies positively link the role of emotional language in social media content to information diffusion (Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2013). The use of emotional language triggers cognitive and arousal effects, resulting in higher levels of attention, participation, and social sharing behavior (Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2013). Exposure to emotional language may in this way lead to both emotional and social contagion, spreading the mood and moral judgement in emotional content (Brady, Wills, Jost, Tucker, & Van Bavel, 2017). In sum: social media provide political parties with a platform that gives their content the potential for virality as well as social contagion, which can mobilize a constituency. These are the ingredients for a successful online campaign. There is, however, a reverse side to this coin. While social media were lauded for their democratic potential at their emergence, recent research has indicated that social media may also undermine the democratic process through the formation of “echo chambers”, in which individuals are only exposed to conforming opinions (Dubois & Blank, 2018). Such politically fragmented echo chambers may stimulate political segregation, and are linked to both populism and extremism (Groshek & Koc-Michalska, 2017; O’Hara & Stevens, 2015). For populist politicians, the effect may provide an opportunity to find 3 and target an audience where their ideas are salient. Therefore, it might be of particular interest to newer populist parties that wish to build up a constituency, especially when targeting groups that are overrepresented online, such as males and youths (Barthel, Gottfried, Mitchell, & Shearer, 2016). Because using emotional language influences group-level communication behavior in terms of information sharing as well as moral judgements, in particular among the in-group, it may influence the formation of such echo chambers (Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2013). In this paper I will answer the question: “To what extent and effect do Forum voor Democratie members use emotional language on Twitter?” I will argue that their great online success can be partially explained by their use of emotional language, which in turn may facilitate an echo chamber effect. I will show that Tweets by FVD that express negative emotions gain more traction, gaining greater popularity with the in-group of FVD-supporters. This finding opposes emotional sharing theories that presuppose positive messages are more likely to be spread. While no exhaustive conclusions can be based on this research, it should encourage further delving into this highly relevant and overseen topic. This paper will contribute to contemporary understanding of the political implications of