A prominent social media presence is typically seen as critical to the success of populist politicians. However, Kristof Jacobs and Niels Spierings find that in the key case of the Netherlands, populist politicians were slower to adopt Twitter and engage with fewer people on it, seemingly preferring instead to stick to their own echo chamber

Jacobs, Kristof

Spierings, Niels

English

LSE Research Online

1/5By Democratic Audit UK 18 April 2018Is Twitter a populist paradise?democraticaudit.com/2018/04/18/is-twitter-a-populist-paradise/A prominent social media presence is typically seen as critical to the success of populistpoliticians. However, Kristof Jacobs and Niels Spierings find that in the key case of theNetherlands, populist politicians were slower to adopt Twitter and engage with fewerpeople on it, seemingly preferring instead to stick to their own echo chamber.Picture: Pixabay, via a CC0 licenceIn a cartoon that appeared last year, Donald Trump throws a football (with the label ‘socialmedia’ on it) over the heads of a group of reporters, directly into the hand of a ‘typical laycitizen’. The cartoon exemplifies how pundits often view the relationship betweenpopulism and social media: a natural fit, whereby populists use social media platforms toavoid or circumvent the traditional media and establish a direct relationship with ordinarycitizens. This in turn is considered the foundation of their success – indeed, Trumphimself has been vocal about his belief that Twitter contributed significantly to his electionvictory.It is tempting to focus only on high-profile cases, and label Twitter a populist paradise. Yetthis conventional wisdom obscures the fact that we know surprisingly little about howpopulist politicians use social media. In a new study we address this lacuna andexamined when populist politicians adopted Twitter and how they used it, and how thisdiffers from other politicians.What did we do?We (1) examined populists’ Twitter adoption and (2) investigated whether they differ fromother political actors in their posting, connecting and engagement behaviour on Twitter.Whereas most contemporary studies on social media and populism focus on the party2/5leadership, we examined the activities of all the (populist and non-populist) politicians inthe Netherlands. The timeframe of our analysis of adoption and posting was relativelybroad (2010–2016), which allowed us to examine changes over time. Our assessment ofpopulists´ connecting and engagement behaviour was based on a three-month period atthe end of that time frame (August to October 2016), as this tells us most about thecurrent way in which populists (do not) use Twitter.There are two main substantive reasons why we focused on the Netherlands. Firstly, thecountry is a Twitter frontrunner with very high internet-penetration rates among citizens aswell as politicians. Hence, if there is any (lasting) pattern to be found, it should be visiblehere. Secondly, and this is especially important for a study of populism, the countryhouses a right-wing populist party (PVV) and a left-wing one (SP). This allows us toexplore differences and similarities between the two types of populist parties.Populists on Twitter: main findingsOur main findings were threefold and highlight that the conventional wisdom obscures animportant part of how populists use Twitter.1. Populists were slower to adopt professional Twitter useMost studies examine the social media use of politicians at one particular time-point.However, taking a longitudinal perspective, we were able to examine who adopts newtechnologies first and who follows. Given the potential advantage for populists to bypasstraditional media using Twitter, one would expect them to be among the early adopters.Yet this was not the case (see Figure 1). On the contrary, we found that populists wereactually slower to adopt Twitter.Figure 1. Twitter adoption over timeWhy was this so? While we cannot look into the heads of the party leadership, there aresome indications that (negative) incentives from the party matter. Semi-structuredinterviews with the left-wing populists’ campaign leader and social-media managersuggest that the populists’ tendency towards strong centralisation and dislike of dissent is3/5the explanation. In the words of the latter: ‘[W]e do not want (…) incidents whereindividual MPs all air their own individual opinions and start criticising each other on socialmedia.’ (Hijink, 2013).The right-wing populist party generally refuses to talk to political scientists, but mediainterviews with former MPs of the party also suggest that Twitter use is tightly restrictedas ‘Wilders fears a loss of control stemming from conflicts.’2. Non-responsive: Populists were @-mentioned the most, but reply the leastOne would expect that populists would use Twitter to connect and engage with the peopledirectly. After all, their ideology centres on being on the side of the ‘good people’ (not thatof the ‘evil elite’). This does not seem to be the case (see Table 1). While populistpoliticians do get @-mentioned more on Twitter, they are less likely to form reciprocalrelations with these accounts. In another recently published study we found that evenwhen accounting for this larger share of @-mentions, populists are significantly less likelyto reciprocate @-mentions from lay citizens.Admittedly, the more @-mentions one gets the more difficult it is to answer all of them.However, when we control for this factor, the findings are still clear: populists seem torespond less to @-mentions. In the Netherlands, this relationship is somewhat distortedbecause the highly prolific PVV party leader Geert Wilders (famously) does not respondto questions. Yet, even when we exclude him from the analysis, the relationship is stillstatistically significant and negative.Table 1.  Populists´ @-mention relationships# unique accounts @-mentioning MP in research period% of reciprocalrelationshipsPopulist Radical Right:PVV701 3%Leftwing populist: SP 141 7%Others 81 9%Postmaterialists 268 8%Note: The numbers above are descriptives; the journal article also presents the results ondifferences after controlling for party position, age, etc. These analyses lead to the sameconclusion. Postmaterialist parties are parties that prioritise goals such as sustainabledevelopment, privacy and the quality of life over materialist goals such as domesticsecurity and economic issues. This category includes the progressive liberals (D66), thegreens (GroenLinks), and the Party for the Animals.3. Echo chambers: populists followed fewer people, but retweeted these accountsmore4/5Populists also clearly differed from politicians of other parties in their following andretweeting behaviour. If populists genuinely use Twitter to connect with the people, onewould expect them to follow more accounts. Yet once again, this was not the case. On thecontrary, populists seemed more selective in who they follow (see Table 2). Compared toother parties they follow far fewer accounts. The populist radical right party leader, GeertWilders, only follows one other account. (When we exclude him from the analysis, therelationship still holds.)These ‘selected few’ are, however, more likely to get retweeted by the populist politicians,at least if we focus on the populist radical right MPs. This is in line with the logic of echochambers, whereby populists spread the word of like-minded people.Table 2. Populists´ befriending and retweeting behaviour# unique accounts MPs have followed themselvesindex friends among retweeted accountsPopulist Radical Right: PVV 357 77Leftwing populist: SP 555 12Others 892 11Postmaterialists 1051 12Note: Above are descriptives; the journal article also presents the results about thesedifferences after controlling for party position, age, etc. These analyses lead to the sameconclusion. As the proportion of friends among retweeted accounts is highly dependent on thenumber of friends (in a positive way) and number of retweeted accounts (negatively) thisfigure present the number of retweeted friend accounts per friend per retweet, times tenthousand.Conclusion: no populist paradiseA lot of attention has been devoted to high-profile populists on social media, such asDonald Trump. Such cases have fuelled the conventional wisdom that social media andpopulism are a natural fit and that populists use such media to establish a directrelationship with the people (and avoid media).Our analysis of all Dutch MPs suggests that a lot of the conventional wisdom needs to beamended. To begin with, Twitter and populism are no natural fit. Populist parties areleader-centred and wary of internal dissent, while social media such as Twitter canempower backbenchers and expose internal disagreements. It should thus not come as asurprise that populist politicians turned out to be slower in adopting Twitter.aa5/5Their use was also different: they did not use Twitter to engage with ‘the people’ andlargely seemed to ignore @-mentions. They were also far more selective in who theyfollowed, but did use Twitter to retweet their friends relatively more often, which is in linewith the logic of echo chambers. In that sense, it seems that populists are less interestedin ‘the’ people, but mostly interested in ‘their’ people.This article represents the views of the authors and not those of Democratic Audit.  Itdraws on their article ‘A populist paradise? Examining populists’ Twitter adoption and use’published in Information, Communication & Society About the authorsKristof Jacobs is Assistant Professor in Comparative Politics at Political ScienceDepartment of the IMR, Radboud University. His research focuses on the challenges todemocracy (e.g. populism) and how political actors solve these (e.g. by using socialmedia or implementing institutional reforms). He has published, among others, in theJournal of Information, Technology and Politics, West European Politics, PoliticalBehavior and the European Journal of Political Research. You can find him on Twitter:@kristofjacobs1Niels Spierings is Assistant Professor in Sociology at the Department of Sociology andRadboud Social Cultural Research, Radboud University. His research interests includepolitical inequalities; the social implications of technological developments, such as socialmedia; the political parties-voters connection, and the rise of populism in Europeanpolitics. On these issues he has published, among others, in the Electoral Studies,Patterns of Prejudice, Political Behavior, and West European Politics. You can find him onTwitter: @NielsSpieringsSimilar Posts

Is Twitter a populist paradise?

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Is Twitter a populist paradise?

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