ALGORITHMIC POPULISM AND THE DATAFICATION AND GAMIFICATION OF THE PEOPLE BY FLEMISH INTEREST IN BELGIUM

ABSTRACT Populism studies tend to understand populism as a purely political phenomenon (MUDDE; KALTWASSER, 2017; MÜLLER, 2016). To categorize someone as a populist or not, is in many cases solely based on an evaluation of discourse, style or even ideology. It is much rarer to see approaches to populism that focus on the relation between politics and media and digital media in particular (welcome exceptions are CESARINO 2019 e SILVA, 2019). Throughout this contribution, I will argue that we cannot understand populism in full without focusing in detail on how populists and others actually construct the populist voice, how they communicate themselves on different platforms as the ‘true representatives of the people’. This inevitably means taking the changing media landscape into account as a key-context that shapes contemporary populism. The hybrid media system, its media logics, affordances and its culture of connectivity need to be considered when trying to make sense of populism and politics in general in the 21st century.