Digital populism in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries :|a textual analysis of candidates’ twitter communication

Abstract

To better understand the phenomena of populism, in both its uncanny relationship with social media and its complicated, often fractious relationship with democracy, the Twitter timelines of Republican presidential candidates in the 2016 United States elections were analyzed. Two questions were posed: Firstly, do Republican outsider, or challenger, candidates employ more populist language than those with closer proximity to power? And secondly, how do candidates vary in their framing of populist language? In answering these two research questions, a methodological approach was employed, incorporating automated dictionary-based analysis in tandem with n-gram analysis, that endeavors to let the language of populism speak for itself. It was found that outsider candidates, or those further from the traditional centers and pathways to power employ more populist appeals than established, insider candidates. Furthermore, n-gram analysis of populist terms revealed nuanced variations in the types of populist appeals employed by both insider and outsider candidates and revealed Twitter to be an extension of the campaign arena, albeit one far more amenable to populist appeals than traditional media settings. In general, populist communication was found to be more than just a strategy for bolstering democratic legitimacy, but an innate feature of the democratic process.