Abstract

Despite the alleged discursive affinity between populist rhetoric and conspiracy theories, we know too little about how populist conspiracies are communicated by politicians, and how these messages activate individual-level support for populist ideas. In this setting, this article reports on a qualitative content analysis of leading (radical) right-wing populist politicians’ self-communication (Trump and Wilders) and an experiment in which the central content features of populist conspiracies are manipulated. The main findings indicate that populist conspiracy theories activate populist attitudes more than mere exposure to populist ideas. Together, this article shows how conspiracies are framed in populist actors’ communication, and how these populist conspiracy frames can fuel support for populist ideology in society.

中文翻译：

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他们正在把自己卖给敌人！民粹阴谋论的内容和影响

摘要

尽管据称民粹主义修辞理论与阴谋论之间存在话语亲和力，但我们对政治家如何传达民粹主义阴谋以及这些信息如何激发个人对民粹主义思想的支持知之甚少。在这种情况下，本文对领先的（激进的）右翼民粹主义政客的自我沟通（特朗普和怀尔德）进行了定性的内容分析，并进行了一项实验，其中操纵了民粹主义阴谋的主要内容特征。主要发现表明，民粹主义阴谋理论不仅激发了民粹主义思想的曝光，更激发了民粹主义的态度。本文共同展示了在民粹主义演员的交流中如何构筑阴谋，以及这些民粹主义阴谋框架如何为社会中的民粹主义意识形态提供支持。