Communication strategies of populist leaders

This project aims to analyze how right-wing populist leaders deal with a public-health crisis. To address this question, my proposed study engages in a detailed analysis of the Twitter accounts of three right-wing populist leaders, namely, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and Narendra Modi. More specifically, I seek to understand the communication strategies of populist leaders who are faced with a major crisis such as the covid-19 pandemic. The study will use network analysis to establish the kind of topics (through hashtags) leaders bring to focus, and which political figures they (co-) mention. Furthermore, it will conduct sentiment analysis to study the content of tweets sent out by the aforementioned leaders and document them according to message type and content. Thus I am looking for students interested in political science and international studies to code populist leader tweets based on the criteria set by the research coordinators. The research requires no prior training on research methods. I will provide the basic instructions.