Om inte Thunberg, kanske Trump?

En studie om sambandet mellan samhällsskeptiska attityder och inställningen till globala politiska symboler

Abstract

If not Thunberg, perhaps Trump? A study about the relationship between skepticism towards society and attitudes towards global political symbols

This article concerns how publics relate to global political actors, including: Joe Biden, Greta Thunberg, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. In an increasingly glo balized and digitized era, the influence of political actors increasingly transcends national boundaries, turning them into global celebrities and in this case also global political symbols. In order to explore the growing importance of global political symbols for political behaviour, this article seeks to explore the association between opinions towards several global political symbols, broadly representing either the establishment or the anti-establishment, and attitudes towards the media, politics, science, global warming and the Covid-19-pandemic. Using survey data collected in Finland 2021, the results broadly show that holding positive opinions about establishment symbols are positively associated with holding mainstream opinions, while a similar relationship is found between anti-establishment symbols and populist attitudes. The findings add to the literature about the attitudinal foundations of emerging global political mass movements.