Canada, Still the Exception? Mapping Populist Discourses in Canadian Federal Leaders' Social Media Presence


Emily Laxer, York University, Glendon Campus; Rémi Vivès, York University, Glendon Campus

The last decade has seen a marked increase in social scientific and public interest in populism. Since 2016, the year that saw Donald Trump elected U.S. President and Britain’s exit from the European union (“Brexit”), the number of publications including the terms “populism(s)” or “populist(s)” in their titles have virtually exploded, as have worldwide google searches of the term “populism” (Peker, Vivès and Laxer, 2023). This substantial increase in attention poses challenges for social scientific research. If populism is of such broad significance, how can it be clearly defined? What are its characteristic features and key dimensions? How can we reliably operationalize and measure it? Current answers to these questions are disproportionately informed by observations of right-wing populisms in Europe, which are known to elicit public fears about the cultural influence of foreign and domestic “others”. This has left a clear imprint on the field. For instance, several studies define populism as inherently prone to excluding minority populations (e.g., Engesser et al., 2017). Others address populism as a matter of degree, distinguishing its minimal or “thin” forms characterized by positive references to the “people”, from “thick” versions that include negative references to “elites” and “others” (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007). A third branch of scholarship regards exclusion of “others” as characteristic of right- but not left-wing populisms (Freisen, 2021). In this study, we aim to ascertain whether and to what extent theoretical propositions derived from the European experience can illuminate the role and impact of populisms in non-European contexts. We focus on Canada, which, until recently, was widely viewed as impervious to the global populist surge, particularly its exclusionary dimensions. However, this tale of “exceptionalism” has become overshadowed by reports that parties, leaders, and movements deploying populist discourse and strategy have taken on greater significance and visibility in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. Using a dataset of over 5,000 original tweets by five Canadian federal party leaders, we compare the prevalence and intensity of three characteristic populist discourses: people-centrism, anti-elitism, and exclusion of “others”. Our decision to include politicians from across the political spectrum is informed by a conception of populism as a communication style, which varies in degree both within and across parties, and which contains multiple dimensions, some of which are taken up by “mainstream” parties. In including politicians from a range of ideological traditions, we also seek to avoid presuming who is or is not “populist”, opting instead to focus on instances of populist mobilizing, which can take varied forms. Our results complicate prevailing definitions of populism by showing a weak correlation between people-centrism – which is widespread across the political spectrum – and anti-elitism – which is far more circumscribed. We also find far more complexity in the make-up of right-wing populisms – particularly in terms of the exclusion of “others” – than the European literature suggests. We argue that our findings warrant a rethinking of populism’s key dimensions and relationship to ideology beyond the Canadian case.

Non-presenting authors: Efe Peker, University of Ottawa

This paper will be presented at the following session: