A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book

Facebook and the populist right – How populist politicians use social media to reimagine the news in Finland and the UK




AuthorsHatakka Niko

EditorsLaura Basu, Steve Schifferes and Sophie Knowles

Publication year2018

Book title The Media and Austerity. Comparative perspectives.

First page 237

Last page247

ISBN9781138897304

eISBN9781315178912


Abstract

This chapter investigates the role of social media in the populist
remediation of financial crisis journalism. Crises provide populist parties
with discursive windows of opportunity, but we know little about the process in
which the mediated salience of economic recession or crisis – especially when
coverage is highly elite-driven – becomes appropriated to contribute to
populist political communication. The chapter analyses how politicians from two
nationalist-populist parties – UKIP and the Finns Party – have utilized
news-sharing on Facebook to construct grievances, to attribute blame, and to
mobilize support in the context of the Euro crisis during 2010–2015. The
analysis suggests that social media have provided populist politicians with
alternative means for rewiring the ideological contents of mainstream news
through selective news-sharing and active challenging of news frames. This
contributes to making the news flow to more resonant and compatible with
populist demands of replacing elites with representatives of the people



Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 20:28