Professional paper
Analysis of the presence of populism in the Facebook posts of political parties We can! (Možemo!) and the Homeland Movement (Domovinski pokret)
Ivana Abramović
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb
Lara Paša
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb
Abstract
A lack of trust in democratic processes, growing frustration with the ruling elite and a declining interest in politics are trends visible around the world. Such a political environment favors the emergence of populist parties -those who see that elites no longer advocate the wishes of their fellow citizens and who believe that the only solution to the problem is to return power to the people. Today, almost every country has its own populist option, and it seems that Croatia does not deviate from the rules. In the parliamentary elections in 2020, two new parties appeared that managed to shake up the Parliament and win 7 seats for the We Can Party! (Možemo!) and 16 seats for the Homeland Movement (Domovinski pokret). The media quickly characterized both parties as populist. Since such a big part of life takes place in the virtual sphere, the aim of this paper is to investigate whether political parties We can! and the Homeland Movement use populism in their Facebook posts. Facebook is the most widespread social platform in Croatia, which is continuously proving to be suitable for political communication. Using content analysis, a total of 60 Facebook posts were analyzed, 30 from each party, over two periods - before and after the election. The post was considered populist if it contained two constitutive elements - a positive mention of the people and a negative mention of the elites. The results indicate that both parties make little use of populism in their political communication and the main reason for this is that they rarely mention the people, and if they do, they mention them in a neutral context. One possible explanation for these results is the way Facebook is used, as parties do not use it as a means of strengthening communication with their constituents, but as a collection of their media appearances or speeches from Parliament. Another possible explanation is that the parties use a populist style at certain times in order to gain the sympathy of a wider segment of the people, and that the media characterized them as populist without a real foothold.
Keywords
Croatian Parliament; Homeland Movement: parliamentary elections; populism; We can!
Hrčak ID:
265896
URI
Publication date:
25.11.2021.
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