The Landscape of Populist Content and Style on Facebook during Taiwan's 2020 Election: Examining Their Manifestations, Communication Mechanisms, Inter-Party Differences, and Linkages to Electoral Agenda-Setting

While some literature examines populism in Taiwan, current Taiwan-specific literature offers limited insight into the extent of populist messaging on social media election campaigns, its communication mechanisms and internal structure, inter-party differences in its application, and its relationship with election topics. To address these significant gaps, this paper analyses Facebook campaign messages of seven candidates/leaders from different Taiwanese political parties during the 2020 election using quantitative content analysis. This paper contributes by: (a) establishing a reliable framework for measuring populist content and style in Taiwan; (b) identifying negative and confrontational inclinations in minor parties’ populist communication; (c) uncovering a moderate correlation between populist content and style in Taiwan, with systematic engagements of negativity and emotionality; and (d) revealing significant associations between populist content and style and election topics, as well as different tendencies across parties in leveraging these elements to frame the electoral agenda.