Barbeito Iglesias, Roberto L.Iglesias Alonso, Ángel H.2025-06-172025-06-172021-07-05Barbeito Iglesias, R., & Iglesias Alonso, Á. (2021). Political emotions and digital political mobilization in the new populist parties: the cases of Podemos and Vox in Spain. International Review of Sociology, 31(2), 246–267.0390-67011469-9273https://hdl.handle.net/10115/89357The article is part of a thematic section of the IRS whose call for papers proposed an international analysis to examine affective polarisation and the exchange of emotions in political ecosystems fostered by digital platforms, focusing on the development of new theoretical approaches and empirical research based on case studies. The text is part of a line of research on the crisis of liberal democracy and democratic innovations, especially in local contexts, examining their relationship with protest movements. It benefited from the authors' participation in the ISCH COST ACTION IS 1207 project, funded by the EU under the Horizon 2017 Framework Programme. The two authors participated jointly and interchangeably in all phases of the research work, including the writing of the article. IRS is the oldest scientific journal in the field of sociology, founded in 1893. It is currently published by Taylor & Francis Online / Routledge (London) and publishes three issues per year through a blind peer review system. It is financially supported by La Sapienza University of Rome and is managed by the Department of Statistics. It publishes international research on sociology, studying its relationship with economics, demography, anthropology and social psychology. Articles published in IRS may be freely accessible or subject to a fee. This article was published subject to a fee. It is indexed in a selection of the most prestigious international bibliographic databases in its fields, with medium-high and high impact levels.This text examines the role of emotions as a strategy of populist mobilization into a risk context, presuming that populism is a political style useful for any kind of political actor, but especially suitable for ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘low-cost’ parties. The article compares the cases of Podemos and Vox, the two populist parties that emerged successfully into the electoral scene after the Spanish movement of the Indignants (or 15M movement). Combining literature with an exploratory qualitative analysis of their websites and social media accounts, the paper argues that emotional persuasion is widely used by the two both populist parties’ framings, but in quite different ways, according to their cute different ideological projects. Moreover, the text holds that emotions are not exclusive of the populist nor the social protests, but they are a feature of current democracy and even intrinsic to representative democracy from its origins. The article analytical approach conceives populism as a political style useful for any actor, but more so for “entrepreneurial” and “low-cost” parties. It compares the cases of Podemos and Vox, which emerged successfully on the electoral scene after the 15-M movement. Combining literature with qualitative analysis of websites and social media, it extracts original information showing that emotional persuasion is widely used by the strategies of the two populist parties, but in different ways, depending on their different audiences and ideological projects. The findings are consistent with previous studies that argue that emotions are not exclusive to populist parties or certain social movements, but rather a feature of contemporary democracy. They also agree with a hypothesis put forward by the authors: appealing to emotions has been a core component of political communication in representative democracy since its very origins.enpolitical emotionspopulismsocial movementspolitical communicationdigital democracyriskPodemosVoxArticle10.1080/03906701.2021.1947948info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess