75 Introduction Most political communication studies on populism and social media have been one-country case studies or comparative quantitative studies, and mostly focused on populist parties’ activities on social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. This chapter aims to contribute to the understanding of populism styles of visual political communication during election campaigns by comparing the very different cases of left-wing Podemos / Unidas Podemos, originally liberal moderate party Ciudadanos, and far-right VOX political parties in Spain, as well as right-wing Sweden Democrats in Sweden. This chapter concludes that visual political communication has turned out to become a corner stone in populist parties’ propaganda in both countries. The aim of this chapter is to examine and compare visual political communications of the populist parties Podemos / Unidas Podemos, Ciudadanos, and VOX (in Spain), and Sweden Democrats (in Sweden) in recent national elections (28 April and 10 November, 2019) in Spain and (14 September 2014 and 9 September 2018) in Sweden. Currently populist movements are politically successful all over the world, and Europe is no exception to this rule. The two last European parliament elections, in 2014 and 2019, have generally resulted in significantly increased voters’ support for political parties that may be characterized as populist with regard to their ideology and/or their dominant political messages during the campaign – partly because of their ‘exclusionary narratives’ which centre on some particular groups Chapter 3 Left and right populist parties in Spain and Sweden and their visual communication strategies in 2018/2019 Karen Arriaza Ibarra Complutense University of Madrid arriazaibarra@ucm.es Lars Nord Mid-Sweden University lars.nord@miun.se A comparative study of Spanish and Swedish ‘populist parties’ strategies and propaganda videos for the 2018 and 2019 national election campaigns while they exclude others (Sanders et. al., 2017; Mudde, 2019). In the EU, the number of parliamentary seats for populist parties is now larger than ever before and the opinion polls in which populist parties are performing well are distinctive features of many European countries regardless of their political tradition, media systems, voters’ demographics or domestic political culture. Variations of populism have arisen in both right and left political ideologies and have surfaced in a variety of political systems and traditions (Engesser et al. 2017). The rise of populist political actors in Europe has mostly been explained by economic recession and increased migration flows, or most typically by a combination of both factors (Goodhart, 2017). The economic crisis that hit Europe approximately ten years ago gave rise to new, unexpected political actors that showed up in – sometimes – the most peculiar ways (Judis, 2016). It is interesting to notice, though, that while in the majority of Europe right-wing populist parties were hitting strong (as in the case of Germany, France and the UK), in others, like in Spain, the difficult unemployment rates and the harsh economic situation affecting its citizens gave green light to unexpected left-wing political parties. A couple of the most representative cases of these are ‘Podemos’ (We Can), which on 15 March 2019 modified its name to ‘Unidas Podemos’, UP (‘Together We Can’, with the feminine use of the adverb ‘Unidas’ instead of ‘Unidos’), as a gesture of empathy towards women) in Spain and ‘Syriza’ (‘From The Roots’) in Greece. On the other hand, we have witnessed how some European nations known for their long-established democratic traditions – such as it is the case of the Nordic countries – have had right-wing populist parties with strong representation in national parliaments (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and also with representation in coalition governments (Finland and Norway). In many European countries, the success of populist parties has changed the political landscape significantly. In Spain and Sweden new populist parties have emerged as a ‘third’ political force beside of the traditional rivalry between right-wing and left-wing party/coalition groups. Podemos / Unidas Podemos (UP), Ciudadanos and VOX now have come to change the traditional-left and traditional-right party system established by the socialist PSOE (Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party) and the conservative PP (Popular Party) in Spain, while The Sweden Democrats play the same crucial role in contemporary Swedish party politics. However, it is important to note that the only truly national, hegemonic party in Spain is the conservative Popular Party (PP). In the case of the socialist party, PSOE, they work with regional leaders called ‘barons’ (barones), and each one of them has a literal ‘feud of power’ in their own respective region and put together their list of candidates for the general elections. In the case of the PP, all names suitable for election are decided in Madrid. As an example, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 76 spokesperson of her party until August 2020 in the Congress, was born in Madrid and is well-known for her far-right comments and ideas, but her name was not only included in the PP’s headquarters in Madrid as representative for Barcelona, but the party leader Pablo Casado referred to her as “our Messi” (El País, 22 March 2019). The new populist actors also appear in a dramatically changing political communication landscape where digital and social media exist side by side with traditional mass media (Chadwick, 2013). The new media landscape offers to populist parties and candidates increased opportunities to reach voters directly with political messages without having them distorted by news media interpretations or journalistic news frames (Engesser et al. 2017). The Internet and digital or social media have also sometimes been characterized as tailored for populist political communication (Bimber, 1998). So far, most political communication studies on populism and social media have been one-country case studies or comparative quantitative studies, and mostly focused on populist parties’ activities on social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. This chapter aims to contribute to the understanding of populism styles of visual political communication during election campaigns by comparing the very different cases of left-wing Podemos / Unidas Podemos (UP), centre-party Ciudadanos, and far-right VOX political parties in Spain, as well as right-wing Sweden Democrats in Sweden. It examines their political advertisements on the less explored social media video platform YouTube, which so far is a rather understudied medium of political communication. This comparison of populist parties’ campaign styles is intended to address the relative importance of both ideological orientation and country-specific characteristics for visual populist political communication and shed new light on the underexplored communicative aspects of populism on such campaign platforms. Particular attention is given to examine whether the campaign communication of the populist political parties in Spain and Sweden have changed as they are now becoming more established in their national political contexts. The next section introduces previous findings on populist political communication features and a theoretical framework for the study. Then follows a brief presentation of the parties’ current status in the Spanish and Swedish political systems. Finally, political ads on YouTube in both countries are compared and analyzed. Populism and visual media This significant transformation of the European political landscape and the increased support for populist parties has no single and simple explanation. 77 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN Populism in terms of championing the people against an establishment may appear regardless of ideological orientation. Populism parties are most of the times right-wing and left-wing oriented. For their discourses they mainly focus on political sensitive issues such as immigration, nationalism, terrorism, globalization and free trade. Usually, left-wing populism focuses on economic values within society, while right-wing populism is more oriented towards cultural values (Norris & Inglehart, 2019). Instead of trying to find a distinct definition of populist movements, it may be useful to characterize them as a kind of ‘early warnings’ of possible political crises in democratic societies as they address ‘genuine problems’ that have to some extent been overlooked or neglected by the political majority that has ruled before them (Judis, 2016). To sum up, there exist several descriptions of populism as many European countries have them incorporated to their everyday political lives; however, explanations illustrating its ideological roots and role in contemporary democratic societies differ. For that reason, in this chapter we attempt to face the vague nature of the concept of populism by narrowing the analytical perspective and limiting it to its visual communication strategies through campaign videos. In specialized’ studies, populism is often primarily defined as a specific political communication style (Jagers & Walgrave, 2007; Krämer, 2014). The styles of populist parties and their communication strategies have been central for ‘supply-side’ studies of populist communication. Populist parties’ communication is generally suggested to appeal to the people, to be identified with them and to speak in their name; while, at the same time, these parties play the role of the underdog and attack mainstream media and other political parties which represent ‘the establishment’ as well as excluding dangerous ‘others’ from the homogenous people (Jagers & Walgrave, 2007; Mazzoleni, 2008, Aalberg et al., 2017). It is common to distinguish between a ‘thin’ definition of the concept, where populist parties mainly refer to the people, and a ‘thick’ definition where these parties, in addition to references to the people, also express anti-establishment ideas and explicitly exclude certain parts of the population. Empirically, populist political communication styles have previously been investigated in studies of various communication channels, such as party manifestos, party congresses, press releases, party broadcasts and radio and TV programs (Jagers & Walgrave, 2007; Engesser et al. 2017.) Research on populism has mainly focused on the traditional political communication arenas, but at the same time new forms and practices of communication, networking, and online culture have opened up new channels and opportunities for political actors and individuals. Thus it is relevant to look at how these actors make use of today’s THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 78 media and communication environment in order to mobilize public opinion. However, there is still a limited number of studies focusing on recent media technology developments and the emerging ‘hybrid media system’ where traditional news media and social media appear side by side and where digital media become more prominent (Chadwick, 2013; Davis 2019). Even fewer studies on populism are focusing on diverse forms of visual communication, despite fact that such communication seems to be well suited for emotional political messages. There are very good reasons to include both visual platforms and social media in the analysis of populist political communication as these communication channels offer a much more direct linkage to the people and bypasses journalistic filters that are often – and in some cases correctly – perceived as biased and anti-populist. Most political parties in hybrid media systems need to adopt mixed communication strategies – including both mass communication and target group communication – but it is reasonable to believe that populist parties benefit more than others from the increased opportunities to choose between news media and social media options. While news media logic is based on professional norms and news values rarely favourable for populist parties, social media logic is driven by a network logic favouring ‘attention maximization’ and polarized political discussions evolving around ‘like-minded’ networks on digital platforms (cf. Klinger & Svensson, 2015). The Study The study investigates the development of visual political communication over time, focusing on elements of populist rhetoric and expression in party messages. Furthermore, the study examines whether this type of communication changes when the populist parties are becoming more established in the national political context and the label of ‘populist’ is not as clearly linked to their name anymore. Methodologically, visual communication channels from Podemos / Unidas Podemos (UP), Ciudadanos, and VOX (in Spain) and The Sweden Democrats (in Sweden) are examined through a qualitative text analysis of message content and communication style through their campaign videos. The emergence of recent far-left political party Más País (More Country), which derived from the local far-left party Más Madrid and became a national party on 25 September 2019, obtained only 3 seats in the November 2019 elections and therefore has not been considered for the analysis in this chapter. The only remarkable comment is that its leader, Íñigo Errejón, was since its foundation the second leader (after Pablo Iglesias) of Podemos / Unidas Podemos (UP) and left it 79 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN because Errejón had a more ‘moderate and transversal’ view of Podemos, while Iglesias wanted a ‘more radical political party’ (El País, 28 September 2016). The empirical section of the chapter is divided into three parts: First follows an overview of the general electoral campaign contexts in Spain and Sweden. Then the campaign communication styles of the populist parties in the two countries are examined. Finally, the visual video communication contents of populist campaigning are reviewed. Electoral campaign contexts in Spain and Sweden In Spain General elections in Spain, in which the President and the 350 members of the Congress are elected, normally take place every four years, while regional elections are scheduled in different dates depending on the region or ‘autonomous community’ in which they need to take place. However, other ways exist to change the electoral schedule. One of them is the “motion of censorship”, a political procedure included in the 1978 Spanish Constitution (article 113) that allows the Congress to withdraw its trust in the President and therefore force him to resign. In Spain there had been three previous attempts to carry out this procedure: in 1980 against Adolfo Suárez, in 1987 against Felipe González, and in 2017 against Mariano Rajoy. The three first attempts did not succeed – which means that they were not backed up by the minimum number (35, equivalent to 10% of the seats) of congress members that the Law requires. However in 2018 Rajoy was not able to fight the second “motion of censorship” presented by the then socialist leader Pedro Sánchez on 1 June after the sentence of the “Gürtel case”, one of the biggest political corruption scandals in Spain, found the Popular Party members guilty and sentenced 29 of the 37 accused to a total of 351 years of prison (El País, 25 May 2018). The ‘temporary’ government of Pedro Sánchez ruled for eight months and then decided to call for elections on 28 April 2019. The results favored them with 123 of the 350 seats, but in the following months Sánchez did not succeed in his attempt to form a coalition with other political parties. Therefore, he again had to call for general elections, which took place on 10 November 2019. These latter results would change significantly the political scenario in Spain, as we explain below. The Spanish election schedule is of relevance here, as the presence of populist parties became notably stronger from the 28 April elections and thereon. Particularly significant is the raise of right-wing populist party VOX, which entered the congress with 24 seats in April, enter the parliament of Andalusia THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 80 with 12 seats in the December 2018 regional elections, and went up to 52 seats after the November elections. On the other hand, Ciudadanos dropped down from the 57 seats obtained in the April elections to 10 seats after the November elections, something that forced the resign and the retirement from the political life of his leader and founder, Albert Rivera. Table 1 in the next page illustrates the results of the main Spanish political parties – PSOE, PP, Ciudadanos, Podemos / Unidas Podemos (UP), and VOX) after April / November General Elections that took place in 2019. 81 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 82 TABLE 1. NATIONAL ELECTION RESULTS AND VOTER TURNOUT IN SPAIN 2015-2019 (in percentage) SOURCE: elaborated by authors , with information from CIS, Center for Sociological Research, by its initials in Spanish 83 In Sweden The party system in Sweden has historically been described as one of the most stable in the word, with the same five political parties represented in the Parliament between 1918 and 1988, and with The Social Democrats in an almost hegemonic position, for example ruling the country in 42 years from 1934 to 1976. Political conflicts have regularly been based on left-right wing ideological positions, but it is important to note that party politics in general and over time has been more characterized by policy compromises and agreements on single issues than by conflicting ideological struggles (Hadenius, 1996). However, relatively new political parties such as the Green Party, The Christian Democrats and The Sweden Democrats have emerged on the national political scene from 1988, and the success of new parties on the regional and local level is even more evident. The party system has become more fragmented than ever and power relations between the parties have changed (Nord et al., 2018). Table 2 shows election results and voter turnout in recent National Elections and the remarkable success of The Sweden Democrats. The main reason behind party fragmentation is of course changing political preferences within the electorate. The most significant development with regard to voter behavior is not a single drift towards left or right, but the overall increasing volatility that makes politics more unpredictable. Predispositions and party alignments seem to be of less importance, and voting decisions are taken later during the campaign. In 2018, a record number of 41 percent of the electorate voted for another party than they did four years before. Citizens that represent about one-third of the electorate make their decision during the initial campaign period, and one-fifth do it during the very last week of the campaign. LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN TABLE 2. NATIONAL ELECTION RESULTS AND VOTER TURNOUT IN SWEDEN 2002-2018 (in percentage) SOURCE: Valmyndigheten, www.val.se (Oscarsson & Holmberg, 2016). These developments have all been favorable for an anti-establishment party such as The Sweden Democrats. However, the positive trend in elections results has not led to political influence. On the contrary all other parties have declared they are not willing to rule or even negotiate with the Sweden Democrats. Given their increased voter support, this has made government formation a very complicated process. After the 2018 Nation Elections, it took 134 days to form a new left-center government. As a result, a new conservative oppositions bloc now appears where The Sweden Democrats seem to be accepted as a potential political partner by The Moderates and The Christian Democrats. The Swedish media system has been described as somewhat of an archetype of a democrat corporatist model with a highly-developed newspaper market, a tradition of political parallelism, a high degree of journalistic professionalism and with considerable state intervention in the media system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). At the same time, a transformation process is evident, where newspaper markets face increased competition from global actors and the traditional links between political parties and media have weakened significantly. During the last decades, the Swedish media landscape has become highly digitalized and undergone considerable changes as commercial radio and TV channels, free tabloid newspapers and the Internet and social media have been introduced (Weibull et al., 2018). The digital media landscape can be described as more competitive and crowded; the supply of diverse media channels has increased significantly, media choices are more individual and usage patterns become more fragmented. Former mass media such as printed newspapers and broadcast radio and television still attract a huge audience, but are gradually loosing terrain, especially in younger generations of the population, while the use of social media platforms have increased significantly year by year (Mediebarometern, 2019). The campaigns of the populist parties In Spain The Spanish populist parties’ campaigns during the national election campaigns of 2019 are to characterized by the same distinctive features, such as heavy reliance on direct communication channels (political television ads and postal information to voters), less developed news media strategies and relatively high activity on social media platforms. THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 84 85 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN The campaigns for the Spanish elections on 28 April 2019 were well planned, because the timetable gave all political parties enough time to prepare their strategy, videos and messages. The opposite thing happened in the hastily scheduled 10 November elections, where it seemed that politicians had to ‘rush’ in order to compete in these elections that had to be called as a consequence of the lack of a stable government in Spain. The campaign periods can be seen Table 3: The reason why, in the case of Spain, two national elections took place within a year, is that socialist President Pedro Sánchez was not able to establish a coalition with the other political parties that would lead to a stable government. The ‘natural’ political alliances with the other left-wing political party, Unidas Podemos, was unsuccessful as its leader, Pablo Iglesias, established as a mandatory requirement for a coalition to hold the Ministries of Economy, Health, Science and Education, Housing, and one Vice Presidency. Sánchez responded that if he would agree to Iglesias’ demand, “he wouldn’t be able to sleep peacefully at nights” (El Plural, 19 September 2019). It is important to note, however, that after the disastrous results of the 10 November 2019 for Ciudadanos, which left them with only 10 seats from the 57 they had obtained in the 28 April 2019 elections, its main leader Albert Rivera resigned and even retired from the political life (El País, 11 Nov. 2019), thus provoking the re-structuring of the newly ‘orphan’ party. VOX, on the other hand, raised from 24 to 53 seats after the 10 November elections, and it became the third political party in Spain. Therefore, its political campaign strategies will also be considered in this chapter. In Sweden The right-wing populist Sweden Democrats’ campaign communications during the national election campaigns 2010, 2014 and 2018 were to some extent characterized TABLE 3. IMPORTANT DATES ON THE APRIL / NOVEMBER 2019 GENERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGNS IN SPAIN SOURCE: elaborated by authors by the same distinctive features, such as heavy reliance on direct communication channels (political television ads, postal information to voters), less developed news media strategies and relatively high activity on social media platforms. As a politically very controversial party from the beginning, The Sweden Democrats preferred direct but non-personal contacts with voters and avoided for example canvassing and campaign activities in public spaces. But year after year their campaign profile has transformed into more mainstream areas and is today very similar to other parties and characterized by professional political communications. The main reason for this is that the party campaign budget has been growing continuously due to party financing rules (based on parliament strength since previous elections). In the recent election campaign of 2018, The Sweden Democrats spent 50 Million SEK (approx. 5 M€), about the same as the Moderate Party, but less than The Social Democrats and (the very rich) Center Party. This has allowed The Sweden Democrats to organize the campaign more differently on multiple platforms and facilitated the use of a broader arsenal of campaign methods and strategic tools. They have been particularly skilled in using social media platforms, where debates are often more polarized and emotional. Despite their limited political influence, The Sweden Democrats is the party most often mentioned – both in positive and negative terms – in social media. The party has also gained a lot of publicity for free because of its controversial character. Party meetings disturbed and party posters destroyed by political opponents automatically become big news. In the final days of the 2018 election campaign, a statement on immigrants by party leader Jimmie Åkesson in a party leaders’ debate in public service TV was directly criticized ‘live’ by the media company, and this ‘affair’ totally dominated the scene during the last hours of the campaign. The usual political conflict between the left and the right was replaced by the conflict between the populist party and the ‘establishment’ of public service television. Finally, it should be added that The Sweden Democrats now targets more diversified segments of the electorate. Initially, campaign features focused on attracting core groups of voters of dissatisfied, nationalistic and radical right-wing people. In order to grow politically, the party has systematically developed their political communications to new groups of voters. In a first step, The Sweden Democrats singled out ‘conservative workers’ and successfully challenged Social Democrats in this segment. In a second step, female voters have been targeted with an increased political issue focus on health care, care of elderly people and crime against women. THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 86 Populist visual campaign communications In Spain Left-wing populist party Podemos already had demonstrated their ‘strength’ in the European elections of 2015: without any members of Parliament, they could not yet build on public funding for campaigning. However, despite this Podemos managed to take five of their members to the EP and were able to prepare a very ‘emotional’ campaign for the 28 April elections, in which their motto was “It is you the one who writes history” in a long video (of nearly three minutes) in which Pablo Iglesias speaks offscreen criticizing the “political and economical elites, who created the ‘disaster’ [in clear reference to the financial crisis and unemployment] and now wanted to lead the way out through one thing only: austerity”. He also referred to “ (…our women, who point out the way to a free and fulfilling life” (minute 1:45). After this campaign, Podemos obtained 42 seats in the April elections, a number that went down to 35 in the November elections. 87 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN FIGURE 1. FOUR IMAGES FROM THE VIDEO CAMPAIGN OF PABLO IGLESIAS, LEADER OF UNIDAS PODEMOS “ESTA VEZ LA HISTORIA LA ESCRIBES TÚ” (‘THIS TIME YOU WILL WRITE HISTORY’) On the other hand, far-right political party VOX did not have any political representation until the regional elections of December 2018 in Andalusia, when they obtained 12 of 109 seats. For the 28 April national elections they prepared a video campaign in which Santiago Abascal also stars as the only one who speaks (off-screen) and walks in a countryside, in some moments that have been copied from the film ‘Gladiator’ – like Abascal passing his hand in a wheat field – and others in which he is directly receiving the rain in his clothes and face while it rains heavily. Their motto was “Let’s make Spain great again” – similar to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” – and they obtained 24 seats, which went up to 52 after the 10 November elections. THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 88 89 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN FIGURE 2. FIVE IMAGES FROM THE VIDEO CAMPAIGN OF SANTIAGO ABASCAL, LEADER OF VOX “HACER ESPAÑA GRANDE OTRA VEZ” (‘TO MAKE SPAIN GREAT AGAIN’) THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 90 The political campaign of Ciudadanos of April 2019 was the only one that showed faces of young female adults instead of that (or the voice) of their political leader until 11 November 2019, Albert Rivera. With enthusiasm and familiarity, they used the motto: “¡Vamos!” (Let’s go!) in order to urge people to vote on 28 April. The result was good, as they obtained 57 seats, but dropped dramatically to 10 seats in the 10 November elections. However, and as we have pointed out, after this result its leader Albert Rivera resigned, retired from political life, and the party’s executive committee said that the party would be restructured. By March 2021 Ciudadanos continues with its re-structuring process facing several internal crises, to an extent that it is uncertain to guarantee its continuity as a political party. 91 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN FIGURE 3. FOUR IMAGES FROM THE VIDEO CAMPAIGN OF ALBERT RIVERA, FORMER LEADER OF CIUDADANOS -- “¡VAMOS! “(‘LET’S GO!’) THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 92 There is also the need to mention the two other video campaigns, the ones of the PSOE, the socialist party, and the PP, the Popular Party – the only political parties in Spain until the irruption of Ciudadanos, in July 2006, and Podemos, in October 2014. In the case of the socialist campaign (PSOE), their motto was “Make it happen”. They presented a black/white video campaign portraying ordinary people in their everyday activities while they get ready to go to vote, with the voice (off screen) of a woman inviting people to do so. The video ended with 93 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN FIGURE. 4 THREE IMAGES FROM THE VIDEO CAMPAIGN OF PEDRO SÁNCHEZ, LEADER OF PSOE -- HAZ QUE PASE (‘MAKE IT HAPPEN’) the face and the voice of Pedro Sánchez saying “On April 28, make it happen”. They got 123 seats in the April elections and a little less, 120, in the November elections. THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 94 95 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN The Popular Party, founded 1976, was for a long time the only conservative party in Spain. For this campaign, it portrayed from beginning to end its leader, Pablo Casado, as the undisputed star of the campaign. In an attempt to make citizens forget about the 2018 sentence for corruption to its party members, the motto of their campaign was: “Everything starts today”. They obtained 66 seats in the 28 April elections and went up to 88 seats in the 10 November elections. THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 96 FIGURE. 5 SIX IMAGES FROM THE VIDEO CAMPAING OF PABLO CASADO, LEADER OF PARTIDO POPULAR, PP (POPULAR PARTY) TODO EMPIEZA HOY (‘EVERYTHING STARTS TODAY’) 97 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN In Sweden Without parliamentary seats in the National Election Campaign 2010, The Sweden Democrats operated with a modest campaign budget and limited resources for visual communications. The most discussed Sweden Democrat campaign feature in the 2010 campaign was without comparison the political advertisement they produced on YouTube. The video started with a figure of the current Swedish state budget deficit and a close up with a person counting bills and a voice saying ‘politics is always about priorities’. In the next scene, an old Swedish woman is slowly approaching a ‘welfare desk’ where public subsidies and pensions to citizens are distributed. Almost there, she is finally overturned by a large group of Muslim women in burkas, supposed to take all money initially designed from her. The final voice echoes the message in the previously mentioned party poster and says: ‘There is a stop for further pensions, and there is a stop for further immigration – it’s your choice!’ The video was strongly criticized by political opponents and the commercial TV company TV4 refused to display it. However, the video attracted a large audience on the web and was one of the most discussed campaign features in 2010. Overall, Sweden Democrats visual political communications during the 2010 campaign emphasized the danger of immigration and its challenges to traditional domestic values. Immigration was portrayed as the basic reason for a possible collapse of the Swedish welfare state, not being able to take care of old and sick Swedes any more due to rising immigration costs. The party rhetoric in posters and video consequently underlined the basic differences between the traditionally well-organized welfare system in Sweden and the chaos that would follow if the system had to support the increasing amount of people coming from other countries. Finally, the ‘true will’ of the people was stressed by regular references to peoples’ exclusive right and possible choice to change politics in the future by voting for the Sweden Democrats. THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 98 99 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN FIGURE. 6 SEVEN IMAGES FROM THE VIDEO CAMPAIGN (2010) OF SWEDEN DEMOCRATS ‘POLITICS IS ALWAYS ABOUT PRIORITIES’ (VOICE OFF SCENE) THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 100 Increasing campaign budgets allowed for a more professionalized and diversified communication in the 2014 and 2018 national election campaigns. The videos produced by the party in the 2014 and 2018 campaigns were very different from the controversial one four years earlier. The party had two videos in 2014. The first one showed the party leader Åkesson in the back seat of a car with his Ipad, talking about Sweden when passing through typical Swedish rural areas. The second video displayed three party members, including Åkesson, and his sidekicks both seemed to have immigrant background. 101 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN FIGURE. 7 FOUR IMAGESIMAGES FROM THE 2ND VIDEO CAMPAIGN (2014) OF SWEDEN DEMOCRATS, ENHANCING RACIAL DIVERSITY THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 102 In the first video, Åkesson is talking about the situation in Sweden. He explains that it is not easy all the time to be in opposition towards the establishment in term of other political parties and mainstream media: ‘To be disliked by other politicians, union leaders and journalists is tough, but has its advantages as I don’t have to be politically correct’. Åkesson continues to address general problems in Swedish society (without mentioning anything specific) and concludes that the country now needed political leaders more interested in Sweden than in their own popularity. In the second video, with the title ‘Don’t be silenced’, the two ordinary young party members supposedly with a non-Swedish background start with saying that ‘racism is terrible and caused some of the worst crimes in human history’. The video continues with statements that it is not racism to stand up for your own country, its culture and history and to fight against honour murders, begging and trafficking. The video ends with the party leader joining the other and saying: ‘Don’t let the public debate be silenced by coward politicians and opinion polices misusing this term. Dare to stand up against racism, dare to stand up for our Sweden – for real.’ Compared to 2010, party messages in 2014 and 2018 were less black-and-white and slightly more nuanced. Immigrants were not portrayed as a general problem for Sweden; instead, the problems seemed to be caused by those immigrants who did not accept Swedish values and laws and by the silence from other politicians and power circles unwilling to discuss these problems. Distance to other parties was mainly addressed by the frequent use of the term ‘for real’, indicating that the party was not that very different from other ones, but definitely much more serious in dealing with political issues, and the best alternative for those who wanted the most radical changes. The personality of the party leader was also more exposed than previously. Conclusions This chapter contributes to the on going discussion of possible explanations to the rise and success of populist parties in Europe. By the analysis of their campaigning discourse we have been able to find out that the communication strategies of populist parties of far-right tendency differ in Spain and in Sweden in two aspects: 1) While in Spain there is a tendency of reviving the sentiment of nationalism through the motto: “Let’s make Spain great again”, in Sweden the strategy 103 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN is focused on the promotion of fear towards immigrants and how they will slowly take the place of national citizens when it comes to the advantages of the welfare system that most European countries provide. However, both elements are part of the far-right populism and, as Greven (2016) points out that the populist permanent narrative is the people “as whose sole authentic voice the populist party bills itself” and, at the same time, “right-wing populism adds a second antagonism of us versus them”. 2) We were also able to find out that populist parties to a large extent rely on visual communication when campaigning – mainly through YouTube videos. In the case of far-right political parties, Spanish VOX portrayed its leader as a pure, nature-lover man who scales a mountain at the end of the video, while the scenario in the case of Sweden Democrats was a dark place in which an old Swedish woman is unable to reach the social services to which she has right as a group of Islamic women advancing rapidly do not let her reach her objective. A dramatic focus is more present in the case of the Sweden Democrats’ campaign. Thus, the comparison of populist parties’ visual communications in Spain and Sweden are related to macroeconomic factors (such as recession and unemployment), political and societal issues (such as migration and environment), the different levels of political trust, voters behaviour and media systems in each country. The growth of populist parties in both countries is closely related to the current political developments where established political parties during long time have failed to deliver what voters have desired in different policy areas. Classical political power struggles between traditional political enemies have decreased public trust in the political system and opened ‘windows of opportunity’ for new political challengers. At the same time, populist parties have benefitted from fundamental media system changes in Spain and Sweden. Traditional media with newspapers supporting traditional parties, and public service media trying to strictly balance traditional party standpoints are not as important as before. Digitalization has offered more communication channels and political communication has to considerable extent moved to social media platforms without professional news gate-keeping functions and ethical publicity considerations. Social media equalize hitherto political hierarchies and tear down previous obstacles of reaching out effectively with controversial messages to huge audiences. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube fit populist perspectives perfect. Particularly so, as these platforms use algorithms that encourage emotional and expressive posts and comments. THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES 104 105 As a last, meditative word, we can conclude that visual political communication has turned out to become a corner stone in populist parties’ propaganda in both Northern and Southern Europe. Despite the fact that in some cases the intentionality is more than evident, in others it becomes very necessary that we all pay very close attention to what we are really watching when we watch an election video from far-left and/or far-right populist political parties. Fake news do not always come in the form of ‘news’. References Chadwick, A. (2013). The hybrid media system: Politics and power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas), Spanish Center of Sociological Research: http://www.cis.es/cis/opencms/ES/index.html Davis, A. (2019). Political communication: A new introduction for crisis times. Cambridge: Polity. 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Video references: The Spanish campaign videos described in this book chapter can be seen on Youtube: Pedro Sánchez, PSOE, “Haz que pase” (‘Make it happen’): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNnXKQUZC4s Pablo Casado, PP, “Hoy empieza todo” (‘Everything begins today’): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXA6PA3R0Kg Albert Rivera, Ciudadanos, “Vamos!” (‘Let’s go!’): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdeBi0-IMyI Santiago Abascal, VOX, “Un nuevo comienzo” (‘A New Beginning’): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaSIX4-RPAI Pablo Iglesias, Unidas Podemos, “La historia la escribes tú” (’You write history’): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxrcXVOLwlQ The Swedish campaign videos described in this book chapter can be seen on Youtube: • The race to the welfare desk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkRRdth8AHc • The problem with racism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uph8Mrc28dk 107 LEFT AND RIGHT POPULIST PARTIES IN SPAIN AND SWEDEN