The Polarizing Impact of News Coverage on Populist Attitudes in the Public

What is it about?

In a field study in four European countries, we conducted a survey on 1000 persons, each. Among other things, this survey measured the degree to which these persons subscribe to populist ideology. One year later, we asked the same respondents for their attitudes again and asked them about their media consumption. Using a large-scale media content analysis in these countries, we found the degree of populist communication in the media outlets used by the respondents and tried to figure out how the individually consumed media content influences populist attitudes. We found that people already high in populist attitudes in the first survey became more populist the more populist content they received. Conversely, people with little initial populism got even less populist the more populist communication they received.

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Why is it important?

With populism on the rise in all western democracies, the degree to which populism in the media affects the audience (i.e. the voters) should be investigated. Our results, however, do not point to a general media influence on all people but to a polarization process in which initial attitudes get stronger over time.