Selective Exposure to Populist Communication: How Attitudinal Congruence Drives the Effects of Populist Attributions of Blame

Although it has been argued that populist communication only appeals to a specific audience, extant research has exclusively studied the effects of populist communication in forced-exposure media environments. Responding to this discrepancy, we conducted two experiments (N = 562 and N = 558) in which we manipulated the core idea of populist messages—attributing blame—in forced and selective exposure media environments. Our results demonstrate that citizens higher in relative deprivation are most likely to select populist messages. Irrespective of selective exposure, citizens’ populist attitudes are only positively affected if the populist message is congruent with their prior feelings of relative deprivation. These results provide important insights for the polarizing potential of media populism in a fragmented media environment.