Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://www.weizenbaum-library.de/handle/id/1111

Collection of articles, reviews, preprints

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Author: search.filters.author.Heft, AnnettSubject: search.filters.subject.radical right parties

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    Anti‐elitism in the European Radical Right in Comparative Perspective
    (2023) Vaughan, Michael; Heft, Annett
    To better understand the communication of anti-elitism in contemporary politics, this study conceptually differentiates between specific anti-elitism geared toward specific, materially powerful elites (‘Angela Merkel’) and general anti-elitism referencing broader discursive constructs (‘the elite’). The study analyses the online communications of radical right parties in the 2019 European Parliament elections from six countries (Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Poland and Sweden). This more fine-grained analysis of anti-elitism highlights some areas of transnational convergence, such as a tendency to focus on specific political elites, rather than other sectors such as the media or discursive constructs. The findings also reveal stratification according to parties’ position in national power structures: opposition parties tend to target national-level elites while governing parties focus on the European level. The findings highlight that anti-elitism is used in a highly instrumental way, and help us to better understand the intersection between anti-elitism and the multilevel politics of EP elections.
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    Mobilization and support structures in radical right party networks. Digital political communication ecologies in the 2019 European parliament elections
    (2022) Heft, Annett; Reinhardt, Susanne; Pfetsch, Barbara
    The 2019 European Parliament elections seemingly fostered concerted political action among radical right parties (RRPs) to fortify their positions and mobilize publics on a pan-European scale. Digital platforms provide central infrastructure for networks among political actors and user interactions on the ground. Our study, therefore, investigates the intra- and transnational networking on Twitter established by RRPs’ strategic communication and user interactions. To understand how distinct political and media-related opportunity structures align with different intensities, types, and meanings of digital connections, we investigate the salience, actor types, and geographical scopes as well as the functions of digital connections within and across Twitter networks in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden during the EP election campaigns. Our results indicate the influence of parties’ structural power position on networked communication: The ecologies around RRPs in government reflect their integration in national discourses and competition. The networks of RRPs in opposition display a self-referential campaign ecology for the promotion and distribution of candidates, content, and positions. Transnationality in these networks is structured by EU-level collaboration and driven by civil society and political entrepreneurs, who appear keener to mobilize across borders.
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    Transnational issue agendas of the radical right? Parties’ Facebook campaign communication in six countries during the 2019 European Parliament election
    (2023) Heft, Annett; Pfetsch, Barbara; Voskresenskii, Vadim; Benert, Vivien
    In this study, we investigate to what degree radical right parties use social media for pushing a common issue agenda to mobilise voters on a pan-European scale. Using the 2019 European Parliament (EP) election as a case, we analysed radical right parties’ campaign agendas in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden and identified the transnationally shared issue repertoire in their Facebook communication. Based on the structural topic modelling we used for analysis, our results reveal a set of shared issues – immigration and blaming elites –which are typical of the populist core of those parties. Moreover, all parties use social media to draw attention to the election itself. While radical right parties mobilise their voters based on a transnationally recurring set of shared issues, national political opportunity structures account for party-specific topics and national adaptations of shared issues in their campaigns on Facebook.