How Populist Actors Campaign on Facebook: Case Studies From the EP Elections

DEMOS will discuss preliminary results on the impacts of populist discourse on voters through populist leaders' creative ways of using social media in an event on October 22 in Brussels. Organized by the project partner Andrej Školkay, from the School of Communication and Media in Slovakia (SKAMBA), the roundtable discussion will be moderated by Paul Butcher, policy analyst at Brussels-based think tank European Policy Centre. The event aims to explore the challenges involved in researching the role of social media in populist discourse.

Three partner members will represent DEMOS in the discussion. These include professor Umut Korkut (Glasgow University, UK), Andrej Školkay and Igor Daniš (SKAMBA), and Eglė Butkevičienė (Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania).

Professor Korkut will present features of populist discourse in the UK and Turkey, both countries with appeal of social media for political leaders.

The Slovakian team will further engage in cyberspace to analyze populism and social media using the Hungarian, Slovakian, Polish, and Romanian cases, with contributions from project coordinator (Centre for Social Sciences, Hungary) and partner (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland).

In the last panel, Egle Butkevičienė will explore populism on social media in Lithuania, where the political field is mostly dominated by centrist populist actors, before a roundtable discussion follows. Subsequently, Butcher will explore pathways for public policies stemming from the talk and work presented by DEMOS.

Hosted by the European Digital SME Alliance, the event is geared toward academics, policymakers, and think tanks. Participants should register by contacting Igor Daniš, the communications' officer at the School of Communication and Media: igor.danis@skamba.info

PROGRAMME

16.00 Welcome & introduction
Paul Butcher, Policy Analyst, European Policy Centre (Moderator)