The ideational definition of populism proposes that a narrative is populist if it is characterized by a Manichean cosmology that divides the political community between a “people,” conceived as a homogeneously virtuous entity, and an “elite,” conceived as a homogeneously corrupt entity. Departing from that conceptualization, this work first investigates the specific stories that Andrés Manuel López Obrador uses to spread his populist worldview, which we call “storytelling.” We define the idea of storytelling as the art of telling a story where emotions, characters and other details are applied in order to promote a particular point of view or set of values. Second, we explore whether some of those stories produce greater negative affective polarization, here defined as the extent to which rival sociopolitical camps view each other as a disliked out-group. Findings suggest that some specific stories—in particular, what we call “stories of conspiracy” and “stories of ostracism”—indeed tend to induce more polarized attitudes among citizens.

中文翻译：

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民粹主义讲故事和负面情感两极分化：来自墨西哥的社交媒体证据

民粹主义的概念定义提出，如果一种叙事具有摩尼教宇宙论的特征，这种叙事将政治共同体划分为“人民”（被视为同质的道德实体）和“精英”（被视为同质的腐败实体），那么它就是民粹主义的。与这种概念化不同，这部作品首先调查了安德烈斯·曼努埃尔·洛佩斯·奥夫拉多尔用来传播他的民粹主义世界观的具体故事，我们称之为“讲故事”。我们将讲故事的概念定义为讲故事的艺术，其中运用情感、人物和其他细节来宣扬特定的观点或价值观。其次，我们探讨其中一些故事是否会产生更大的负面情感极化，这里定义为敌对的社会政治阵营将对方视为不受欢迎的外群体的程度。调查结果表明，一些具体的故事——特别是我们所说的“阴谋故事”和“排斥故事”——确实倾向于在公民中引发更加两极分化的态度。