The following paper focuses on the relatively new rise of populism which has seen a surge across states across the western world. Populism refers to governance of and for the people, as opposed to the ruling elites. As the sensation of democratic deficits and partisan cleavages increase, the reaction is populism which aims to restore the fundamental democratic values back to the people, advocating a more transparent form of democracy, where power moves away from the ruling elites, back to the people. We explore what populism entails through defining it through its theoretical identifiers and analyzing which political and social attitudes are present in supporters of populist parties. This study is meant to complement Staerkle and Greens study about the social representation of right-populists. By using the same research methodology as Staerkle and Green but also including left populists. This means looking at the social representation of left-right populist supporters and identifying mutual conventions and relations through a cross sectional case study of four countries which have seen a rise in populist parties. The findings lead us to see convergence in left-right populist parties toward institutional distrust and divergence in opinion towards globalism and multiculturalism. In essence, we compare and present the social representation of populist supporters of left-right populist parties and investigate which attributes cause the divergence in their political and social identities.

I analyse whether coalitions consisting of one or several parties from both political blocs have a causal effect on the following election results of the Sweden Democrats using election data. I find that, when the largest bloc is unable to reach a seat majority in a municipal assembly and forms a coalition with one or several parties from the other bloc, the Sweden Democrats increase their municipal vote share by on average 11.71 percentage points the following election. I interpret the result as support for the view that Swedish voters punish the established parties when they are perceived as becoming more similar in terms of policy and ideology. Moreover, my results show that the effect is only significant in municipalities where no small and/or local parties exist, indicating that the largest bloc in many municipalities prefer to form a coalition with these parties when the opportunity exists.

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Thesis (M.A. (Communication Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Language is the most common and crucial element newspapers apply to express meaning. Language is a system of linguistic signs combined by rules to create meaning. Newspapers use language, among other or sign systems (e.g. photographs, graphics, content and layout) to communicate. These systems support each other and perform as a unit to reflect a newspaper's character and function. South Africa has a diversity in language, culture, background and literacy levels and the media's target audiences differ significantly. The ways in which these systems are thus applied, diverge to satisfy the various needs of audiences. These needs include being informed, entertained, aesthetically pleased, emotionally involved and mobilized (persuaded). Audiences also seek a reflection of their values, views and cultures in the media. / Thesis (M.A. (Communication Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University, Dept. of Political Science.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Immigration is one of the effects, one of the symptoms of the ill-functioning and outdated machine that is the elite. Immigration and asylum-seeking have been frequent topics in public debates for years. The number of refugees making their way from war-torn regions of the world to Sweden makes the citizen versus asylum-seeker dichotomy highly relevant for social psychology research about discursively constituted identities. That is to say: how social-categorizations, emotions and attitudes are created in text and talk. Today, public opinion is largely produced online, this makes it possible to explore the motivations, strategies and goals of “the nonracist racist” on Facebook. This study utilizes a dual-edged approach in that coding is done both from an inductive- and a deductive direction. It adheres to a discursive psychology approach and follows Potter and Edward’s (2001) situated, action-oriented and constructed features of discourse. These theoretical features inform the deductive coding and are contextualized using Sakki and Pettersson’s (2016) three representation of otherness with subsequent six discourses produced by the populist radical right. Findings indicate that cultural comparison constructing cultural incompatibility is the main rhetorical resource for constructing the citizen versus asylum-seeker dichotomy. However, this dichotomy is not the most dominant “us and them” construction by the “nonracist racist”. “The elite versus the people” is the most common “us and them” construction. It carries significant weight that the seemingly unfiltered expressions of hatred on anti-immigration pages on Facebook are more concerned with what “we” are doing wrong rather than what is wrong with any “deviant others”. It is more about an internal clash of moral compasses than it is about a supposed clash of civilizations. Along with the occasioned feature of discourse, this partly explains why anti-immigration advocates for example position themselves as victims or defenders.

Cette thèse étudie les générations politiques des chroniqueurs, membres de l’élite journalistique sous le gouvernement de l’AKP, tâchant de définir les rôles qu’ils tiennent et les discours qu’ils produisent lors des crises politiques, dans notre cas celle qui est suscitée par le mouvement de Gezi. En s’appuyant sur la sociologie des crises politiques de Michel Dobry et étudiant le champ journalistique, les trajectoires militantes et professionnelles des chroniqueurs, ce travail avance l’hypothèse principale selon laquelle le rôle d’intermédiaire/médiateur politique est celui dont s’approprient ces derniers lors des crises politiques. La construction médiatique du charisme d’un leader, Erdoğan en l’occurrence, par les chroniqueurs au travers du mouvement de Gezi fait également l’objet de notre recherche / This thesis examines the political generations of the columnists as members of the journalistic power elite under the AKP government, and endeavour to reveal the roles they hold; the discourses they produce during political crises, in our case that which is aroused by the Gezi movement. Relying on the sociology of political crises of Michel Dobry while examining the journalistic field; the militant and professional trajectories of the columnists, this study posits as main hypothesis that the columnists appropriate the role of political mediators during political crises. The media construction of a leader’s charisma that of Erdoğan, by the columnists through the Gezi movement is the subject of our study as well

Historians have long been fascinated by the last decade of the nineteenth century. It was in these years that one of the great industrial reform movements arose, spearheaded in much of the West and South by the Populists. It was also a decade in which the nation fought its first foreign war in half a century and forcibly took possession of its first major overseas colonial possessions. Scholars have frequently attempted to discuss the two phenomena in conjunction, but their attempts thus far have been shallow and unsatisfactory. This study examines the Populists of the U.S. West in detail, with a special focus upon the years from 1898 to 1900. Within the first years of the decade, the Populists had developed a substantial following by demanding a reorganization of the national economy for the benefit of small-scale producers and laborers. By 1896, the party formed a vital component of the reform coalition that won most of the elected offices of the region. The Populists and their allies appeared poised to become a substantial force for change, but it was not to be. Wars---the first with Spain over Cuba, the second in the Philippines to quash an independence movement---shifted public attention to other matters. Western Populists and Democrats responded by extending their critique of concentrated wealth to foreign affairs, and they attributed the drive for empire to the demands of financiers and industrialists. Yet by attacking the American war efforts, they laid themselves open to charges of disloyalty. President McKinley and the western Republicans who followed him saw the opportunities provided by the conflicts. They declared that colonies would promote trade and promised that the wealth generated by this commerce would trickle down to all classes. To an even greater degree, they skillfully used the wars to rally support around the nation's soldiers and the "flag." And finally, western Republicans successfully labeled the Populists and Democrats who opposed the wars as traitors and "copperheads." In this way conservatives destroyed the most serious challenge to the American industrial order.