The Dark Side of Inspirational Pasts: An Investigation of Nostalgia in Right-Wing Populist Communication

Autor: Tim Wulf, Manuel Menke
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Persuasion
collective nostalgia
persuasion
media_common.quotation_subject
online election campaign
Politikwissenschaft
050109 social psychology
Political communication
Media Contents
Content Analysis

ddc:070
Politics
german democratic republic
Great Rift
Political science
050602 political science & public administration
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Narrative
political communication
Political Process
Elections
Political Sociology
Political Culture

media_common
News media
journalism
publishing

politische Willensbildung
politische Soziologie
politische Kultur

Medieninhalte
Aussagenforschung

Communication
05 social sciences
Communication. Mass media
Media studies
P87-96
Democracy
populism
0506 political science
Populism
alternative for germany
Rhetoric
ddc:320
Publizistische Medien
Journalismus
Verlagswesen

Faculty of Humanities
Alternative for Germany
German Democratic Republic
Zdroj: Media and Communication
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Inspirational Media between Meaning, Narration, and Manipulation
Menke, M & Wulf, T 2021, ' The Dark Side of Inspirational Pasts : An Investigation of Nostalgia in Right-Wing Populist Communication ', Media and Communication, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 237–249 .
Media and Communication, Vol 9, Iss 2, Pp 237-249 (2021)
Popis: In recent years, research found that populism employed a new strategy by using nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, as a communication tool to persuade citizens to support their political agendas. In populist campaigns, nostalgia is used to affectively link (alleged) crises with longing for a cherished past. In this article, we applied a mixed-methods approach to understand how populists exploit nostalgia in their communication and how nostalgic rhetoric has the potential to persuade people to support their claims. In Study 1, we conducted a case study based on a qualitative content analysis of Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) online election campaign in the 2019 Thuringia election in East Germany. The analysis revealed that the campaign was built around the nostalgic narrative of the 1989 peaceful revolution as a proud historical moment for former German Democratic Republic citizens while at the same time creating a sense of crisis supposedly caused by false post-reunification politics. To further investigate the persuasiveness of nostalgia, Study 2 used a statement from the campaign and found that participants tended to agree more with populist statements if they contained nostalgic rhetoric (compared to non-nostalgic populist and control rhetoric). These findings suggest that right-wing populists can effectively exploit nostalgia and that it may ‘sugarcoat’ populist messages.
Databáze: OpenAIRE