Adobe Systems 1 Data and measurement Populist political communication Adobe Systems 2 Based on the ideational approach to populism + a specific communication style Populism is “a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.” (Mudde 2004: 543). ̶ ̶ Adobe Systems 3 Ideational approach to populism Three core components of populism ̶ Anti-elitisim Sovereignty People-centrism Adobe Systems 4 Populist communication style ̶E.g. Engesser, De Vreese… ̶Negativity ̶Emotionality ̶Sociability ̶Register Adobe Systems 5 Content analysis Content/ textual analysis: ̶ideas of political actors are measured through messages that they produce (speeches, party manifestos, social media communication etc.) ̶Communication sources (various texts, pictures, etc.) as „true“ representatives of what politicians say are plan to do Adobe Systems 6 Content analysis Types of content analysis: ̶Mancoded/handmade ̶Computerised/automatized ̶ Note: Classical content analysis can be combined with computerised content analysis (semi-automated content analysis). - Usually follow the deductive, concept/theory rooted approach There are two main types… Adobe Systems 7 Content analysis Classical content analysis: ̶a codebook is defined ̶coders systematically analyse text by means of a codebook (human-coded approach) In a classical content analysis researchers first create a codebook, in which they specify what they mean by populism, how they want to measure/ code it. This codebook is then used by coders to analyse populism in texts of political actors – speeches of presidents, party manifestos etc. People do the analysis – referred to as human-coded approach. Adobe Systems 8 Content analysis Computerised content analysis: ̶dictionary of populist terms defined (indicators of populism) ̶computer counts the proportion of words that we consider to be indicators of populism ̶Mostly doable in English (some tools in other languages, possibility to use Google Translate) ̶ ̶Fully automatized, AI assisted (machine learning) – not in this class In computerised content analysis researchers first create dictionary containing words/ phrases which are indicators of populism. Computer is then given both the texts of political actors in which populism should be measured and the dictionary. Output is the proportions of populist words in those texts. Adobe Systems 9 Content analysis: units of analysis Ukip Pledge 600 Výsledek obrázku pro trump speech …election manifestos, speeches… Adobe Systems 10 Content analysis: units of analysis Související obrázek Výsledek obrázku pro trump tweet …debates, newspaper articles, but also Tweets or Facebook posts. Adobe Systems 11 Content analysis units of analysis ≠ units of measurement Chunks of these texts are then units of our analysis. Adobe Systems 12 Content analysis: units of measurement Donald Trump inauguration speech transcript 1 2 3 4 These can be paragraphs… Adobe Systems 13 Content analysis: units of measurement Donald Trump inauguration speech transcript …words… Adobe Systems 14 Content analysis: units of measurement Donald Trump inauguration speech transcript 1 …entire texts (common in case of speeches). In such case we talk about holistic grading approach in content analysis. Adobe Systems 15 Content analysis in practise Rooduijn , M. & Pauwels, T. 2011. “Measuring Populism: Comparing Two Methods of Content Analysis.” West European Politics 34(6), 1272–1283, online https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402382.2011.616665 Lets have a look at the article on content analysis you have been asked to read before the class Adobe Systems ̶authors use both classical and computerised content analysis to measure and compare the degree of populism of political parties in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy ̶ ̶units of analysis: election manifestos ̶core components of populism: people-centrism, anti-elitism ̶ 16 Rooduijn & Pauwels 2011 Content analysis in practise In their research,… They measure populism in election manifestos of political parties in these countries. And they try to identify people-centrism and anti-elitism in these party manifestos. Adobe Systems Classical content analysis ̶units of measurement: paragraph ̶à comparison of the degree of populism among parties based on % of populist paragraphs in their manifestos ̶paragraphs in which both people-centrism and anti-elitism were present selected as populist ̶ 17 Rooduijn & Pauwels 2011 Content analysis in practise In classical content analysis they look at individual paragraphs in election manifestos. Only if both people-centrism and anti-elitism are identified in a paragraph, that paragraph is coded as populist. Therefore, the comparison of the degree of populism…. Adobe Systems Classical content analysis: operationalisation of the core components of populism ̶people-centrism: “Do the authors of the manifesto refer to the people?” ̶examination of every possible reference to the people (citizens, our country, society, we the people, etc.) list of words and combinations of words that could refer to the people: people, citizen(s), community, society, public, population, nation(al), all of us, each of us, everyone, our, we, voter(s), electorate, referenda, direct democracy, public opinion, country, specific country (depending of course on the country under analysis ̶interpretation of the broader context 18 Rooduijn & Pauwels 2011 Content analysis in practise By people-centrism authors mean reference to the people. Coders provided with the list of words and combinations of words that may refer to the people, such as…. Coders also asked to take into account the context – word we may not refer to the people but to the party. Adobe Systems Classical content analysis: operationalisation of the core components of populism ̶anti-elitism: “Do the authors of the manifesto criticise elites?” ̶focus on criticism concerning the elite in general (critique on a specific party/ politician not coded) ̶interpretation of the broader context 19 Rooduijn & Pauwels 2011 Content analysis in practise By anti-elitism authors mean ciriticsm concerning the elite in general, not ciriticism of specific party or polician. Again, coders asked to take into account the context. Adobe Systems Computerised content analysis ̶units of measurement: words ̶à comparison of the degree of populism among parties based on % of populist words (words considered populism) ̶ 20 Rooduijn & Pauwels 2011 Content analysis in practise In computerised content analysis authors look at individual words in party manifestos. Therefore, comparison of the degree of populism is based… in those manifestos. Adobe Systems Computerised content analysis: operationalisation of the core components of populism ̶focus only on words that refer to anti-elitism ̶measurement of people-centrism by means of individual words is nearly impossible (words we and our often mentioned not in reference to the people, but to the political party) ̶selection of words into dictionary based on both empirical and theoretical reasoning ̶election manifestos of populist parties not analysed in this study used to make list of words that such parties have used to express their negativity towards elites ̶ 21 Rooduijn & Pauwels 2011 Content analysis in practise Authors developed their own dictionary. Contains only words that refer to anti-elitism. They used party manifestos of populist parties not included in the analysis to identify those words. Adobe Systems 22 Rooduijn & Pauwels 2011 Content analysis in practise Here you can see what a dictionary used in a computerised content analysis can look like. Star symbols next to each chunk. Means that such chunk can be followed or preceded by any letters. Why is it useful? Adobe Systems 23 Rooduijn & Pauwels 2011 Content analysis in practise Example: chunk corrupt* -> not only word corrupt but also corruption, corrupted counted as indicator of populism in a text Adobe Systems ̶Dictionary based approach ̶Automated content analysis ̶Words in context ̶Broader dictionary ̶Parameters of a dictionary: recall (avoid false negatives) and precision (avoid false positives) ̶Different units of measurement (sentences and posts on FB and Twitter) 24 Gründl 2020 Content analysis in practise Adobe Systems 25 Content analysis Harvard Dataverse – Global Populism Database: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/LFTQEZ ̶ ̶measurement of the level of populist discourse in the speeches of 215 chief executives (presidents and prime ministers) from 66 countries across all continents, mostly between 2000 and 2018 ̶holistic grading For this course, Global populism Database more usufl Dataset contains data on measurement ….. Holistic grading used – entire text – speech – one unit of analysis. Example of codebook. Adobe Systems 26 Advantages & Drawbacks of different types of content analysis Visual materials as a political content •Basic assumption on the importance of visual materials – affecting our attitudes, values and also perception of politics • •What are visual materials: pictures, movies, sculptures (anything you can see) • •Different ways of analysis (similar to text analysis) – both qualitative and quantitative Quantitative approach •Similar to other quantitative analysis – theoretical assumptions, ideally formulation of theoretically driven hypotheses (BUT explorative approach possible as well) •Definition of variables of interest (objects /leader, other members of the leadership, other parties/, environment /e.g. mingling with the people/, clothing, policy areas, types of pictures /e.g. Selfies/) •Usually comparative hypotheses (are populist visual materials more people-centric than materials of other political parties?) – otherwise how would you know that something is more or less? •Possible questions: •In which circustances are leaders of populist parties presented? •How are other political parties presented in visual materials of different political actors? •Challenge (not much has been done so far): How to measure populism in visual communication? Types of questions (Bell) •Try to think of these types of questions in relation to populist communication Data in quantitative analysis •Similar principles as in textual analysis •Definition of the corpus (data) – which pictures/movies should I analyze? •Driven by research questions •Possibilities – election period, representative sample, related to a specific topic, different time periods, etc. • units of analysis – pictures, frames, parts of pictures such as politicians, environement, tonality… (dependent on the question) •Values – the same as the text analysis (remember: mutually exclusive and ideally exhaustive categories – see Krippendorf) •Interpretation – prevalent characteristic, comparison… •Reliability – not that so much of our concern in the course but values/categories should be defined as clearly as possible Qualitative approach •Deeper understanding of the content • •Visual materials are not translated into numbers or quantifiable categories • •Interpretation, effort to find a context for interpretation • •Meaning instead of numbers Example I: Doerr •Qualitative approach •„visual posters and symbols constructed and circulated transnationally by various political actors to mobilize contentious politics on the issues of immigration and citizenship“ •Transnational spillover •Comparison of ideologically different political actors •„how did the SVP and EuroMayday campaigns portray the relationship between immigrants and citizens in order to reach out and mobilize supporters in distinct national contexts and transnationally?“ Data, method and results •SVP, NPD and LN •analysis of the black sheep campaign, the sample includes relevant visuals found on web pages and blogs by the groups associated with the cases studied (98 visuals, blacksheep related) •Discoursive analysis, visual iconography, contextualization (you do need to follow the method in details, instead concentrate on the qualitative nature of the analysis) •Comparison of the ways of transnational spillover and adaptation of communication related to immigration Example II: Wodak, Forchtner •Analysis of a specific visual materials – Sagas from Vienna •Qualitative approach – discourse-historical approach •„calculated ambivalence“ – blurring the line between fiction and reality •Politics of memory •Contextual analysis of discoursive practices •What is important here is the conceptual and analytical background suited to the research questions – remember: research design follows your questions Adobe Systems 35 Conclusion ̶You can meaure level of populism by collecting new data or by using existing data sources ̶An economic way how to assess policy positions of parties or compare them accross countries or time ̶In same cases not necessary to know the language, althouhg the numbers needs to be explained