Fractured implicitness. Why implicit populism matters?

Abstract

This paper aims to refine a theoretical and methodological approach in social sciences, namely implicit populism. To achieve this goal, the study aims to connect implicit populism and its counterpart, explicit populism to a specific research approach, namely the political communication style and introduce their contributions to the literature. Additionally, the paper introduces implicit populism’s possible effects on content analyses to demonstrate its methodological potential. Finally, the study attempts to provide an aspect by which the antagonist part of implicit populism can be subcategorized. Therefore, new subdimension of antagonism might emerge in populism studies. The first focuses on the articulated enemy by employing, for instance, the signifier of ‘dangerous people.’ The second aims to explore the more sophisticated populist political style embedding the ‘culprit others’ in a concealed way. Consequently, expressions such as ‘danger,’ ‘threat,’ ‘anger,’ and ‘hatred’ are also parts of antagonism representing a universal and unarticulated problem that harmfully affects people.