Analyzing the populist voter in Europe: the effects of political news and internet usage on voting behaviour

Abstract

Populism is one of the most researched topics in the past decade. There are many factors that can have an effect on the populist vote. It has been claimed that political news and internet use are some of them. Regarding the former, the mediatization and sensationalization of politics alongside the interdependence between political parties and the media could have an effect on people, which eventually might influence their voting behaviour. Regarding the latter, social media algorithms and unregulated content creates echo chambers and filter bubbles that are used by populists who are experts at using online tools to spread their ideas to a vast audience; which could translate into cast a vote for a populist party. Hence, this thesis analyses the effects of the media’s political news (PN) and internet usage (IU) on the populist voter to try to see if their consumption could be linked to voting for a populist party. It also tries to discover if rightwing populist voters (in comparison with left-wing populist and centrist populist voters) are those who spend more time watching political news and using the internet. In order to analyze this, two sets of logistic regression were performed. The first included the main variables of the study, PN and IU, and the second model was applied with the inclusion of 10 additional demographic and attitudinal variables. Each regression was tested in 22 European countries. Depending on types of populism found in each country, the regression was tested in right wing, left wing and centrist populist scenarios. In order to see which kind of populist voter consumes more news and internet, a t-test was carried out to compare the means for the groups of voters. The overall findings showed that the PN and IU do not have a significant effect, except for what can be considered an isolated scenario. Nonetheless, the full model permits the discovery of other findings that will help to give an overview of the behavioral traits of the populist voter.