Further Readings

Further readings on Populism and AI

“Populism has been defined in many different ways, mostly in regard to political ideology and political dynamics, but only in recent years in relation to communication variables. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the identification of a socially mediated type of populist communication profoundly affected by the specific nature of social media. It presents and discusses empirical evidence on Italy’s populist and non-populist leaders that use Facebook regularly, and highlights the extent of the overflow of populist communication patterns and ideological features into mainstream political communication. Populist ideology fragments emerged in Italian leaders’ Facebook posts, thus leading to two main conclusions: first, populism appears to be ‘endemic’ in the Italian online facebooksphere; second, political actors—even non-populist ones—do not disdain the adoption of typical populist rhetorics.” (Quote by Gianpietro Mazzoleni & Roberta Bracciale)

• Digital Demagogue: Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter, Christian Fuchs
• How the grotesque online culture wars fuel populism, The Economist
• A look into the black box — how populist communication strategies affect citizens’ attitudes, NCCR
• Five thesis on populism, The Guardian
• Comparative Research about Populism

Chantal Mouffe and Populism

• Snarky Guardian review of her new book
• The key characteristic of all populism, Mouffe writes, is the identification of a “people” who are distinguished from some kind of adversary, a distinction that serves to unite and mobilise them. Nationalists can point to any number of adversaries, from foreign powers to immigrants to “enemies within” (the liberal media, socialist intellectuals, Jews), all of whom can be charged with harming “the people”
• “Margaret Thatcher succeeded in building just such a hegemony, painting her policies as the only way of acting in the nation’s interests, such that a common-sense view of the economy was already in place by the time New Labour came to power”
• 2005 book on Latin American populism by lifelong collaborator and co-author Ernesto Laclau (Arg)
• Populismo de Izquierdas