The use of populist narratives in the tweets of “challenger” presidential candidates in France (2017) and the United States (2016)

Does Twitter facilitate the diffusion of populist discourse and is there a convergence of its content between presidential candidates who challenge the political establishment? The article analyzes these questions based on the tweets of major political figures (Le Pen, Macron, Mélenchon, Sanders and Trump) during the presidential election campaign in France (2017) and the United States (2016). The corpus of tweets includes an entire year in each country. The method combines various automated textual analyses and a qualitative analysis based on examples. Results show that in France as in the United States, populist discourse is particularly adopted by “outsider” candidates, whether they are from the right or the left, but not in the same way. There are striking similarities between Le Pen and Trump on the one hand, Mélenchon, and Sanders on the other, while Macron’s tweets show little resemblance to the populist style. Beyond this difference, we also see that the left-wing candidates use a form of watered-down populism that attacks political elites much less than Le Pen’s and Trump’s discourse.