Topic of the thesis: The more mainstream they get, the more they must please. A comparative analysis of the changing populist political communication of Italian Five Stars Movement, Lega, and Finnish Finns Party.

Abstract: Today populist parties are a major political force in Europe and in some countries they managed to enter the government – a process accompanied by a change in their political communication. In this research, I present a comparative study of the populist parties supporting the Italian government formed after the 2018 parliamentary election, Movimento 5 Stelle (M5s) and Lega, and the Finnish populist Finns Party (FP), that during 2015-2017 was in a cabinet with conservative parties. I argue that populist parties in countries as diverse as Italy and Finland show common tendencies to adjust their communication when they turn “mainstream” – the more popular they get, the more they must please, shifting from the initial “revolutionary” rhetoric towards a more moderate one. This research sees populism as a communication phenomenon and studies the discursive techniques that populists use to convince their voters, how their communication style changes when the parties institutionalize, and how political news coverage by mainstream media affects their communication. I perform a systematic analysis of social media communication in official channels of the parties and their leaders, as well as news articles in mass media to compare the parties' reactions to news coverage. Selected case studies highlight important themes in populist communication from 2011 to 2019: national and European elections, governmental crises, immigration, and economy. The material will be analyzed via critical discourse analysis and framed in the analytic scheme of populist political communication. Broader implications for policy making will be discussed.

Research interests: Political communication – Connections between media and politics – Populism – European public sphere.

Graduated from: University of University of Helsinki, Finland.

Degrees obtained: BA in Social Sciences, Major in Media and Communication Studies – MA in Social Sciences, Major in Media and Communication Studies.

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