Populist Rhetoric by Belgian Party Leaders on Twitter

The next presentation in this session at ECREA PolCom 2023 conference is by Laura Jacobs, who begins by outlining the function of political in- and out-group identification and its links to polarisation and conflict in society. Political parties make use of in- and out-group appeals in their messaging, and may also draw on populism in constructing ‘us vs. them’ oppositions.

Populism is a thin-centred ideology that positions the ‘pure’ people against the ‘corrupt’ elites; it might connect with a host ideology (e.g. socialism on the left or nativism on the right). This project, then, explores how left- and right-wing parties in Belgium utilise populism in their communication: those parties identified as populist will use more in- and out-group appeals in their messaging, and position themselves more strong against elites. It explored this using a dataset of tweets from Belgian party leaders.

Only left-wing populist parties made significantly more in-group appeals compared to non-populist parties; both left- and right-wing populist parties made substantially more out-group appeals, however. Right-wing populist parties also positioned elites significantly more often as out-groups rather than in-groups, and the people as in-groups rather than out-groups; this pattern was not observed for left-wing populist parties, however. Populists on both sides also positioned specific economic groups more often as in-groups, and sometimes as out-groups. Right-wing populist parties also often focussed on ethnic and religious groups as out-groups, and people from Wallonie or Flanders as in-groups.

This confirms horizontal antagonism between the left and the right, as well as vertical antagonism between ‘elites’ and ‘the people’ on the right of the Belgian populist political spectrum.