This paper aims to analyse the extent to which new political parties in Croatia and Slovenia use populist political communication discourse in social media. This paper focuses on two new parties that entered the parliament in the most recent elections: Živi zid (Human Blockade) in Croatia, and Združena levica (United Left) in Slovenia. The paper will analyse these parties’ political communication on Facebook. The main question guiding the analysis is: to what extent are new parties in Croatia and Slovenia populist in their political communication on Facebook? The method used in the paper will be content analysis, with a Facebook post as a unit of analysis. The content analysis will be performed on posts published over a period of two weeks prior to the general elections (electoral campaigns).
Dina Vozab is a researcher at the Centre for Media and Communication Research, Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia. She defended her PhD thesis in 2016 under the title: “Media audiences and democracy in Croatia: social stratification as a predictor of media use and its role for political participation”. Her research interests are media audiences, media systems and the relationship between media, civil society and political participation.
Alessandro Albertini
Alessandro Albertini is PhD Candidate in Political Science at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa. He received a Bachelor and a Master’s degree in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Pisa. Albertini currently studying the main populist parties in Southern and Eastern Europe with focus on organization and communication strategies.