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The role of the people in the characterization of populism. Evidence from the press coverage of the 2014 European Parliament election campaign in Italy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2016

Marino De Luca  and
Antonio Ciaglia
Marino De Luca*
Affiliation:
Department of Political and Social Science, University of Calabria, Arcavacata di Rende (CS), Italy
Antonio Ciaglia
Affiliation:
School of Literature, Language, and Media, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
*
**E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Populism is being increasingly studied by political and social scientists. This article pays particular attention to the way in which ‘people’ can be approached and appealed to by their leaders. In particular, by undertaking a content analysis of the two most read daily newspapers in Italy, and by relying on the technique of correspondence analysis, this article shows that to fully understand the phenomenon of populism, the way in which ‘the people’ are approached by their leaders cannot be left aside. In doing so, this article empirically analyses and discusses three dimension of populism and contributes to a more granular understanding of this phenomenon in established democracies.

Keywords

populismelectionsmedia coveragecorrespondence analysisEuropean electionpolitical communication
Type
Research Article
Information
Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 63 - 85
Copyright
© Società Italiana di Scienza Politica 2016 

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Conference ‘New Populisms’ Political Communication’ (26–27 June 2015) organised by the Institute for Communication Sciences (CNRS/Paris-Sorbonne/UPMC) and the Center for Comparative Studies in Political and Public Communication (Ceccopop).

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http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/B6YLAV
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