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Syftet med denna uppsats är testa Muddes hypotes: När populistiska aktörer når politiska framgångar och hotar etablissemanget, svarar delar av etablissemanget med att inkludera ett populistiskt språkbruk för att mota bort utmanaren. Ovanstående hypotes prövas genom att undersöka om Hillary Clinton och Jeb Bush som tillhör ett politiskt etablissemang utvecklat sitt språk i sina kampanjtal mot att bli mer eller mindre populistiska, i samband med att Donald Trump och Bernie Sanders som av flera medier blivit beskrivna som populister anslutit sig till primärvalet 2016 i USA. Teorin som används i uppsatsen är hämtad från Cas Muddes studie The Populist Zeitgeist samt Kirk A. Hawkins studie ”Is Chávez Populist?”. Metoden i uppsatsen utgörs av en kvalitativ idealtypsanalys. Utifrån uppsatsens resultat kan följande indikationer redovisas. Hillary Clinton har inte inkluderat ett mer populistiskt språk i sina kampanjtal i samband med att Trump och Sanders ställt upp inför primärvalet 2016 i USA. Detta står i motsats till Jeb Bush som inkluderat ett mer populistiskt språk i samband med att Trump och Sanders ställt upp inför primärvalet 2016 i USA, vilket styrker Muddes hypotes.

The nation stood in either awe or disbelief when Bernie Sanders, a political Independent, only recently turned Democrat, defeated the establishment candidate and former first lady, Hillary Clinton, in the early 2016 New Hampshire primary. As the primaries concluded, it became clear that Sanders’ message resonated. But why was this the case after eight years of “hope and change” under the Obama administration? Furthermore, to what extent did Sanders align with traditional Democrats or traditional Socialists and how can we understand the unprecedented success of a presidential candidate who identifies with socialism? My thesis seeks to answer these puzzles. I do so by: interviewing Sanders supporters, investigating the development of American Socialism and Sanders’ own political identity, and analyzing the economic and social factors leading up to the 2016 primaries. Ultimately, my thesis proposes that Sanders’ ability to win over twelve million votes in the Democratic Party primaries stems from his creation of his own brand of socialism that merged traditional socialist principles of championing the working person with the economic and social realities of twenty first century middle-class America.

This study explores the articulation of a popular political identity by the US Senator Bernie Sanders and the political coalition he communicates. The analysis part is conducted on two levels: the construction of the populist signifier ‘the people’ and the construction of the antagonist in Sanders’ political communication. The theoretical part is mostly driven by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s perspective in radical democracy, identity construction, collectiveness and the chain of equivalence. By deploying theoretically unprejudiced approach, the thesis shows how a popular identity, namely ‘the People’, emerges, how it is communicated in order to put forward an alternative reading of populism which is hotly-debated subject among scholars and political scientists. Furthermore, the thesis elaborates how the theoretical discussion proposes a way of understanding the collective subject of ‘the People’ which appears as an identifiable and contra- conjectural category. The analysis ascertains that ‘the people’, as a populist subject, emerges as collective citizens demanding equal rights and taking the larger issues of inequality at stake based on inclusive values and positions, rather than as undemocratic, authoritarian, ethnically and culturally homogenizer subjects. Consequently, any subject causing ‘injustice’ becomes the antagonized other who obliges ‘the People’ to experience misery, oppression, and discrimination. The research tackles how Senator Sanders’ political communication brings disperse identities along with the chain of equivalence, how his movement articulates the political front of ‘the People’, and how it signifies the outsider through dichotomizing the political space. The study concludes that Sanders popular articulation provides a critical perspective for us to read populist zeitgeist of the twenty-first century.

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The objective of this study is to investigate what type of personalization is more successful in shaping an authentic image of the politician. Two politicians; Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been chosen for the study. Hence, the questions that the study seeks to address are; What type of personalization is most successful in shaping an authentic image of Hillary Clinton? and What type of personalization is most successful in shaping an authentic image of Bernie Sanders? The method employed for this study is a survey experiment designed to compare perceived authenticity between the respondents for two different personalization types; privatization and emotionalization. The survey experiment, conducted during November and December 2023, had a total of 102 valid respondents. The data with perceived authenticity for the two personalization types were presented in a bivariate regression analysis. Results reveal that privatization is more successful in shaping an authentic image of Hillary Clinton, particularly among female respondents, indicating gender-based variations. For Bernie Sanders, the study finds no clear preference between privatization and emotionalization overall, but a gender-specific analysis suggests that privatization is more successful among female respondents.

The present thesis uses methods of Critical Discourse Analysis to examine 16 front-page newspaper articles, from The New York Times and The Washington Post, covering progressive presidential candidate Bernie Sanders during the 2015 “invisible primary”. In particular, this thesis investigates how Sanders and his supporters were represented, linguistically and visually, and whether these representations – formulated as “interpretive frames” – appear more legitimizing or delegitimizing. In the crucial prevoting period of the invisible primary, the media largely have the power to construct the identity of relatively unknown candidates, such as Sanders, in the minds of the national public. The 2015/16 election season occurred against the backdrop of extreme levels of economic inequality and related societal ills, which have arguably arisen from four decades of neoliberal policies implemented by successive American presidents from both major political parties.The findings of the analysis appear to confirm a concerning pattern of largely delegitimizing US media coverage (or omission) of progressive political candidates and social movements going back several decades. In the articles analysed, Sanders was represented using interpretive frames casting him as an extreme leftist, angry and impersonal, or marginal and old. Only one major interpretive frame – representing him as a skilful, pragmatic politician – appeared legitimizing. Similarly, Sanders’ supporters were largely framed as activists, excitable fans, or divided into narrow identity categories (e.g. “white liberals”) that appear delegitimizing when considered opposite the shared economic struggles that many of them likely face. Given the liberal reputation of The New York Times and moderate image of The Washington Post, the results raise further doubts about the ideological diversity of the mainstream American public sphere.

The study of political communication is an old and diverse field, and the media has been proven to have an effect on their readers. The narratives that they create in their reporting can be as damning as they can be auspicious. Therefore, the study of media and how they frame certain events is as important as it has ever been. The democratic primaries in 2016 were certainly an interesting event. Hillary Clinton, the apparent nominee of the party, faced off against Bernie Sanders, who, in America, is something as unusual as a democratic socialist. How were these two polar opposites framed? To find out, a framing analysis was made on New York Times and Washington Post, two of the largest newspapers in the US. The analysis was built around four “events” that were deemed important in the election. 195 articles were analyzed. The methods that were used were both quantitative and qualitative, and the theories of framing (how the media depicts the election) and agenda-setting (what the media deems to be important) were applied. The results showed that the two newspapers did not differentiate all that much from each other, except for a few percent in certain aspects. All in all, the narrative was obvious. Clinton was the candidate that would go on to win the nomination. She was also the most suitable candidate. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, was framed as the loser and as unsuitable. Though he was consistently framed as having more integrity than his opponent. Clinton was also the candidate that had the biggest focus on her. This was true for all of the events, and in both newspapers. The implications of the study are twofold. First, Sanders was consistently painted in a negative light, which created an undesirable narrative and gave him negative momentum. Secondly, the virtual duplication of the narratives in New York Times and Washington Post suggests that there was some kind of consensus. Either Clinton really was the obvious nominee for the party, or the media hampered Sanders chances to clinch the nomination by depicting him in a negative manner.