Shifting the blame. Populist politicians’ use of Twitter as a tool of opposition

The advent of new social media has facilitated new means of political communication, through which politicians can address the electorate in an unmediated way. This article concentrates on political actors challenging the establishment, for whom new media platforms such as Twitter provide new tools to engage in a ‘permanent campaign’ against dominant mainstream parties. Such opposition is ostensibly articulated most strongly by populist parties, which can be seen as the ultimate challengers to the (political) ‘elites’. By means of two often-identified cases of populism in the Netherlands (the... Mehr ...