Linda Bos

Populist rhetoric in politics and media: A longitudinal study of the Netherlands

Many claim that populism in the Netherlands has grown over the last 10 years; that it spreads among mainstream parties; that its success has to do with the media, who pay more and more attention to populist parties and immigration issues; but that it is difficult to distinguish between political populism intended for the media and populism by the media. In a longitudinal content analysis of newspapers, television news, talk shows and party political broadcasts, covering seven elections in nearly 20 years, these claims are put to the test. The picture that emerges is far more ambiguous than publicized opinion suggests, with no clear trend but a downward one in 2012.

Public images of leaders of anti-immigration parties: Perceptions of legitimacy and effectiveness

In the last two decades several anti-immigration parties have risen in Western Europe. Some of these parties have been very successful in elections, whereas others have been rather unsuccessful. Some scholars have argued that this success depends in part on the extent to which voters perceive these parties (and their leaders) as legitimate (not violent or undemocratic) and as effective. However, no studies exist that test the effect of these public perceptions on electoral support. We fill this void by proposing operationalizations of voters’ perceptions of parties in terms of legitimacy and effectiveness. These operationalizations were employed to measure public perceptions of leaders of two anti-immigration parties and leaders of four established parties that participated in the Dutch national parliamentary elections of 2006. The analyses of these data (n = 382) demonstrate the significance of measuring public images directly and show that legitimacy and effectiveness are important predictors of support for anti-immigration parties. Prior research showed that voters evaluate anti-immigration parties largely by the same criteria as they use to evaluate other parties. Our study demonstrates that this is only true when voters consider an anti-immigration party as effective and legitimate.

“They Did It” The Effects of Emotionalized Blame Attribution in Populist Communication

How can we explain the persuasiveness of populist messages, and who are most susceptible to their effects? These questions remain largely unanswered in extant research. This study argues that populist messages are characterized by assigning blame to elites in an emotionalized way. As previous research pointed at the guiding influence of blame attributions and emotions on political attitudes, these message characteristics may explain populism’s persuasiveness. An experiment using a national sample (N = 721) was conducted to provide insights into the effects of and mechanisms underlying populist blame attribution with regard to the European and national levels of governance. The results show that emotionalized blame attributions influence both blame perceptions and populist attitudes. Identity attachment moderates these effects: Emotionalized blame attributions have the strongest effects for citizens with weaker identity attachments. These insights allow us to understand how populist messages affect which citizens.

The Mediating Role of Emotions News Framing Effects on Opinions About Immigration

Emotions play an important role in explaining why news framing has effects on opinions about immigration. Yet, our knowledge regarding which emotions are relevant for different types of news frames is limited. This survey experiment (N = 715) determines to what extent positive and negative emotions mediate framing effects about immigration, and whether mediation depends on the type of frame at stake. We exposed participants to one of four preestablished frames: the emancipation, multicultural, assimilation, or victimization frame. Results show that the emancipation and multicultural frames cause the most emotional response. Positive emotions function as mediators of framing effects on immigration opinions.

Priming Issues, Party Visibility, and Party Evaluations: The Impact on Vote Switching

Voter volatility has become a hallmark of Western democracies in the past three decades. At the same time short-term factors—such as the media’s coverage of issues, parties, and candidates during an election campaign—have become more important for voters’ decisions. While previous research did look at how campaign news in general affects electoral volatility in general, it has omitted to explicitly test the mechanisms underlying these effects. Building on theories of agenda setting, (affective) priming, and issue ownership, the current study aims to explain why certain news aspects lead voters to switch their vote choice. We theorize it is the visibility of a party, the evaluation of a party, and the attention for issues owned by a party that primes voters to switch to a certain party. We use national panel survey data (N = 765) and link this to an extensive content analysis of campaign news on television and in newspapers in the run up to the 2012 Dutch national elections. The results show that issue news leads to vote change in the direction of the party that owns the issue. Even stronger is the effect of party visibility on vote switching. Our results, however, find the strongest support for the effect of party evaluations on vote change: More favorable news about a party increases switching to that party.

The Appeal of Media Populism: The Media Preferences of Citizens With Populist Attitudes

Although a growing body of literature points to the particular media diet of populist voters, we know too little about what specific media preferences characterize citizens with populist attitudes. This article investigates to what extent citizens with antiestablishment and exclusionist populist attitudes are attracted to attitudinal-congruent media content. We collected survey data using a nationally representative sample (N = 809) and found that citizens’ preferences for media content are in sync with their populist attitudes. Beyond having a tabloidized and entertainment-based media diet, populist voters self-select media content that actively articulates the divide between the “innocent” people and “culprit” others. These findings provide new insights into the appeal of different types of media populism among citizens with populist attitudes on different dimensions.

Linking Survey and Media Content Data: Opportunities, Considerations, and Pitfalls

ABSTRACT In media effects research a fundamental choice is often made between (field) experiments or observational studies that rely on survey data in combination with data about the information environment or media coverage. Such studies linking survey data and media content data are often dubbed “linkage studies.” On the one hand, such designs are the state of the art in our field and on the other hand, they come with a long list of challenges and choices. This article reviews the rationales for linkage studies, outlines different types of linkage studies, reviews the state-of-the-art in this area, discusses which survey and content items to use in an analysis, reviews different types of analyses, outlines considerations for alternative specifications, and provides a step-by-step example.

Nation binding: How public service broadcasting mitigates political selective exposure

Recent research suggests that more and more citizens select news and information that is congruent with their existing political preferences. This increase in political selective exposure (PSE) has allegedly led to an increase in polarization. The vast majority of studies stem from the US case with a particular media and political system. We contend that there are good reasons to believe PSE is less prevalent in other systems. We test this using latent profile analysis with national survey data from the Netherlands (n = 2,833). We identify four types of media use profiles and indeed only find partial evidence of PSE. In particular, we find that public broadcasting news cross-cuts all cleavages. This research note offers an important antidote in what is considered a universal phenomenon. We do find, however, a relatively large segment of citizens opting out of news consumption despite the readily available news in today’s media landscape.

Shoot the messenger? The media’s role in framing populist attributions of blame:

Attributing blame to elites is central to populist communication. Although empirical research has provided initial insights into the effects of populist blame attribution on citizens’ political opinions, little is known about the contextual factors surrounding its presence in the media. Advancing this knowledge, this article draws on an extensive content analysis (N = 867) covering non-election and election periods to provide insights into how populist blame attributions are embedded in journalistic reporting styles. Using Latent Class Analysis, we first identified three distinct styles of reporting: neutral, conflict, and interpretative coverage. In line with our predictions, we find that populist blame attributions are present most in conjunction with an interpretative journalistic style and least when a neutral journalistic style is used. Populist blame attributions are more likely to be used by journalists of tabloid newspapers than journalists of broadsheet newspapers. These results provide valuable insights for understanding the intersections between journalism and populist communication.

The Impact of Mediated Party Issue Strategies on Electoral Support

Based on agenda-setting, priming and issue ownership theory, we know that issue ownership and party visibility in the news can be used as strategies to affect electoral support. Thus far, it is, however, unclear whether these effects are independent or work interactively. This study aims to fill this gap. We focus on the Partij voor de Vrijheid, the prominent Dutch right-wing populist party, and draw upon an experimental design in which we exposed a sample of Dutch voters (N = 600) to media coverage on one of four issues – an owned issue, an unowned issue, an issue owned by another party and a contested issue – featuring either a party cue or not. The results indicate that the impact of issue coverage is moderated by party cues: attention to owned issues and unowned issues increases support only when party cues are present. Attention to contested and trespassing issues does not increase support.