News exposure as accelerating factor in populism’s rise - The role of mobile app notifications, negativity bias and information saturation in the growing support for illiberal politics

Abstract

This thesis explores the relationship between digital communication technologies, psychological effects and political behaviours – particularly focusing on how news delivered through mobile app notifications may influence support for Illiberal Right Populist (from here on IRP) policies. Anchored in the theory of Ontological Security, which examines how societal perceptions of threat and anxiety shape political attitudes, the study investigates whether the incidental exposure to negatively biased informational updates encountered in news updates, amplifies societal insecurities and influences political views.

Employing a qualitative methodology, the research utilizes thematic analysis of data gathered from twenty semi-structured interviews with residents of metropolitan Sweden. In these, the interviewees’ experiences reveal complex interactions between constant exposure to negative news, feelings of anxiety and varying degrees of receptivity to IRP rhetoric. The results indicate that while frequent negative news updates significantly elevate anxiety and perceptions of societal insecurity, these psychological effects do not translate into support for IRP solutions universally, but instead rather with a defined subset of participants.

The findings contribute to existing literature by emphasizing that digital communication mechanisms can indeed amplify populist sentiments but do not uniformly predict political outcomes. This research so highlights critical pathways through which online news media can effect democratic resilience and provides nuanced insights into the intersection of news consumption, psychological wellbeing and political behaviour in contemporary polities.