Looking for the Guilty? The Discursive Strategy on Twitter of the European Populist Political Actors in Times of Crisis

Abstract

Western democracies live a populist momentum. In this context, the consolidation of the digital technologies plays a key role because of their possibilities to widespread easier the populist messages. This research examines how European populist political actors introduce in their discursive strategy on Twitter the exclusion of groups, the Euroscepticism and the existence of a crisis and how they frame it with the aim to know if there are significant differences regarding their ideology. The sample are composed by the messages shared by four European political parties (Podemos, 5 Stars Movement, National Front and UKIP) and their leaders (Pablo Iglesias, Beppe Grillo, Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage and Paul Nuttall) during three temporary periods, out of electoral campaigns. 9,128 messages have been analyzed. The main findings show that, despite not being inherent characteristics of the populist phenomenon, the narrative of the crisis, the exclusion of groups and Euroscepticism is present in the discourse of all the populist political actors analyzed on Twitter. All of them base their discursive strategy looking for the guilty in order to introduce themselves to the people as the only political option capable of defending them and restoring the sovereignty that has been taken from them. In this context, the ideology is a key element.