Introduction

This chapter presents the introduction of the book An Interdisciplinary Approach to Discourse on Populism: Tracking the Uses of ‘Populism’ in Media and Political Discourse, which summarises the main outputs of the research project ‘Discourse, populism and democracy. Tracking the uses of populism in media and political discourse’ conducted at UCLouvain (Belgium). Highlighting that the use of the term populism itself by different actors in public debate is an aspect that remains rather understudied in existing literature on populism, this chapter emphasises the innovative approach of the project and the interest it could arouse in readers interested in looking for original approaches to the study of populism as well as in combining different methodological approaches. To do so, the first part of the introduction outlines this book’s aims, presenting the interdisciplinary focus adopted by the project and the case studies selected to address the use of populism in public discourse. The second part then presents the structure of this volume and its chapters.