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146 | Norbert Merkovity and Büsra Özyüksel in their speeches and programmes. Some, such as Podemos, profess to be ideologically empty, like an empty shell waiting to be filled with whatever the peoples demands are. Except for populist appeals (direct or indirect appeals to the people - empty populism - and further possible attributes like the exclusion of various outgroups or anti-elitism), no policy or political programme can be identified as shared by a wide range of populist political parties in Europe. The populist label encompasses many elements, including nationalism, regionalism, Euroscepticism, opposition to immigration, anti-multiculturalism, anticorruption, and calls for greater citizen participation and more direct forms of democracy (Stanyer et al. 2017, 357). Here the role of media should be mentioned in terms of a vehicle transmitting political messages to citizens. European media networks have undergone significant changes over the past decades, leading to expanded opportunity structures for disseminating populist themes. The loss of traditional party press, increased media ownership concentration, reliance on advertising, and a stronger emphasis on news values have all contributed to the rise of populist rhetoric (Esser et al. 2017). With the emergence of political communications fourth period, and with the rise of social media (network logic, self-mediatisation), a new kind of populism appeared: media populism (Mazzoleni 2003). The term ‘media populism refers to three separate viewpoints: populism by the media, populism via the media, and populist citizen journalism (Esser et al. 2017, 367). The first point of view is the populism of the media, which refers to media companies actively engaged in their form of populism through the use of a rhetorical style in order to inject themselves, as supposed public representatives, into the political process. Populism fuelled by the media exists in several European states. The second viewpoint on media populism is populism through the media. According to Gianpietro Mazzoleni, the media’s major problem is not the spread of media-specific populism, but rather the reinforcement of politicians’ populist rhetoric. Populist parties and movements depend on media support. Media reports on these actors’ slogans, arguments, and ideological views increase their public exposure and perceived validity. Mazzoleni argues that political malaise is a common essential condition for the growth of antipolitical sentiments: “the media play a role in disseminating it, either by simply keeping it on a country’s public agenda or by spreading political mistrust and a mood of fatalistic disengagement - all of which populist politicians can easily and quickly exploit” (Mazzoleni 2008, 50). Populist citizen journalism is the third and final approach to media populism. It happens when media companies create channels for the dissemination of populist messages originating from their audiences - typically, but not only, in the form of reader comments on their websites (Esser 2017).
