Populism (Special Issue) 

Deadline: April 7, 2024

Guest Editors: Feeza Vasudeva and Dayei Oh 

The relationship between religion and populism has been a topic of growing interest in recent years, as populist movements with religious supporters and institutions have gained prominence around the world. The connections between Donald Trump and Evangelical Christianity in the United States, Viktor Orbán and Christianity in Hungary, and Narendra Modi and Hindu nationalists in India, are only a few examples.

At the same time, new forms of media and hybrid media environments (cf. Chadwick, 2013; Hoover, 2020) have emerged and transformed public discourse, influencing the production, reception, and circulation of populist concepts. The logic of ‘media populism’ (Mazzoleni, 2003) identifies that populist actors reach for new audiences through mediatising 'personalisation, emotionalization, and anti-establishment attitude’ (Mudde, 2007). Scholarly attention has been paid to the distinctive rhetorical style and communicative strategies of mediatized populism, such as playing up the intimacy and closeness of populist politicians to portray them as the representatives of the people against the establishment. However, not enough attention has been given to mediatized religious populism.

This call for papers seeks to explore the intersection of religion, populism, and hybrid media, focusing on the many ways these associations interact and shape one another. We welcome conceptual, methodological, and empirical research works. Possible topic areas include (but are not limited to):

• Populism and Religion
  
• Religious Nationalism and Xenophobia
  
• Mediatized religious populism
  
• Religion, Populism, and Conspiracy Theories
  
• New Religions, Cults, and Populism
  
• Atheism and Populism
  
• Transnational Nationalism(s) and Populism(s)
  
• Populisms in Datafied Society
  
• New Religious Constellations
  
• Translocal and Hybrid Movements
  
• Emotion and Affectivity
  
• Epistemic contestations in Religious Populism
  
• Institutionalized Populisms
  
• Interfaith Dialogues and Religious Populism
  

 We welcome submissions from various disciplines, including media studies, sociology, religious studies, political science, and communication studies. We encourage interdisciplinary approaches and transnational studies that examine these phenomena across different geographical contexts.

The special issue will invite individual submissions based on approved abstracts. To submit an abstract for consideration, please email an MS Word document of no more than 500 words with author information to feeza.vasudeva@helsinki.fi and cc: dayei.oh@helsinki.fi using the subject header, “Religious Populism in Hybrid Media Special issue.” The deadline for receiving abstracts is Sunday 7th April 2024. Invited manuscripts of no more than 10,000 words (inclusive) must be submitted by Sunday 25th August 2024 to the journal submission page to receive a double-blind peer review. No payment from the authors will be required.