Zoltan Fazekas (Copenhagen Business School)

“Similar Citizen Portrayals? Exclusionary Media Populism in Tabloids and Broadsheets”

Abstract: The news media play a crucial role for the dissemination of populist messages. This study focuses on exclusionary (media) populism and argues that it can be linked to systematic differences in the portrayal of different groups of citizens and generate an in- and outgroup divide. While previous research has treated the out-group as homogenous and analyzed the broad category of migrants, we focus on a case with multiple (potential) outgroups. Our results show that migrants and EU citizens are both established as outgroups. This suggests that exclusionary populism can extend to citizens who might currently be based in other countries. Analyzing the Brexit related news coverage using word embeddings, our findings show that EU citizens were depicted as more similar to immigrants rather than UK citizens. In line with previous research on anti-elitism populism, our findings bring further evidence for a convergence between tabloids and broadsheets, as differences in the use of exclusionary media populism are negligible between these outlet types.