Political and Media Populism: "refugee crisis"

This project investigates the nexus between political parties, media and right-wing populism with regard to the so-called refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016 in two countries at the central- north end of the Balkan route. Historical background of the project is the erosion of party democracy and the rise of populist democracy: Classical political leadership is declining, giving centrality to media speech, opinion polls, public relations experts and, foremost, populist type leaders who treat democracy as a marketing campaign based on the techniques of manipulation (Colin Crouch). These conditions paved the way especially for right-wing populist actors whose aim is to mobilize against the elite and against internal and external others. The growing number of refugees fleeing to European countries along the Balkan route from war torn and economically devastated zones mainly in the Middle East fuelled the populist upsurge across Europe, including Slovenia and Austria, as refugees were increasingly regarded as dangerous, culturally deviant and as a threat to the national security and the welfare system. Against this background the research project proposes a novel analysis of exclusionary populism between 2015 and 2018 based on previous research on media and Internet populism. It encompasses the analysis of a) trends in politics and policy making, b) trends in the media and journalistic field with an emphasis on digital media, and c) the related public perception of migration in a comparative perspective. The project focuses on the populist production of politics of fear and securitization which addresses the emotions and affects of people and converts fear of economic and social decline into anger against refugees and immigrants. The dynamic interplay between political strategies and media representations the media-political parallelism is of central concern, i.e. how the policy frames of the political field and the media are reflected in public opinion and become common sense. The project will apply a mixed method approach combining in-depth interviews (with politicians and journalists, e.g.), focus groups (of media workers), frame and discursive analysis (of party programs, migration policies, but also of broadcasts and blogs, e.g.), and the analysis of survey data to explore the interplay and shifts in the political and journalistic field, and to give account about the public perception of populist mediated discourses on refugees and immigration. The project adds the important but hitherto lacking media dimension (in particular a digital media focus) to the growing debate on populism, it incorporates a new emotional and affective theoretical perspective into rather rationalist perspectives on populism, and it focuses on the currently most prominent issue of right-wing populist exclusion: the othering of refugees.

The overarching aim of the research project POP-MED was to contribute to a better understanding of the rise of right-wing populist actors, their mobilization of affects, and the media's impact on public opinion in Austria and Slovenia - two countries on the "Balkan Route" that had not been compared so far. We studied exclusionary populist communication in a comparative perspective in the aftermath of the so-called "refugee crisis" 2015 by analyzing parliamentary debates on changes of migration, asylum and integration laws following the "summer of migration", accompanying media coverage, and citizen-generated expressions of populism in online comments. We developed two innovative analytical tools: first a "Critical Affect-sensitive Frame Analysis" as a qualitative content analysis tool that examines populist and emotional language, and second a software tool for automatic text analysis, the R-package "dictvectoR". Furthermore, we conducted interviews with journalists in order to find out how they experience changes in journalist practices and ethics in times of exclusionary populism. Finally, to analyze transformations of public perceptions of migration and migration policies in the two countries, we compared opinion polls in both countries and citizen-generated communication on social media. The results of the project are manifold: First, we showed that right-wing exclusionary populism is a strategy of "governing through affects". Through an affect-sensitive frame analysis of parliamentary debates we demonstrated how the production of fear and anger, but also hope and love underpins communicative constructions of right-wing populist antagonisms. The two countries showed similarities, but one difference became very clear: while Austrian parliamentarians emphasized the "civilizational threat" posed by migration, Slovenian actors were more concerned about national borders and statehood. Secondly, by following a communication-centered approach, we widened the research field's focus on the actors that disseminate populism. Our analyses showed that populist language is not only found in the communication of right-wing populist political parties, but also in statements from conservative mainstream parties. Thirdly, journalists and ordinary users of social media platforms similarly frame debates on migration in an affective, exclusionary, and populist way, hence reinforcing populist communication strategies. This is, fourthly, also true for the affective gender dimension which was very present in the material. Our study allowed us to identify the contours of an emerging affective "masculinist conjuncture" in exclusionary right-wing populism. Fifthly, our analysis of communication on online platforms identified the consequences of user-generated right-wing populist communication for (anti-)democratic discussions online.