IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jcsosc/v8y2025i3d10.1007_s42001-025-00392-w.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The face of populism: examining differences in facial emotional expressions of political leaders using machine learning

Author

Listed:
  • Sara Major

    (University of Novi Sad)

  • Aleksandar Tomašević

    (University of Novi Sad)

Abstract

Populist rhetoric employed in online media is characterized as deeply impassioned and most often imbued with strong emotions. This paper investigates the differences in affective non-verbal communication of political leaders. We use a deep-learning approach to process a sample of 220 YouTube videos depicting political leaders from 15 different countries, analyze their facial expressions of emotion, and then examine differences in average emotion scores representing the relative presence of six emotional states (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) and a neutral expression for each frame of the processed YouTube video. Based on a sample of manually coded images, we find that this machine learning approach has 53−60% agreement with human annotation. We observe statistically significant differences in the average score of expressed negative emotions between groups of leaders with varying degrees of populist rhetoric. Overall, our contribution provides insight into the characteristics of non-verbal emotional expression among political leaders, as well as an open-source workflow for further computational studies of their affective communication.

Suggested Citation

  • Sara Major & Aleksandar Tomašević, 2025. "The face of populism: examining differences in facial emotional expressions of political leaders using machine learning," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 1-22, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jcsosc:v:8:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s42001-025-00392-w
    DOI: 10.1007/s42001-025-00392-w
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s42001-025-00392-w
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s42001-025-00392-w?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Benjamin Moffitt & Simon Tormey, 2014. "Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation and Political Style," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 62(2), pages 381-397, June.
    2. Inglehart, Ronald F. & Norris, Pippa, 2016. "Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash," Working Paper Series 16-026, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    3. Boussalis, Constantine & Coan, Travis G. & Holman, Mirya R. & Müller, Stefan, 2021. "Gender, Candidate Emotional Expression, and Voter Reactions During Televised Debates," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 115(4), pages 1242-1257, November.
    4. Jankowski, Michael & Huber, Robert A., 2023. "When Correlation Is Not Enough: Validating Populism Scores from Supervised Machine-Learning Models," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(4), pages 591-605, October.
    5. James, Nicholas A. & Matteson, David S., 2015. "ecp: An R Package for Nonparametric Multiple Change Point Analysis of Multivariate Data," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 62(i07).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sofya Glazunova, 2020. "‘Four Populisms’ of Alexey Navalny: An Analysis of Russian Non-Systemic Opposition Discourse on YouTube," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 121-132.
    2. Frédéric Docquier & Stefano Iandolo & Hillel Rapoport & Riccardo Turati & Gonzague Vannoorenberghe, 2024. "Populism and the skill content of globalisation," PSE Working Papers halshs-04960427, HAL.
    3. Manuel Menke & Tim Wulf, 2021. "The Dark Side of Inspirational Pasts: An Investigation of Nostalgia in Right-Wing Populist Communication," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(2), pages 237-249.
    4. Sofya Glazunova, 2020. "‘Four Populisms’ of Alexey Navalny: An Analysis of Russian Non-Systemic Opposition Discourse on YouTube," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 121-132.
    5. Lars Rensmann, 2017. "The Noisy Counter-Revolution: Understanding the Cultural Conditions and Dynamics of Populist Politics in Europe in the Digital Age," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 123-135.
    6. Frédéric Docquier & Lucas Guichard & Stefano Iandolo & Hillel Rapoport & Riccardo Turati & Gonzague Vannoorenberghe, 2022. "Populism and the Skill-Content of Globalization: Evidence from the Last 60 Years," CESifo Working Paper Series 10068, CESifo.
    7. Işıl Zeynep TURKAN-İPEK, 2018. "Elections in Risk Society," Sosyoekonomi Journal, Sosyoekonomi Society, issue 26(36).
    8. Lars Rensmann, 2017. "The Noisy Counter-Revolution: Understanding the Cultural Conditions and Dynamics of Populist Politics in Europe in the Digital Age," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 123-135.
    9. Manuel Menke & Tim Wulf, 2021. "The Dark Side of Inspirational Pasts: An Investigation of Nostalgia in Right-Wing Populist Communication," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(2), pages 237-249.
    10. Dani Rodrik, 2018. "Populism and the economics of globalization," Journal of International Business Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 1(1), pages 12-33, June.
    11. Indra de Soysa & Synøve Almås, 2019. "Does Ethnolinguistic Diversity Preclude Good Governance? A Comparative Study with Alternative Data, 1990‐2015," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(4), pages 604-636, November.
    12. Vigvári, Gábor, 2022. "Transzformáció és a populizmus a visegrádi országokban [Transformation and populism in the V4 countries]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(3), pages 339-366.
    13. Xinyu Zhang & Yue Liao, 2023. "A Bibliometric and Visual Analysis of Populism Research (2000–2020)," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.
    14. Tito Boeri & Prachi Mishra & Chris Papageorgiou & Antonio Spilimbergo, 2018. "A Dialogue between a Populist and an Economist," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 191-195, May.
    15. Eriksson, Katherine & Alsan, Marcella & Niemesh, Gregory T., 2020. "Understanding the Success of the Know-Nothing Party," CEPR Discussion Papers 15562, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Hubert Tworzecki, 2019. "Poland: A Case of Top-Down Polarization," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 681(1), pages 97-119, January.
    17. Liesbet Hooghe & Tobias Lenz & Gary Marks, 2019. "Contested world order: The delegitimation of international governance," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 731-743, December.
    18. Jasiecki Krzysztof, 2018. "The strength and weaknesses of the varieties of capitalism approach: the case of Central and Eastern Europe," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 54(4), pages 328-342, December.
    19. Walter Bossert & Andrew E. Clark & Conchita d'Ambrosio & Anthony Lepinteur, 2019. "Economic Insecurity and the Rise of the Right," PSE Working Papers halshs-02325984, HAL.
    20. Lars Rensmann & Sarah L. de Lange & Stefan Couperus, 2017. "Editorial to the Issue on Populism and the Remaking of (Il)Liberal Democracy in Europe," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 106-111.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jcsosc:v:8:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s42001-025-00392-w. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.