The development of social media platforms has allowed a new wave of populism to accelerate rapidly. Tweets, Facebook shares, and viral memes get information to ordinary citizens quickly and directly, without the influence of authorities, and often without the benefit of research and facts. Is this democracy in its purest form or mindless transmission of fake news and irresponsible reporting? What is the result of digital populism, and what can be done to use it for the good of the people? This resource contains viewpoints that will awaken readers to the value of critical thinking skills.

Populist parties and movements are now a force to be reckoned with in many Western European countries. These groups are known for their opposition to immigration, their "anti-establishment" views, and their concern for protecting national culture. Their rise in popularity has gone hand-in-hand with the advent of social media, and they are adept at using new technology to amplify their message, recruit, and organize. The online social media following for many of these parties dwarfs the formal membership, consisting of tens of thousands of sympathizers and supporters. This mélange of virtual and real political activity is the way millions of people--especially young people--relate to politics in the 21st century. This is the first quantitative investigation into these digital populists, based on over 10,000 survey responses from 12 countries. It includes data on who they are, what they think and what motivates them to shift from virtual to real-world activism. It also provides new insight into how populism--and politics and political engagement more generally--is changing as a result of social media. The New Face of Digital Populism, a publication of the UK think tank Demos, calls on mainstream politicians to respond to and address concerns over immigration and cultural identity without succumbing to xenophobic solutions. People must be encouraged to become actively involved in political and civic life, whatever their political persuasion--it is important to engage and debate forcefully with these parties and their supporters, not shut them out as beyond the pale. The Open Society Foundations organized the conference "We Say What You Think: Is populism the Future of European Politics" in November 2011 to discuss the findings with policy makers, journalists and academics.

This book comprehensively describes the impact of modern technologies on political leadership by providing a new paradigm of the phenomenon of neo-leadership, that is political leadership oriented on creating both the image and political influence on the Internet. It examines its functioning in the new media environment and identifies the most important transforming trends, taking into account their impact on political and social relations in an era of dynamic technological development. Systematically exploring various dimensions of leadership, it presents new notions relevant in a networked world where leaders are created and conduct themselves against the backdrop of a technological revolution, including the development of AI, automation, algorithms and ultrafast networks, all of which strengthen or disrupt their impact and create a new set of virtual authorities exerting an increasing impact on society, ethical considerations and political life and requiring new methods for study. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of leadership and elite studies, media and communication studies, political marketing, political science, international relations; public policy, and sociology.

This book examines different dimensions of digital communication and populism in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. While doing so, it discusses views, opinions, and research results regarding the conditions, experiences, constraints, benefits, and challenges related to the topic - not only using theoretical and methodological approaches but also practical perspectives. The COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic significantly accelerated the technological revolution presenting many social, economic, and political challenges, as it pushed the world into cyberspace to ensure social distancing. At the same time, many populist protests expressed in the digital public sphere massively gained importance during the lockdowns. As a result, one of the most significant consequences of using electronic tools is not only greater e-participation of citizens, but - especially evident through elections during a pandemic - even greater transfer of political communication and election campaigns into the space of new media. The book broadly analyses various contexts of digitalization of communication processes and populist politics from both theoretical and empirical perspectives in various case studies on the digitalization of information, communication, or participation processes during the COVID-19 pandemic in selected European countries and beyond. This book will appeal to students, researchers, and scholars of political communication, political science, electoral studies, digital politics, and democracy, as well as policy-makers interested in a better understanding of digital communication and populism during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Catherine Fieschi examines why populism and populist parties have become a feature of our politics. Populism's appeal, she argues, needs to be understood as a response to the fundamental reshaping of our political, economic and social spheres through globalisation and the digital revolution"--

This book re-evaluates the role of performance in global politics in the face of populism and the digital mediatisation of political interactions. As political communications are increasingly conducted in online environments,‘post-truth’ performances become evermore central to democratic processes. It is therefore essential to reconsider the political potency of performance and theatricality in order to effectively reinvigorate democracy in the 21st century. Drawing on applied theatre practices, this book shows that performance is inherently concerned with cooperative and collaborative encounters across difference, and performance might therefore support effective responses to digital populism. The analysis addresses the performative aspects of populist political movements in the United States and United Kingdom. The chapters engage with aspects of performance and theatricality not commonly broached in IR scholarship, including interpersonal engagement, creative embodiment and interactive affect, making the case for the importance of these features to democratic engagement. This book resonates with recent debates regarding the relevance and treatment of Arts and Performance as IR subjects, methodologies and practices, and will be of interest to scholars and students of global politics, international relations, performance studies, radical democracy, and mass communication and culture.

This highly original work considers the rhetoric of political actors and commentators who identify digital media as the means to a new era of politics and democracy. Placing this rhetoric in a historical and intellectual context, it provides a compelling explanation of the reinvention and thematic recurrence of democratic discourse. The author investigates the populist sources of rhetoric used by digital politics enthusiasts as outsiders inaugurating new eras of democracy with digital media, such as Barack Obama and Julian Assange, and explores the generations of rhetorical and political history behind them. The book places their rhetoric in the context of the permanent tensions between insiders and outsiders, between the political class and the populace, which are inherent to representative democracy. Through a theoretical and conceptual research that is historically grounded and comparative, it offers rhetorical analysis of candidates for the 2016 presidential election and discusses digital democracy, particularly discussing their origins in American populism and their influence on other countries through Americanization. Uniquely, it offers a sceptical assessment of epochal claims and a historical-rhetorical account of two of the defining figures of twentieth-century politics to date, and reveals how modern rhetoric is grounded in an older form of anti-politics and mobilises tropes that are as old as representative democracy itself.