“Protect our homeland!” Populist communication in the 2018 Hungarian election campaign on Facebook
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.19195/1899-5101.12.2(23).4Keywords:
populism in Hungary, social media, political communication, campaign rhetoric, populist communication, Hungarian parliamentary campaign in 2018Abstract
The research presented in this paper is based on analysis of the Facebook posts of five major Hungarian political parties over the course of the official campaign season leading up to the 2018 parliamentary elections. We conducted a mixed-method analysis on 795 Facebook posts. First, the main topics of the parties were collected. Second, the posts of the parties were analyzed from a populist communicational perspective. Third, we tried to find some correlations between the basic topics and the populist communicational categories. Finally, we outline possible differences and similarities between parties’ communication. Our analysis shows that opposition parties did not have a common communicational strategy on Facebook while ruling parties emphasized both inner and exterior threats that could destabilize Hungary.
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