Stuck in a Nativist Spiral: Content, Selection, and Effects of Right-Wing Populists’ Communication on Facebook
Open accessAbstract
Although social media have become important venues for right-wing populist (RWP) campaigns, the content, selection, and effects of RWP messages on social media remain largely unknown. Using content and panel analysis in two studies, we investigated the potential reciprocal relationship between RWP communication on social media and citizens’ anti-immigrant attitudes, anti-elitist attitudes, and feelings of anger and anxiety. In Study 1, we analyzed 13,358 Facebook posts from German and Austrian political parties and their leading candidates. Among our results, RWP actors conveyed anti-immigrant and anti-elitist messages more often than non-RWP actors, and anti-immigrant messages especially induced negative emotional responses among followers of RWP actors. In Study 2, our analysis of data from a two-wave panel study with 559 respondents revealed that anti-immigrant attitudes drove selective exposure to RWP content on Facebook, which consequently fueled anti-immigrant attitudes, and that selective exposure to such content increased individuals’ anti-elitist attitudes and anxiety.
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There is evidence for an association between increased social media use and online right-wing radicalization in Austria, Sweden and Australia.
“There is also evidence for an association between increased social media use and online right-wing radicalization in Austria, Sweden and Australia135–137.”
From A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy (2022) · cites this paper as [135]
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“…on the so-called anti-elitist (vertical) dimension of populism; however, concerning the nativist (horizontal) dimension of it, right-wing populists are deemed exclusionary in nature (Heiss & Matthes, 2020) while left-wing populists follow a more inclusionary logic (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2013).”
BackgroundLove and Anger in Global Party Politics
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A New Era of Electoral Instability
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Anti-immigrant rhetoric of populist radical right leaders on social media platforms
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Populist MPs on Facebook: Adoption and emotional reactions in Austria, the Netherlands, and Sweden
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Fighting Populism on its Own Turf: Experimental EvidencePreprint
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“Notably, partisan posts featuring out-group animosity—negative expressions about counter-partisans—tend to receive more retweets on Twitter and reactions on Facebook than posts featuring in-group or moral-emotional language (Rathje et al., 2021).”
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“Such biased information intake increases attitude extremity on issues such as immigration (Heiss & Matthes, 2020).”
BackgroundOnline anti-immigrant discourse in Germany: ethnographically backed analysis of user comments
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“We also account for left–right political affiliation (0 = left; 10 = right) as exposure to right-wing populist rhetoric was found to promote anti-immigrant attitudes (Harteveld et al., 2017; Heiss & Matthes, 2020).”
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“Also, most studies focus on how right-wing populism flourishes on a given platform, like Facebook (e.g., Heiss & Matthes, 2020) and Twitter (e.g., Wells et al., 2020), or compare populists’ performance on different platforms (e.g., Ernst et al., 2017).”
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Extend the context! Measuring explicit and implicit populism on three different textual levels
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“One ideology that is often combined with populism is nativism (Betz, 2017; Heiss & Matthes, 2020; Mudde, 2007, 2012; Rooduijn et al., 2021).”
Linking citizens’ anti-immigration attitudes to their digital user engagement and voting behavior
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A New Player in the Game: Changing Electoral Competition in Germany
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H@te Online: Die Bedeutung digitaler Kommunikation für Hass und Hetze
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Media Biases and Voter Attitudes during the 2009, 2013, and 2017 Federal Election Campaigns
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Hard-Right Social Media and Civil UnrestPreprint
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Is it about “them”? leveraging big data research to understand anti-immigrant discourse
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“Scholars have documented how talks about immigrants target the political elite (Heiss and Matthes, 2020).”
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Issue Salience and Vote Choice
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Do Televised Debates Affect Voting Behavior?
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“The simplicity and transparency of dictionaries have contributed to their active use for detecting political content based on the presence of certain features like politicians’ or parties’ names [19, 21] or terms associated with a specific politics-related phenomenon (e.g. migration [22]).”
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“Beyond reinforcing existing biases, these advertisements actively reshape cognitive heuristics by encouraging quick, emotional decision-making rather than reflective analysis (Heiss & Matthes, 2020; Schmuck & Matthes, 2017).”
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Political Communication Through New Media In Local Elections In Indonesia
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Dynamics of Coalition Preferences and Vote Choices
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“Mesmo solto, Lula nunca será livre”:
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“Two social channels in particular play an important role in the transfer of populist content, i.e., Facebook and Twitter, currently X (Ernst et al. 2017; Heiss and Matthes 2019; Jacobs et al. 2020; Davidson, Enos 2024).”
The Relationship between Populist Attitudes and Antisemitism
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Knowing more, worrying less? Internet use eases public concern about immigrant cultural threat
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“Particularly, some of them base their “racial, ethnic, or religious supremacy” to defend their interest against other social groups, resulting in a growing trend of right-wing extre-mism and populism (Heiss & Mattes, 2019; Jones, 2018).”
The Push and Pull of Political Leaders
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“It does not come as a surprise that these powerful narratives leave their mark on citizens’ attitudes and trigger a negative image of elites and immigrants (Heiss and Matthes 2020).”
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“Most Americans receive information about these mass shootings from the news media (Wright & Watts, 2022) and the media coverage of shootings strongly influences how the public feels about and responds to the incidents, both emotionally and politically (Heiss & Matthes, 2020; Näsi et al., 2021).”
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“As such, we consider the causal flow supported by findings from multi-wave survey data (Heiss & Matthes, 2020; Schumann et al., 2021).”
InfluentialIntroduction. Backlash Politics in Latin America: Challenges to Sustainable Development
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“…their communication can reinforce conspiracy theories amongst their followers, leading to a spiral whereby followers selectively expose themselves to PRR content on social media, and this exposure to their messages further strengthens their initial attitudes and beliefs (Heiss & Matthes 2020).”
The Impact of Social Media on the Political Behaviour and Decision-Making of Young People
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- Authors
- Heiss, R., & Matthes, J.
- Affiliations
- Management Center Innsbruck (AT)
- University of Vienna (AT)
- Corresponding author
- Matthes, Jörg
- Venue
- Political Communication
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2019-10-17
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 303-328
- ISSN
- 1058-4609 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-7675
- OpenAlex
- W2980634472
- Cited by
- 104
- References
- 55
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 12
- FWCI
- 65.57
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Political Communication (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Phaidra (Universität Wien) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Populism, Right-Wing Movements
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Keywords
- right-wing populism, Facebook posts, anti-immigrant sentiment, selective exposure, nativism, political parties, political candidates, anger, anxiety, social media
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