East European Politics

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Aligning populist worldviews of citizens to media

preferences: peculiarities of an illiberal political
context

Mojca Pajnik, Nejc Berzelak & Ajda Šulc

To cite this article: Mojca Pajnik, Nejc Berzelak & Ajda Šulc (2023) Aligning populist worldviews
of citizens to media preferences: peculiarities of an illiberal political context, East European
Politics, 39:3, 554-573, DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2023.2180734

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EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS
2023, VOL. 39, NO. 3, 554–573
https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2023.2180734

Aligning populist worldviews of citizens to media

preferences: peculiarities of an illiberal political context
Mojca Pajnika,b, Nejc Berzelakb and Ajda Šulcc
a
Department of Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia; bThe
Peace Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia; cDepartment of Social Studies, Humanities, and Methodology, Faculty of
Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In this article we look at how people’s relations to the media shape Received 26 April 2022
their anti-establishment, people-centrist and exclusionist populist Accepted 19 January 2023
worldviews. We propose to establish the relation between the
KEYWORDS
media and populist attitudes by measuring media consumption Populist attitude; public
with citizen’s attitudes towards a democracy-related function of opinion; media preferences;
the media, and we postulate that research should consider the illiberalism; Slovenia;
peculiarities of political situations. The results of a representative political parties
public opinion survey in Slovenia confirmed a relation between
tabloid media consumption, negative media attitudes and
populist worldviews – however, with differences according to
specific dimensions of populism, reflecting characteristics of an
illiberal political landscape in the country.

Introduction
In the last decade several studies have been published on the populist attitudes of citi-
zens, focused predominantly on an analysis of their relation to political behaviour and
sociodemographic factors. These studies (Akkerman, Mudde, and Zaslove 2014; Rooduijn
2014, 2018) have confirmed the alignment of voting preferences to populist attitude for-
mation, pointing out that the more people vote for right-wing political parties, the more
their attitudes appear as populist. Recently, communicative approaches to populism have
been debated (De Vreese et al. 2018; Kefford, Moffitt, and Werner 2022), exploring how a
political actor’s populist communication develops in line with practices and conventions
that determine the way media function, while literature that would consider the media
sphere in relation to populist attitude formation is still scarce. In this article we aim to con-
tribute to the existing research on citizens’ media-related populism, beyond the common
analysis of the shaping of populist attitudes based on demographic characteristics. Devis-
ing a “media-centred” approach, we look at how citizens’ anti-establishment, people-cen-
trist and exclusionist populist worldviews are related to their media preferences and views
on the media’s democratic role in contemporary society. In so doing we aim to address

CONTACT Mojca Pajnik mojca.pajnik@mirovni-institut.si

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2023.2180734
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
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medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 555

the thesis by Mazzoleni (2008) of an “unintended complicity” of populism and media,

pointing to the interchangeability of populist communication and the attention of the
media. When interchangeable relations between the field of political communication
and the media are reflected in the context of public opinion formation, we can assume
a strong correlation of the media sphere with citizens’ populist attitudes. Further, we
assume that the “complicity” of populism and media contributes to a polarisation of
worldviews (cf. Schulz 2019) – the “harsher” the evaluation of media and the more
polarised the consumption practices, the more pronounced the populist worldviews.
We postulate that media preferences relate to populist attitudes that push for articulation
of social issues along the lines of praising the people, denouncing the elites and dividing
“us” and “them”.
While research (Akkerman, Mudde, and Zaslove 2014; Rooduijn 2014, 2018) has
confirmed that voting preferences have a strong influence on citizens’ populist attitudes,
less emphasis has been placed on assessing the correlations of media preferences with
populist attitudes. The focal point of this article is therefore to make a theoretical assump-
tion that citizens’ media practices relate significantly and specifically to the different
dimensions of populist attitude formation, and we explore how these distinctions
occur. We propose to establish the relationship between the media and populist attitudes
by measuring media consumption patterns together with citizens’ attitudes towards a
democracy-related function of the media. In so doing, we complement existing studies
that have mostly measured citizens’ trust in media institutions by exploring citizens’
views on the social responsibility role of the media towards the public. We emphasise
that populism in relation to the media should not only raise issues of citizens’ media
trust and diet but also explore more in depth the issue of media as a vital pillar of
democracy.
Our research was conducted in Slovenia, a country that has experienced instability of the
multiparty electoral system, with periods of right-wing governments led by the Slovenian
Democratic Party (SDS, Slovenska demokratska stranka) that has reproduced ethno-national
variations of populism, forming a cluster of countries in the region of Central-Eastern
Europe (CEE) that embrace securitarian and nativist attitudes towards social issues (Bruba-
ker 2017). We postulate that research on populism and media should to a greater extent
consider the peculiarities of the specific political context, as in cases when the right-wing
political parties are in power, their voters tend to form distinct populist worldviews that
are congruent with patterns of media consumption and general attitudes towards the
role of the media. Because the right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party was ruling the gov-
ernment at the time of our research, we were able to explore in real time how specifically
populist attitudes are shaped when populists are in power.
The theoretical part first outlines the dimensions that structure citizens’ populist atti-
tudes, secondly, theorises the media-centred approach in populist attitudes analysis,
and thirdly, addresses populist politics in the context of democracy backlash in Slovenia.
The results of a representative (n = 1102) public opinion survey in Slovenia (conducted in
the period November 2020 – January 2021) predominantly confirmed a relationship
between tabloid media consumption and populist worldviews, and it also confirmed a
relationship between negative attitudes towards the media’s democratic roles and popu-
list attitudes, but with some differences with respect to the specific dimensions of popu-
lism and with regard to different media outlets.
556 M. PAJNIK ET AL.

Three dimensions shaping citizens’ populist worldview: antagonistic

perception of social issues
Populist attitudes have been predominantly perceived by scholars as a multidimen-
sional concept that comprises anti-elitist attitudes and orientations regarding the
role of the people. Conceptually, our consideration of populism and populist attitudes
draws on Mudde’s (2004, 543) definition of populism as an ideology that stresses the
antagonisms between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite” and postulates that
politics “should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the
people” (cf. Canovan 2002; Taggart 2004; Rooduijn and Pauwels 2011). The two popu-
list antagonisms understand people as “an overwhelming majority” of the population
and their role as “rightful political sovereigns within a given polity” (Aslanidis 2018,
1255). Mudde’s definition has been used to conceptualise main populist antagonisms
as people-centrism, anti-elitism and sovereignty (Schulz, Wirth, and Muller 2020; Cas-
tanho et al. 2020) while a more recent analysis (Wuttke, Schimph, and Schoen 2020)
has pointed out that the anti-elitism and sovereignty dimensions appear very similar
while distinguished from “people-centrism” as a dimension of populist attitudes. It
was established that anti-elitism in itself captures situations when the people are jux-
taposed with the distanced political elites, which misappropriate their “popular sover-
eignty” (Ernst et al. 2019). As the sovereignty dimension is embedded in anti-elitism, we
have not measured it as a separate concept and have focused on capturing attitudes
on anti-elitism and people-centrism.
Following the ideational approach to populism (Hawkins et al. 2018) and recognising
populism as a thin-centred ideology (Mudde 2004, 543, 2007) that latches onto thicker
ideologies such as nationalism or nativism, we have included the additional antagonism
of othering as central for right-wing populism. At the core of right-wing populism is the
nativist idea that foreign, “non-native elements […] are fundamentally threatening”
(Mudde 2007, 19), which is often articulated as opposition towards the “dangerous
others”, constructed as ethnic minorities, migrants and refugees (Brubaker 2017;
Mudde 2004, 2007). Including othering as a constitutive dimension of populism is in
line with recent conceptualisations (Daenekindt, de Koster, and van der Waal 2017;
Suiter et al. 2018), which acknowledge that the antagonism between “the people”
and the dangerous other represents a vital dimension that should be considered in
populism research. As stressed by Taggart (2000, 95), people-centrism and anti-elitism
shape the “populist heartland” constructing foreigners as a threat to the people.
Another argument for a three-dimensional conceptualisation is that we have conducted
our study in Slovenia, in a CEE region where scholars (Brubaker 2017) have found that
the populist radical right is strongly nationalist, and that CEE right-wing populists visibly
adhere to a nationalist notion of “the people”, stressing security issues as a visible value
orientation.
Following recent research (Wuttke, Schimph, and Schoen 2020, 15), we consider
that what makes populist attitudes relevant as a concept is that rather than repre-
senting the sum of its parts at the mass level, its distinctive position develops at
the intersection of the three concept components. Therefore, we understand populist
attitudes as “an attitudinal syndrome that is more than the sum of its sub-dimen-
sions” (Wuttke, Schimph, and Schoen 2020, 15).
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 557

A media-centred approach in populist attitude analysis

Recently, research has linked the media-related items in populist attitudes analysis to
media consumption, pointing to higher consumption of tabloid media rather than
quality media for citizens with stronger populist attitudes (Hameleers, Bos, and de
Vreese 2017; Schulz, Wirth, and Muller 2020; De Coninck et al. 2019). In their book on
the media and neo-populism, Mazzoleni, Stewart, and Horsfield (2003) were among the
first to theorise quality media in their stronger relationship with the establishment and
the social and political status quo, whereas tabloid newspapers are more dependent
on large audiences: therefore, the authors argued, tabloid media devote more attention
to addressing the attitudes and opinions of citizens than do quality media outlets. As
shown by Hallin and Mancini (2004), tabloid media are ideologically related to populism;
tabloids and populist politics have in common a comparable “thin” ideology that fore-
fronts people-centrism and anti-elitism, and they are both inclined to produce an exclu-
sionary portrayal of minority groups, pointing to their alleged incompatibility with the
majority population. The style of quality media reporting is aligned with standards of
objectivity and neutrality whereas tabloid reporting is viewed as supporting people-cen-
trality and expressing distrust in minorities, which makes tabloids more appealing to citi-
zens with populist worldviews (Mazzoleni 2003, 8–9, 15). This was also confirmed by
Wettstein et al. (2018, 14), who found that tabloid media have a significantly more
people-centrist content than quality and weekly media. They noted a strong inclination
of tabloid media toward presenting themselves as “the voice of the people”, advocating
for “the people” and negatively presenting “the elites”.
A study by Hameleers, Bos, and de Vreese (2017, 158) in the Dutch context found that
citizens with populist attitudes develop preferences for tabloid media and commercial TV
over quality media, and consumers of tabloid newspapers have stronger populist atti-
tudes than those who read quality newspapers. These findings are aligned with media
and communication theories that analyse the tabloids as media that actively push for
populist reporting by opposing the viewer and the ordinary, the common and hard-
working citizen (Hallin and Mancini 2004). Research (Fawzi 2019; Schulz, Wirth, and
Muller 2020) conducted in Germany also confirmed a natural alliance between populism
and tabloid media. Citizens with people-centrist and anti-elitist attitudes exhibit a higher
trust in these media, as shown by this research.
Based on these observations, we hypothesise that citizens who show stronger populist
attitudes are associated with distinct media preferences, and we aim at analysing in more
detail the shaping of these relations, and how contextually contingent they are, i.e. how
they are influenced by a specific political landscape.
Recently, the work of Fawzi (2019) has assumed that populist attitudes are incompati-
ble with positive views of the media’s social role in democratic societies. As found by
Fawzi (ibid.), the media as an “enemy of the people” is a view that is more pronounced
for people with stronger populist worldviews. Similarly, Mitchel et al. (2018) confirm
that attitudes towards the media are visibly more divided by populist and non-populist
worldviews than by a specific political position. Those who express populist views are
less likely to believe that the media is performing a relevant democratic role covering
socially important topics. In line with these findings, our media-centred approach to
measuring populist attitudes, grounded in media theory, aims to capture media
558 M. PAJNIK ET AL.

consumption whereby we detect the amounts of exposure to different types of media,

public and commercial/tabloid. Most importantly, proposing a “thicker” conceptualisation
of the media sphere, we include an assessment of citizens’ attitudes towards the demo-
cratic role of the media, i.e. we analyse attitudes towards the media, measuring citizens’
views on the social responsibility role of the media as enhancing democracy. According
to normative theories of the media (Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm 1963; Christians
et al. 2009) socially responsible media operate in the function of enhancing democracy,
monitoring those in power, but for the most part working in the public interest and citi-
zens’ well-being. As these normative social functions that assert that the media have an
obligation to perform functions such as opening debate on public issues, informing the
public and addressing citizens’ interests (Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm 1963, 74) have
been under attack by right-wing populist politicians, we postulate that they are a rel-
evant component to be considered in researching populist attitudes in contemporary
populist zeitgeist. Therefore, we propose to go beyond researching citizens’ media
diet, complementing the analysis of citizens’ populist attitudes by unravelling citizens’
views on the normative role of the media in democratic societies. We measure this
using two dimensions: attitudes on media bias and attitudes on their subordination
to the elites.
Research has highlighted the rise of distrust in media and so-called perceived media
bias (Edelman 2017), which was explored by Barnidge et al. (2020) as a viewer’s percep-
tion of media being biased against their worldviews, regardless of whether bias is present
in the media content. As Lee (2005) reports, this perceived bias is related to an individual’s
political orientation, showing that strong conservatives are more inclined towards the
perception of media bias than liberals, and the bias is positively related to the intensity
of a citizen’s partisanship. Attitudes towards the media are not only related to political
stances of individuals, but might also influence their political behaviours. Barnidge
et al. (2020) found that in countries with high or medium press freedom, the more respon-
dents perceived media as biased, the higher the chances of their active political partici-
pation in campaigns, protests, or persuading others to vote in a specific way. This
supports the corrective action theory, predicting that if an individual believes media is
biased, it encourages them to correct the perceived biased influence on others
through their own political participation (Barnidge and Rojas 2014).
A second dimension of attitudes towards the media that we consider is related to what
Fawzi and Krämer (2021, 3295) understand as antimedia populism, regarded as “an indi-
vidual’s set of anti-elitist ideas about the media’s role in society”. It is based on the idea of
a division between the people and the elite, believing that journalists are part of the latter,
not representing the will or interests of the people. This is strongly connected to general
political populist attitudes as they are based on the same idea of the division described
above, especially to political anti-elitism (Fawzi and Krämer 2021). This research is
aligned with the indexing hypothesis, according to which news content generally
follows the parameters of the elite debate (Bennett 1990).
While media consumption is a frequently used item in public opinion research, and
has been applied in Eurobarometer and European Social Survey (Eurobarometer
2016a, 2016b; European Social Survey 2018) as well as in public opinion research at
the national level across European countries, attitudes towards the media have rarely
been researched, with the notable recent exception of Fawzi (2019). Combining and
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 559

theorising the outlined dimensions as an approach to address the democratic media

sphere in populist attitude formation has not been suggested to date (see Supplemen-
tary Information file).

Populist politics and “war with the media” in Slovenia – the context of
illiberalism
A specific feature of our analysis is the positioning of the study of “populism-media” in
parallel with the specific political context of Slovenia, a country that at the time of our
analysis experienced an “illiberal turn” (Krekó and Enyedi 2018), cross-cutting the
COVID-19-related crisis with rising authoritarian politics (Pajnik 2019). In our analysis on
the interplay between populist attitudes and the media, we consider that the defined pol-
itical context might significantly influence the formation of populist attitudes. Namely,
research that has looked into populist political communication and the media (Hallin
2019) has found that right-wing populist actors increasingly develop a dismissive attitude
towards the media, accusing them of spreading lies, conspiracies, fake news, being part of
the elite, not working in people’s interest etc., trends that have intensified in Slovenia in
the period 2020–2022.
After the establishment of a multiparty electoral system in 1992, Slovenia was ruled by
liberal-centrist governments that defined the political field until 2004, when the consecu-
tive governments led by Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (LDS, Liberalna demokratska
stranka) were disrupted by the first right-wing government (2004–2008) led by SDS
and Janez Janša. If up to the mid-2000s most of the political cleavages developed
along the liberal-conservative poles of the political spectrum, the period since Janša’s
government has witnessed severe destabilisation of the party system, polarisation and
personification of politics (Fink-Hafner 2019). Right-wing populism, which first came
from the Slovenian National Party (SNS, Slovenska nacionalna stranka) in the early
1990s, has further developed its forms of “ethno-national populism” (Brubaker 2017)
through SDS, advocating the protection and purification of the Slovenian nation from
Yugoslavs, migrants, communists, liberal media, etc. (Pajnik 2019). Since 2008 the right-
wing SDS has constituted the governmental coalition twice, in the periods 2012–2013
and 2020–2022, with four governments in between and in 2022 coming from the
liberal-centrist pole of the political field.
After forming his third ruling coalition in March 2020, Janša published an essay titled
“War with the media”,1 which was followed by attempts to change legislation on the
media, the Public Radio-Television Act and the law on STA (Slovenian Press Agency).
These efforts were aimed at suppressing the autonomy of the media and gutting them
financially (Splichal 2020a, 19–20; Splichal 2020b). In parallel, Janša’s government has
been founding and financially rewarding its own media, which has been operating
under the “illiberal laboratory” (Krekó and Enyedi 2018) with the assistance of regional oli-
garch owners. While in power, Janša published insulting tweets, denouncing the media
for “spreading lies”, “being part of the conspiracy”, “producing fake news”, and being “irre-
sponsible virus spreaders” during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has accused the public
broadcaster of lying and misleading the public. Previously convicted of corruption,
Janša (in February 2022) received a suspended sentence for defaming two female journal-
ists, calling them “washed-up prostitutes” in a 2016 tweet.
560 M. PAJNIK ET AL.

We can expect that the political constellations pointing to an illiberal turn and to
what Enyedi (2020) referred to as “right-wing authoritarian innovations” will affect
some of the results of our study in a particular way. The fact that the most visible
right-wing populist party in Slovenia was the ruling party in the coalition during our
research might shift some of the research expectations when populist attitudes are
excessively formed in relation to the attitudes towards the ruling party and the govern-
ment. Recent research (Todosijević, Pavlović, and Komar 2021) found that where popu-
lists are in power, voters of populist parties exhibit a lower anti-elite orientation than
voters of the opposition parties. This is to say that people with populist worldviews
are found to be pro-elite in such circumstances, and anti-elitism as a populist antagon-
ism in such contexts expresses not only general populist attitudes but also specific atti-
tudes towards the ruling party.
In the media context, the situation in Slovenia is a recent example of how right-wing
populist politicians put pressure on the media and denounce and delegitimise their oper-
ation, which might also shape attitudes rather specifically. Therefore, we argue that pol-
itical developments need to be considered more in researching the formation of populist
attitudes in relation to the media. While we are not analysing directly the role of Janša’s
populist political communication on the development of public attitudes towards the
media, we nevertheless find it relevant to include populist denunciation of the media cir-
cumstantially, as an important contextual factor influencing the formation of populist
attitudes.

Research questions: contextualising the “political-media” populism

parallel
In sum, our research model (Figure 1) seeks to understand populist attitudes of citizens in
relation to the media sphere, observed through media consumption and attitudes toward
the media. To unravel the “unintended complicity of populism and media” (Mazzoleni
2008), we have analysed the media sphere beyond consumption, by taking into consider-
ation the normative theories of the media that foreground the role of the media as an
actor enhancing democracy. As we postulated that when right-wing populist parties
are part of the government, populist attitudes formation might be different compared

Figure 1. Research model.

 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 561

to a situation when they are in the opposition, our research design has also considered
the specific political constellations in a country with regard to the placement of right-
wing populist political parties in the governing structures.
In the context of our research design, to analyse the impact of media consumption, we
ask RQ1: How do populist attitudes differ among people based on different media con-
sumption practices? We hypothesise (H1) that consumption of tabloid media is positively
related to stronger populist attitudes, while the consumption of quality media shows
negative or no correlation.
To address the normative role of the media for democracy we devise RQ2: How are atti-
tudes towards the media, i.e. understanding the media as an actor vital for the functioning
of democracy, related to people’s populist attitudes? We assume that people who evalu-
ate the media’s performance more negatively and consider media to have a less positive
role in society exhibit higher degrees of people-centrist, anti-elitist and othering attitudes
compared to people who view the media’s role more positively. We expect that the
media’s social responsibility role emphasising the consideration of a large range of
views as enhancement of democracy counters the assumption of populism, which
relies on a homogeneous people – a negative evaluation of the role of the media
should therefore be related to stronger populist worldviews (Fawzi 2019). Therefore,
our second hypothesis (H2) is: The more negative the respondents’ attitudes towards
the media, the higher their populist attitudes. We expect that citizens with stronger popu-
list worldviews might not believe that they are represented by media, treating them as
part of the elite, not working for the people’s interests. Citizens with stronger populist
worldviews might hold the view that the media distort the true will of the people; they
might perceive media as spreaders of lies and not as a reliable actor. Recent research
by Schulz, Wirth, and Muller (2020, 157–158) on populist citizens’ negative media percep-
tions confirmed that citizens who exhibit anti-elitist attitudes evaluate similarly negatively
the media sphere.
Based on the assumption that anti-elitism as a populist attitude is highly dependent on
the peculiarities of the national political context, we ask RQ3: How is citizens’ political
orientation related to their populist anti-elitism attitudes? Based on the fact that the
ruling party in Slovenia at the time when the survey was conducted was right-wing, we
assume the following (H3): Respondents politically oriented more to the right display
lower scores on anti-elitism attitudes.

Data collection and sample

The survey was conducted on a representative sample (n = 1102) of the population of Slo-
venian residents over 18 years old. A mixed-mode self-administered web and postal mail
survey approach was used to collect data. Data collection took place between 10th
November 2020 and 31st of January 2021. Sampling was based on the Slovenian
Central Population Register as the initial sample frame. The selection process was sys-
tematic random sampling, with each person in the population equally likely to be
selected. For the systematic selection, prior stratification was conducted according to
12 statistical regions, 6 types of settlements, and random starting point. The questionnaire
was completed by 1102 respondents (44%). Data presented below are weighted based on
gender, age, region, and settlement type.
562 M. PAJNIK ET AL.

There were a few more men (51%) among the respondents than women (49%). Distri-
bution of their age groups was as follows: 30 years and younger (16%), 31–45 years (26%),
46–60 years (26%) and older than 60 years (32%). On average, respondents answered that
their schooling lasted 13.3 years, with 11% of them having finished or dropped out of
primary school, 17% having finished vocational education, 32% having secondary
school education, and 39% having completed higher education.
Regarding their political orientation, respondents answered on a scale from 0 to 10,
where 0 means “left” and 10 means “right”. On average, they defined their political orien-
tation as 4.88, meaning slightly more to the left than right, although many were unde-
clared – 22% of them stated they “don’t know” – and 24% positioned themselves in
the middle, answering with 5 (Figure 2).
When asked if they had voted in the last parliamentary elections in June 2018, 72% of
respondents confirmed that they had. Of those, 7% voted for the left political party, 49%
for one of the centre-left parties, 7% for one of the centre-right parties, and 22% for one of
the right parties. 16% of respondents did not answer this question.

Model and measures

We define media consumption and attitudes towards the media, together with electoral
preferences, political orientation and socio-demographic characteristics, as explanatory
variables, and explore them according to the three dimensions of populism (Figure 2).
While we do not strive to establish causal relationships, we set populist attitudes as
outcome variables to study their relations with media consumption and attitudes, con-
trolled by selected socio-demographic characteristics and political preferences.
To answer the research questions, we conducted three regression analyses, one for
each dimension of populism, which were included in each corresponding model as an
outcome variable, and with media consumption and media attitudes as explanatory vari-
ables. We aimed to identify differences according to specific elements of populism and
media behaviours, and not causal influences, since we understand that correlations
between two variables identified in regression models might be reciprocal. We included
the same control variables in all three models, controlling demographic and political
characteristics of respondents.

Figure 2. Political orientation.

 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 563

Populist attitudes
Three dimensions of populist attitudes were operationalised separately as latent variables,
each measured by several items on a five-point agreement scale (see Supplementary
Information file for the list of items). Exploratory factor analysis was used to check the con-
sistency of latent structures with theoretical expectations. Scores for each dimension were
derived by averaging the answer values of the corresponding items, ranging from 1 to 5. A
higher score represents a higher level of a particular type of populism.
To verify anti-elitism and people-centrism as populist attitudes empirically, we con-
sulted a typology developed by Schulz, Wirth, and Muller (2020), and we use their four
sub-dimensions to measure anti-elitism and slightly adapted four sub-dimensions to
measure people-centrism or people “homogeneity” (Schulz, Wirth, and Muller 2020;
Wuttke, Schimph, and Schoen 2020). We measured the antagonism othering in line
with recent research that has used statements on the political, economic and cultural
dimension of migrant (dis)integration (European Social Survey 2018; Hameleers, Bos,
and de Vreese 2017; Fawzi 2019) as indicative of exclusionary populist perceptions.
For anti-elitism the internal consistency across the four items, measured by Cronbach’s
alpha, was good (α = 0.80). The mean anti-elitism score was relatively high, reaching 4.1
(SE = 0.02) out of 5. This might be related to the political situation during the COVID-19
pandemic, which affected trust in political elites.
Four people-centrism items yielded good internal consistency as well (α = 0.82). The
average score on this dimension was 2.9 (SE = 0.03). Respondents somehow agree that
ordinary people all pull together (M = 3.16) and are of good and honest character (M =
3.16), but they agree less than ordinary people in Slovenia have the same values (M =
2.75) and that they think the same when it comes down to it (M = 2.58).
Finally, othering against migrants was measured using eight items on attitudes
towards migrants with high internal consistency according to Cronbach’s alpha (α =
0.93). The mean score was 3.0 (SE = 0.03). Three items with a particularly high agreement
average within othering were “Slovenia’s culture is generally harmed by immigrants” (M =
3.13), “Our borders should be closed for immigrants” (M = 3.25), and with the highest
agreement “Immigrants cost our country a lot of money that should rather be invested
in our own people” (M = 3.49). Around 53% of respondents answered that they agree
or strongly agree with this last statement (see the Supplementary Information file).

Explanatory variables
Media consumption was measured on an ordinal four-point frequency scale (“never”,
“monthly or less”, “weekly” and “daily”). We focused the analyses on the four most rel-
evant Slovenian media: commercial/tabloid PopTV/24ur.com and Slovenske novice (Slo-
venian News), quality media Delo, the public broadcaster TV Slovenia/MMC and Radio
Slovenia, and the political (right-wing) Nova24TV. While three of the four selected
media outlets have the highest consumption rates, Nova24TV was included in the
sample because it has links to the right-wing political network in terms of ownership,
from which we can expect a distinct influence on attitude formation.
Media consumption was included in models as a binary variable, indicating at least
weekly consumption. The share of such respondents was the highest for PopTV/24ur
564 M. PAJNIK ET AL.

(78% at least weekly), followed by TV Slovenia/MMC (63%), and Radio Slovenia (40%). The
consumption was lower for Slovenske novice (24%), Delo (19%) and Nova24TV (15%).
More than half of the respondents answered they never read or watch those three
media outlets (55% for Slovenske novice, 58% for Delo and 68% for Nova24TV).
Developing the item on the understanding of the role of the media in democracy, we
consulted and adapted Fawzi’s nine-item scale that was developed based on the public
debate on media criticism in Germany. Aligned with Fawzi’s conceptualisation, we use
a slightly adapted (shortened) version of a six-item scale that corresponds to recent popu-
list attacks on the media and public debate on media in Slovenia (see Supplementary
Information file). The variable Attitudes towards the media was based on six items on a
five-point agreement scale, measuring two factors (see the Supplement for the list of
items and averages). Three items measuring attitudes towards the media exhibit low
internal consistency with Cronbach’s alphas 0.59 and 0.56 for attitudes on reporting
bias and media subordination to elites, respectively. Although the low reliability may par-
tially stem from the low number of items of each factor, the findings on these concepts
should be considered with caution. The mean scores were 3.0 (SE = 0.03) for reporting bias
and 3.2 (SE = 0.03) for subordination to elites.

Control variables
Demographic and political behaviour variables were used as control variables in all three
regression models: gender, age, education, political orientation, and electoral behaviours
in the last parliamentary elections in Slovenia. For gender, we found lower people-centrism
values for women compared to men (p = 0.035), but no significant correlations with anti-
elitism (p = 0.229) or othering (p = 0.646). Age was positively related with people-centrism
(p = 0.009) and anti-elitism (p = 0.003), but not with othering (p = 0.472). All dimensions of
populism were significantly higher for people with lower education (p = 0.029 for anti-
elitism, p < 0.001 for people-centrism, and p < 0.001 for othering).
For political orientation, respondents were asked to classify the degree of their orientation
either to the “left” or to the “right”, or choose the middle answer as the “middle” (Figure 2).
Regarding correlations with populism, we found that anti-elitism was lower for those who are
oriented more to the right (p = 0.004), while othering (p < 0.001) and people-centrism (p =
0.015) were both lower for the left, compared to those who are undecided.
Respondents who voted for right-wing parties in the last parliamentary elections in
general had lower anti-elitism (p = 0.016) and higher othering (p = 0.001) than those
who did not vote for any party. The latter confirms previous findings that have shown
that voters of right-wing parties express stronger negative attitudes towards migrants
(Wirz et al. 2018). Those who voted for other than a right-wing party were somehow,
with 0.1 level of significance, higher on anti-elitism compared to non-voters (p = 0.074).

Model estimation
We used the ordinary least square multiple regression approach to estimate the three
models, one for each outcome variable. Nested regression was performed to evaluate
the specific contribution of the explanatory variables related to media consumption and
attitudes to the model. We first estimated the models containing only outcome and
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 565

control variables, then we added the explanatory variables and calculated Wald’s and Like-
lihood ratio tests to compare the models. The tests showed significant changes with sub-
stantial increase in the explained variance for all three models. Coefficients of the nested
regression models and test results are presented in the supplementary material. Additional
models containing interactions between political orientation and media attitudes and con-
sumption were also explored but did not provide substantive enhancement to the findings.
More parsimonious models without interaction terms were therefore used.
Model diagnostics did not reveal evidence for multicollinearity or other violations of
regression assumptions. While there is an expected relation between voting behaviour
and political orientation, the strength of the correlation is reduced by significant pro-
portions of politically undeclared and centre-oriented individuals (23% and 24%, respect-
ively) as well as the large proportion of non-voters (31%).

Results
Table 1 summarises the results of the regression models used to identify the relations
between three dimensions of populism and media consumption, attitudes towards
media and the selected control variables.

Media consumption
Results show that at least weekly consumption of quality media is negatively related to all
three dimensions of populism. The relation is particularly strong between othering
against migrants and weekly consumption of the public broadcaster TV Slovenia, but is

Table 1. Regression of media consumption, attitudes towards the media, and control variables on the
three dimensions of populism.
Anti-elitism People-centrism Othering
Coef. (SE) Coef. (SE) Coef. (SE)
At least weekly consumption
TV Slovenia −0.08 (0.06) −0.16 (0.08**) −0.19 (0.07**)
Radio Slovenia −0.03 (0.05) 0.05 (0.07) −0.07 (0.06)
POPTV (T) 0.18 (0.06**) 0.24 (0.06**) 0.28 (0.07**)
Nova24TV −0.38 (0.08**) 0.12 (0.09) 0.23 (0.09**)
Delo −0.13 (0.07**) −0.03 (0.07) −0.15 (0.07**)
Slovenske novice (T) 0.07 (0.05) 0.11 (0.07) 0.10 (0.07)
Biased media reporting 0.05 (0.04) −0.16 (0.05**) 0.23 (0.05**)
Media subordinated to elites 0.14 (0.04**) 0.14 (0.05**) 0.09 (0.05*)
Gender (ref. Male)
Female −0.05 (0.04) −0.12 (0.06**) −0.03 (0.06)
Age 0.005 (0.002**) 0.005 (0.002**) −0.001 (0.002)
Education level −0.02 (0.01**) −0.05 (0.01**) −0.07 (0.01**)
Political orientation (ref. undeclared)
Towards the left −0.01 (0.07) −0.22 (0.09**) −0.35 (0.09**)
Centre −0.02 (0.07) −0.07 (0.09) −0.04 (0.09)
Towards the right −0.23 (0.08**) −0.17 (0.1) 0.12 (0.10)
Voting behaviour (ref. non-voter)
Right-wing party −0.18 (0.07**) 0.06 (0.09) 0.31 (0.09**)
Other party 0.10 (0.06*) 0.06 (0.08) −0.07 (0.08)
Constant 3.49 (0.16) 2.93 (0.21) 2.24 (0.23)
R2 0.18 0.10 0.30
n 933 932 927
*p < 0.10; **p < 0.05; (T) tabloid.
566 M. PAJNIK ET AL.

also significant between othering and weekly consumption of the quality newspaper Delo
as well as between anti-elitism and Delo consumption. The relation with people-centrism,
on the other hand, is only significant for TV Slovenia. The relations are less consistent for
commercial/tabloid media. People who consume the commercial television POPTV at
least once a week have significantly higher scores on anti-elitism, people-centrism and
othering against migrants, while the relations are not significant for the tabloid newspa-
per Slovenske novice.
These results mirror previous findings indicating that people who follow quality media
are generally less aligned with populist ideas compared to citizens who consume com-
mercial media (Mazzoleni, Stewart, and Horsfield 2003). Our results, however, indicate
differences for television and print media, with TV outlets showing a more visible align-
ment with populist attitudes. This confirms recent findings of De Coninck et al. (2019),
who have emphasised that among media outlets TV has the strongest association with
populist attitudes. For our example this holds both for public and private television,
more strongly for the latter. Weaker or no alignment for print media can be explained
by the fact that print media are viewed as associated with the political establishment
or “an elite press” to a greater extent than television, which aims more strongly at
getting closer to the people. This explains why the consumption of the quality newspaper
Delo does not show significant relations to people-centrism.
The results indicate that the consumption of public broadcasting and quality press are
negatively related to the populist dimension of othering, which corresponds with pre-
vious findings that indicated lower exclusionist populist attitudes in the example of
quality media consumption compared to tabloid media consumption (Mazzoleni,
Stewart, and Horsfield 2003). In contrast, the consumption of the commercial POPTV posi-
tively relates to all dimensions of populism, most strongly to othering, showing that the
exposure to exclusionary reporting might result in people taking on antagonistic world-
views, perceiving a binary divide in society along the lines “us” and “them”. Additionally,
people who already believe in that divide might prefer to follow media that further
encourage it. Interestingly, however, we have not confirmed such an alignment for the
tabloid print media. Our findings pointed to positive relations between populist world-
views and consumption of the tabloid newspaper Slovenske novice, but they were not
significant. Similarly as for the quality daily, this can be partly explained by the potentially
lower association of the print media in general with people’s interests.
The medium Nova24TV, which is ideologically and financially linked to the SDS right-
wing populist political party in power during the time of this research, showed specific
relations to populism. The anti-elitism dimension was significantly lower for people
who consume Nova24TV at least once a week, while othering against migrants was sig-
nificantly higher. No significant effects were found for people-centrism in relation to
Nova24TV. While previous research found that when right-wing parties are in govern-
ment, their voters tend to have less of an anti-elite attitude (Todosijević, Pavlović, and
Komar 2021), our results confirm similar trends for the media sphere: consumption of
media owned by the right-wing party that was in government during the time of the
research relates negatively to anti-elitism. Also, the results confirm that consumption of
these media shows a stronger expression of othering as a dimension of populist world-
views, i.e. more hostile attitudes towards migrants, engaging a dualist positioning of
the viewer against migrants.
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 567

Attitudes towards the media

Regarding the third research question, we found several significant correlations between
media attitudes in terms of understanding the media as an important aspect of democ-
racy and populist worldviews. As expected, those who believe that media in Slovenia are
subordinated to the elites also have significantly higher scores on anti-elitism and people-
centrism, as well as marginally higher scores on othering against migrants. This confirms
that mainstream media are treated in populist imaginations as representatives of the
elites, alongside the political establishment, economic elites, etc. (Jagers and Walgrave
2007).
Believing that media are biased, on the other hand, is significantly negatively related
with people-centrism and positively with othering. Its relation to anti-elitism was not
found to be significant. Thus, perceptions that media are biased or that they are lying
to the people bring “betrayal” of the people, hence showing negative relation to
people-centrism. The positive relation to othering interestingly shows that people who
believe media are biased have stronger attitudes against migrants, which possibly
points to an understanding of bias in relation to dissatisfaction with reporting on
migration. This is similar to the recent findings of Fawzi and Mothes (2020), noting signifi-
cantly negative assessment of the media with people showing anti-outgroup attitudes,
while respondents scoring higher on homogeneity of the people had higher expectations
and a more positive evaluation of the media.

Anti-elitism contextual specificities

Based on assumptions of anti-elitism significantly depending on the political situation
regarding its correlation with political orientation, we wanted to additionally portray
its behaviour in the light of current affairs (RQ3). With a right-wing political party in
power, anti-elitism is shown (in the regression model above) to be negatively correlated
with right political self-positioning and voting for right parties. Additional bivariate cor-
relation analysis confirms this finding, with weak but significant negative Pearson corre-
lation (r = –0.239, p < 0.001) between anti-elitism and political self-positioning (where
lower values represent positions more to the left, and higher values more to the
right). To further establish this connection, average anti-elitism scores are shown in
Figure 3 for each grade of political orientation from left (0) to right (10), with an
added linear trend-line. Results confirm our findings that respondents who positioned
themselves politically more to the left have the highest anti-elitism scores, while it
decreases with those who see themselves more to the right. Nevertheless, respondents
in the political centre (grade 5) have a higher average than expected, as well as those on
the far right (grade 10).
Similarly, as shown in Figure 4, those who voted for a right-wing party in the last par-
liamentary elections in June 2018 had a significantly lower anti-elitism average (3.8) than
those who did not vote (4.16) or who voted for another party (4.23). Differences of means
between groups were statistically significant when tested with ANOVA (F = 29.9, p <
0.001). Fisher’s least significant difference test shows the difference between those who
voted for a right-wing party and those who voted for another party (p < 0.001), as well
as those who voted for a right-wing party and those who did not vote (p < 0.001).
568 M. PAJNIK ET AL.

Figure 3. Anti-elitism scores.

Figure 4. Voting preference and anti-elitist attitude.

Discussion and conclusion

Our results have primarily confirmed the importance of the distinction between quality
and tabloid media (Fawzi 2019) as well as political (right-wing) media, since their con-
sumption tends to be differently correlated with populist worldviews. Our first hypothesis
can be partially confirmed. In general, we can say that consumption of quality media is
related to lower populist attitudes and consumption of commercial media to higher
populist attitudes, which confirms some previous research findings (Hameleers, Bos,
and de Vreese 2017; Schulz, Wirth, and Muller 2020; De Coninck et al. 2019). Tabloid
media tend to produce more populist content, to be more closely connected to ordinary
citizens and to address their worldviews more directly, especially within people-centric
values and exclusionist practices against minorities, which makes them, in turn, more
appealing to people with stronger populist worldviews (Mazzoleni, Stewart, and
Horsfield 2003; Hallin and Mancini 2004). As for the right-wing political medium, there
were no significant correlations with people-centrism, but we confirmed its role in por-
traying others, i.e. migrants, as the culprit for social problems and promoting othering
as a visible populist antagonism, which is significantly positively correlated with con-
sumption and trust in Nova24TV, the medium that operates under the influence of the
political party SDS.
We cannot fully confirm our second hypothesis that the more negative the respon-
dents’ attitudes towards the media, the higher their populist attitudes. We did find the
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 569

assumed correlation for the belief that media are part of the elite, being stronger with
respondents scoring higher on all three aspects of populism. But on the other hand,
those who believe media are biased only had higher othering, while their anti-elitism
was not significantly related to this assessment, and they even had significantly lower
people-centrism scores.
We additionally found an important peculiarity within anti-elitism, related to the pol-
itical situation in Slovenia, confirming our third hypothesis. First, the right-leaning political
option – based on orientation as well as on electoral behaviour – was significantly lower
on anti-elitism (in all three models for anti-elitism), contrary to the belief that those who
vote for right-wing parties are more prone to populist attitudes (Akkerman, Mudde, and
Zaslove 2014; Rooduijn 2014, 2018). Additionally, we found significant correlation
between anti-elitism and political self-positioning, where anti-elitism decreases with
leaning more to the right, as well as significant differences in anti-elitism mean scores
between those who voted for right-wing parties (with significantly lower means) and
those who voted for other parties or did not vote at all. This finding is consistent with
the observation that when right-wing political parties are in power, their voters tend to
have lower anti-elite scores (Todosijević, Pavlović, and Komar 2021). Even though the
ruling parties are populist, they turn pro-elite, or at least less anti-elite, when they are
the elite themselves (Fernandez-Garcia and Luengo 2020). Consequently, we see that
they “pass” this attitude on to their voters. They, too, seem to be less anti-elitist since
their trusted party is the elite. And second, consumption of the highly political, right-
wing oriented medium Nova24TV was significantly related to lower anti-elitism, confi-
rming that the specific political situation in a country affects citizens’ populist feelings
in a particular way. Similar as with the political parties and their voters, which turn less
anti-elitist while in power, media linked to those parties show similar parallels regarding
their consumers. With media clearly supporting the ruling party their content should also,
in fact, be more pro-elitist than the opposite. Consequently, messages sent to consumers
might lower their anti-elitism. But on the other hand, people who already support the
ruling party and therefore are themselves pro-elite might deliberately follow certain
media known to be aligned with their worldviews. We have not yet identified similar
findings in previous research, though this might be an important aspect of populism
and media relations deserving of further exploration in future research.
Our results show that positive attitudes towards the media in terms of believing that
the media is important for the functioning of democracy are related to lower anti-elitist
and othering populist worldviews, while people-centrism is lower with respondents
who think that the media are biased. Citizens with populist worldviews believe that
they are not represented by the media, that the media are biased and subordinated to
the elites. Consistent with the research by Schulz, Wirth, and Muller (2020), people with
higher scores for anti-elitism transfer their negative feelings from the elite to the
media, treating media as part of the elite. As found by Fawzi (2019), people with stronger
populist attitudes tend to believe that the media do not have a positive role as an actor
vital for the functioning of democracy.
There are some limitations of the study that should be considered. Above all,
relationships among the variables are most likely reciprocal, even though we had to
set a certain variable as an “outcome” (i.e. populist attitudes) for the purpose of the
analysis. To fully understand the nature of those relationships, cross-sectional data
570 M. PAJNIK ET AL.

used in our study is limited, and a longitudinal study might help shed some light on
this issue. Additionally, to thoroughly confirm the noted peculiarity regarding anti-
elitism when a right-wing party is in power, this correlation should be compared to
the same relationship in times when some other, non-right-wing party is ruling the
country. Regarding the explanatory variables, current models allow us to examine
the relationship between media consumption and populist attitudes, but in some
cases, consuming particular media is not necessarily well aligned with the degree of
sympathising with them.
Despite some limitations, this research provides a comprehensive insight into complex
relations between populist antagonisms and different media dimensions. We have shown
that the models containing explanatory variables related to media and political orien-
tation can provide further insights into factors of populism. Although it increases the
extent of the analyses, we believe that addressing the three dimensions of populism sep-
arately is crucial for accurate understanding of their correlations with media consumption,
attitudes towards the media, as well as one’s political positioning. Regarding the latter, we
found that the on-going political situation in the country plays an important role in how
political orientation correlates with anti-elitism, but not with othering and people-cen-
trism. Conducting three regression models with several control variables therefore
turned out to be an appropriate approach to studying populist attitudes and their corre-
lation with media and politically related variables. Further theoretical and empirical elab-
oration of relations between variables could develop and verify more comprehensive
explanatory models that could be tested in other countries.

Note
1. Available at https://www.gov.si/novice/2020-05-11-vojna-z-mediji/ (accessed on 3 Septem-
ber 2022).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This work was supported by Norface network [grant number 462-19-080]; Slovenian research
agency [grant number J5-9445; P5-0413].

Notes on contributors
Mojca Pajnik is Professor at the Department of Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences, Univer-
sity of Ljubljana, and senior research advisor at the Peace Institute in Ljubljana.
Nejc Berzelak earned the PhD in Statistics at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences.
He works as a researcher in the field of survey methodology and social science statistics at the Peace
Institute in Ljubljana.
Ajda Šulc is an assistant lecturer for sociology and methodology at the Faculty of Criminal Justice
and Security, University of Maribor.
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 571

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