Positive emotions play an important role in populist communication, yet they have received relatively little attention in research. In an interview with NordMedia Network, researchers Jesper Eklund and Jon Järviniemi discuss how emotional appeals shape political identities, the role of social media, and what a broader Nordic perspective could add to our understanding of populism.
In a recent study published in Nordicom Review, Jesper Eklund, Doctoral Researcher at Åbo Akademi University and Jon Järviniemi, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki, examine how the leadership of the Finns Party used emotional appeals on social media during the 2023 Finnish parliamentary election.
Their interest in the subject grew out of a shared curiosity about the role emotions play in populist communication.
“I have long been interested in how populist radical-right parties build political narratives, and particularly in the role emotions play in those narratives. However, I also felt that there was too much focus on only negative emotions in the empirical research of populist radical-right parties”, Eklund explains.
Järviniemi had reached a similar conclusion while writing his PhD on populist communication in Finland.
“Considering that populism is fundamentally built around the construction of an antagonistic divide between “us” and “them”, positive emotions must also play a role in constructing the “us” and fostering a sense of collective identity and belonging”, he says.
The Role of Positive Emotions
While negative emotions remain central to radical-right populist communication, positive emotions can also be powerful, particularly for people who feel left out of politics, betrayed, or disenfranchised.
“I would not say that positive emotions complicate our understanding of radical-right populism so much as broaden it. Populism is fundamentally people-centred. While radical-right parties often mobilise through, for instance, anger, contempt, and fear, they also need to present ‘the people’ as virtuous and ‘worth’ defending,” says Eklund.
He points to Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” as an example of how political messages can combine grievances with a hopeful vision of the future.
Järviniemi suggests that positive emotions may even be essential to what makes communication distinctly populist, rather than simply an expression of political discontent.
“It could even be argued that without positive emotional appeals, this type of communication would be less distinctly populist and instead more closely resemble grievance politics. At the same time, positive emotions are not necessarily ‘inclusive’ in all regards, as we discuss, they can strengthen a sense of belonging among the in-group while also drawing a sharper line between ‘us’ and ‘them’, reinforcing who is seen as part of the community and who is not”.
For Järviniemi, emotions are not simply expressions of existing political identities. They also play an active role in shaping the boundaries between groups and influencing how people understand their place in society.
Emotions Across Social Media Platforms
Eklund recalls the Sweden Democrats’ election film My Europe Builds Walls as an example that stayed with him, illustrating how positive and negative emotions can be combined to create a clear distinction between “us” and “them”.
“That kind of political storytelling is particularly interesting on social media, where politicians can combine language, images, video, music, and other cues to evoke emotions”, he says.
But social media is not one uniform environment. One aspect the researchers were particularly interested in was how emotional appeals vary across platforms.
“We often talk about ‘social media’ as if it were one thing, but different platforms work in different ways, attract different publics, and offer different possibilities for political communication. That means politicians may also use them differently”, Eklund explains.
Asked what they would like to explore further, Eklund points to the need for broader comparisons across social media platforms, involving more political actors and larger samples. Järviniemi, meanwhile, is interested in how emotional communication on social media affects voters.
“For example, do different emotional appeals resonate differently with audiences across platforms, and do they influence how voters identify with a party or perceive political opponents?”
A Nordic Perspective
Although the study focuses on the Finns Party, the researchers see opportunities to explore similar questions in a broader Nordic context.
“It is of course a single-case study, so we should be careful about generalising too far. But the Finns Party is a prominent and electorally successful example of the broader populist radical right, and it has also been one of the more consistent users of populist communication in Finland”, Järviniemi says.
While the Nordic countries share many political and media-system characteristics, their populist radical-right parties differ in their histories and political contexts. Järviniemi therefore sees value in comparing how these parties use emotional appeals across countries.
Eklund, meanwhile, points to the growing discussion around transnational populism and increasing cooperation between populist actors across national borders.
“So, despite differences in their national histories and contexts, these parties may also be more alike than we sometimes assume in their political communication”.
The study
Feelings among friends and foes in populist communication
Authors: Jesper Eklund and Jon Järviniemi, published in Nordicom Review.
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