It's us against them: a comparative experiment on the effects of populist messages communicated via social media
It's us against them: a comparative experiment on the effects of populist messages communicated via social media
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DOI：
10.1080/1369118x.2017.1328523
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发表时间：
2017-01-01
影响因子：
4.2
通讯作者：
Schmuck, Desiree
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hameleers, Michael;Schmuck, Desiree
民粹主义在全球范围内兴起。社交媒体渠道为政客和普通公民提供有吸引力的环境来传播他们的政治思想，从而有助于民粹主义的成功。基于之前的研究，本研究认为，将造成普通民众面临的重大社会问题归咎于其他罪魁祸首，例如移民或政治精英，是民粹主义的核心。通过采用 2x2 受试者间比较调查实验，我们调查了奥地利和荷兰这两个西欧国家 (N=646) 中民粹主义在线信息中的这些指责归因对公民排他主义和反建制民粹主义态度的影响。此外，在现有研究中，我们首次区分了民粹主义政客和普通公民作为民粹主义信息的传播者。结果显示，指责精英或移民的信息增强了公民的民粹主义态度，但仅限于那些支持信息来源的人。相比之下，对于那些反对来源的人来说，民粹主义的指责归因降低了民粹主义的态度。这些发现有助于我们了解普遍存在的民粹主义信息的核心要素——归咎——如何影响哪些公民的民粹主义态度。
Populism has gained momentum all around the globe. Social media channels contribute to the success of populism by providing an attractive environment for both politicians and ordinary citizens to disseminate their political ideas. Building on previous research, this study argues that attributing blame to culprit others, such as immigrants or the political elites, for causing major societal problems facing the ordinary people is central to populism. By employing a 2x2 between-subjects comparative survey experiment, we investigated the effects of these blame attributions in populist online messages on citizens' exclusionist and anti-establishment populist attitudes in two Western European countries, Austria and the Netherlands (N=646). Additionally, for the first time in extant research, we distinguished between populist politicians and ordinary citizens as communicators of populist messages. Results revealed that messages blaming the elites or immigrants bolstered citizens' populist attitudes, but only for those who supported the source of the message. For those who opposed the source, in contrast, populist blame attributions reduced populist attitudes. These findings help us to understand how the core element of pervasive populist messages - attributing blame - affects the populist attitudes of which citizens.