While some literature examines populism in Taiwan, current Taiwan-specific literature offers limited insight into the extent of populist messaging on social media election campaigns, its communication mechanisms and internal structure, inter-party differences in its application, and its relationship with election topics. To address these significant gaps, this paper analyses Facebook campaign messages of seven candidates/leaders from different Taiwanese political parties during the 2020 election using quantitative content analysis. This paper contributes by: (a) establishing a reliable framework for measuring populist content and style in Taiwan; (b) identifying negative and confrontational inclinations in minor parties’ populist communication; (c) uncovering a moderate correlation between populist content and style in Taiwan, with systematic engagements of negativity and emotionality; and (d) revealing significant associations between populist content and style and election topics, as well as different tendencies across parties in leveraging these elements to frame the electoral agenda.
Hongqin Cheng (Wed,) studied this question.