Between the Ideological and Communicative Approaches: Hard and Soft Populism in France and Italy

In the last decades populism has been studied as an ideology or a communication style. Using the French and Italian cases as an illustration, this article suggests that these two approaches should not be considered as mutually exclusive by proposing a novel analytical framework. Per each country, the six most voted parties in 2014 EP elections were analysed in relation to their degree of populism, from both ideological and communication perspectives. The ideological dimension of populism was assessed through a quantitative human content analysis of statutes, charters of values and election manifestos (2014 European elections), identifying the presence of the key elements of populist discourse. As concerns the communicative dimension a quantitative human content analysis of a randomly selected sample of messages posted on Facebook profiles by the main Italian and French political parties and their leaders was carried out (30 days between 1 January and 31 December 2015). The proposed research framework allowed to distinguish different types of populism.