ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses how radical right-wing populist movements have become entangled in and exploited political scandals in their communication. Even if the intersection of right-wing populism and political scandals has been eye-catching, particularly in the twenty-first-century’s liberal democracies, scandalogy has paid only little attention to the issue, remaining more focused on traditional forms of political scandal. The relationship between right-wing populism and the media is complex but the turn towards a so-called ‘hybrid media system’ – in which traditional news media is linked in multiple ways to online and social media – makes the situation even more complicated. Right-wing populism can be seen as a more legitimate and mainstream form of nativism and nationalism than that of extreme movements. In political scandals linked to right-wing populism the interplay between traditional and social media and especially between news media and social media logics is relevant.