Abstract

The insular usage of media sources is a common tool for populist actors to position themselves in relation to the social mainstream and to hold up their claim of creating a counter public. In this article, we traced these dynamics by analysing differences in the insularity of right-wing populist parties’ source repertoires compared to other parties, i.e., the exclusivity of the sources used by populist politicians. By analysing the linking practices of parliamentarians in seven EU countries and Switzerland on Twitter we were able to test the impact of political and media context on these practices. In a second step, we asked to what extent the insularity of sources allows us to draw conclusions on the insularity of topics, i.e., whether right-wing populists used a broad or narrow topic agenda. Our key findings: In countries with high levels of media trust and low levels of polarization, the populist source repertoire features a comparatively low insularity, except for politically marginalized populist parties that use more insular sources. Regardless of the insularity of source use, right-wing populist parties in almost all countries feature a high degree of topic insularity, making a narrow topic agenda the cross-national characteristic of right-wing populist communication.

摘要

对媒体资源的狭隘使用是民粹主义行为者将自己定位于社会主流并坚持其创造反公众主张的常用工具。在本文中，我们通过分析右翼民粹主义政党的来源库与其他政党相比的孤立性差异（即民粹主义政客使用的来源的排他性）来追踪这些动态。通过分析七个欧盟国家和瑞士议员在 Twitter 上的链接做法，我们能够测试政治和媒体背景对这些做法的影响。第二步，我们询问来源的狭隘性在多大程度上使我们能够对主题的狭隘性得出结论，即右翼民粹主义者使用的是广泛还是狭隘的主题议程。我们的主要发现：在媒体信任度高、两极分化程度低的国家，除了政治上边缘化的民粹主义政党使用更多孤立性来源之外，民粹主义来源库的孤立性相对较低。无论来源使用的狭隘性如何，几乎所有国家的右翼民粹主义政党都具有高度的话题狭隘性，使得狭窄的议题议程成为右翼民粹主义传播的跨国特征。