An Unholy Alliance? The Influence of Negative Emotions Elicited by Media Reports on the Persuasiveness of Populist Communication

Abstract

Emotions play a crucial role in the success of populist actors and movements. The present study investigates whether populist actors can profit from emotions elicited by media content. We assume that populist claims are more persuasive than non-populist claims when experiencing negative emotions toward an issue and that citizens with strong populist attitudes are particularly susceptible to this persuasive process. In a 2 × 2 experiment (N = 475), we tested whether emotionalized (vs. neutral) media reports foster the persuasiveness of populist (vs. non-populist) communication and whether populist attitudes moderate this effect. The results indicate that citizens with medium to strong populist attitudes experience stronger negative emotions in response to emotionalized media content and that negative emotions increase support for promoted policies and the promoting actor. However, persuasive effects were not limited to populist communication.