populism
Definition
Populism refers to a political communication style in which leaders strategically employ emotional expression, particularly negative emotions, to frame social issues and influence public opinion. Research using facial expression recognition data from YouTube videos of global political leaders shows that more populist leaders display less connected and more autonomous anger expression, while happiness becomes more contingent on other positive emotions. This distinct emotional network structure, identified through dynamic Exploratory Graph Analysis, suggests that the relationship between emotions during political speeches differs systematically as a function of a leader's degree of populist rhetoric.
Sources: Tomašević & Major (2024)
Related Terms
- network analysis (1 shared article)
- emotions (1 shared article)
- exploratory graph analysis (1 shared article)
- affective dynamics (1 shared article)
- computational social science (1 shared article)
Applications
Populism and Anger Expression
As populist rhetoric increases, anger becomes less connected to other emotions in a leader's facial expression network, indicating a more autonomous deployment of this specific emotion. This pattern was identified by applying dynamic Exploratory Graph Analysis to facial expression recognition scores across 220 videos of global political leaders, with the first derivative model showing a negative correlation between anger and most other emotions.
Sources: Tomašević & Major (2024)
Populism and Affective Polarization
Exposure to the negative emotional content of political campaigns is more likely to drive affective polarization among individuals who score high in populist attitudes. This demand-side relationship suggests that the strategic use of negative emotion by populist leaders may have measurable downstream consequences for political behavior in democratic contexts.
Sources: Tomašević & Major (2024)
