Flexible populist ideology during Russia’s war in Ukraine: A multimodal analysis of internet memes

Abstract

The social media have become an increasingly important vehicle for populist mobilization and persuasion. In this study, we explore how populism as a flexible ideology becomes articulated and reconstructed in times of international political turmoil. More precisely, we focus on the multimodal construction of right-wing populist ideology in the political memes produced by the Finns Party during Russia’s war in Ukraine in the spring 2022. Our multimodal discourse analysis shows that the memes constructed national security and sovereignty, (gendered) anti-elitism, and anti-refugee arguments through drawing upon the ‘Russian threat’ as a central discursive resource. Further, it demonstrates how the specific features of internet memes – humour, entertainment, open-endedness and interactivity – can be creatively utilized in populist political communication. The results of this study have implications for the scholarly understanding of populism as a ‘thin’ and flexible ideology, and for internet memes as a channel for political persuasion and mobilization.