Populist parties choose divisive issues on purpose, researchers say
Populists use controversial issues to a far greater extent than other issues to promote their political messages. This is deliberate.
Election researchers from across Europe have looked at how populist parties profile themselves on Facebook. Their findings are quite clear.
“Populist parties much more often use controversial, divisive issues when they want to show themselves to potential voters,” says Melanie Magin, a professor of media sociology at NTNU’s Department of Sociology and Political Science.
Melanie Magin. Photo: NTNU
Magin and her fellow researchers believe this is probably quite deliberate in order to get the debate into a track that these parties believe they benefit from.
The elections to the European Parliament in 2024 took place during a troubled time. The war in Ukraine was in full swing, swelling numbers of immigrants were a big issue in several countries and climate change was still something most people cared about.
The European Parliament
- The European Parliament is one of the EU's two legislative assemblies, along with the Council of Ministers. Its main functions are legislation, budgeting and control of the European Commission.
- The Parliament consists of 720 members, directly elected by the citizens of the member states every five years.
- Elections are organised nationally with national lists, but representatives are divided into party groups across nationalities when the Parliament meets.
Controversial and divisive
With this as a backdrop, it is tempting for some political parties to raise so-called “wedge issues”. These are controversial issues that divide voters. They can easily be used strategically in an election campaign to create strong emotions and sow doubt about other political parties’ ability and willingness to address them.
The researchers analyzed 8748 Facebook posts from parties in 13 countries. They looked at both whether the posts raised controversial issues, and how these issues were presented, if any.
Perhaps the main finding is not surprising in itself, but it may be surprising that the result is so clear.
“We find that populist parties don’t just use controversial issues more. They also generally present the message in a more populist way, with anti-liberal language,” says Magin.
- You might also like: Why are populists successful?
“Them Against Us”
The purpose is often apparently to exclude outsiders, and create the impression that it is “them against us”.
“These are clear characteristics of digital communication for populist parties,” Magin said.
The intention may be to steer the public political discussion away from problem-solving and instead create a debate about the very liberal democratic basis of our society.
Digital platforms shape the debate through clear messages, but can also contribute to an oversimplification of complicated topics. Especially in times when a number of controversial issues are under debate simultaneously, this approach contributes to creating division in society and poses an intransigent way of communicating.
“We believe that topics such as migration policy can be used by populist actors as a kind of Trojan horse. The intention may be to steer the public political discussion away from problem solving and instead create a debate about the very liberal democratic basis of our society,” Magin said.
Reference:
Haßler, J., Magin, M., Russmann, U., Wurst, A., Balaban, D., Baranowski, P., Jensen, J., Kruschinski, S., Lappas, G., Machado, S., Novotná, M., Marcos-GarcÃa, S., Petridis, I., Rožukalne, A., Sebestyén, A., & von Nostitz, F. (2025). Weaponizing Wedge Issues: Strategies of Populism and Illiberalism in European Election Campaigning on Facebook. Media and Communication, 13, Article 10718. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.10718
