Peculiarities of Modern Nationalist Messages in Online Political Communication: The Analyses of Donald Trump’s and Jair Bolsonaro’s Election Campaigns

Abstract

As digitalized election campaigns are a new phenomenon, there are almost no studies defining the peculiarities of modern nationalist messages in online political communication research. This article seeks to identify some communication patterns and recent innovations in delivering online nationalist messages. These patterns are regarded in conflation with nationalist and populist approaches by political leaders during their digital election campaigns. The literature review approach to making generalizations is chosen to explore the articulation of nationalist and populist messages during Donald Trump’s (The United States), and Jair Bolsonaro’s (Brazil) election campaigns. Overall, the study boils down to an analysis of the populist and nationalist signifiers in social media posts, and the degree to which their structures of meaning revolve around the vertical down/up or the horizontal in/out axis. As a result, some common traits of modern nationalist messages in online political communication are identified and future areas of research are proposed.