Heritage and Nationalism: Understanding populism through big data
How are the Romans invoked in Brexit Britain compared to Donald Trump’s United States of America, and to what purpose? And why is it critical to answer these kinds of questions? One might think that matters such as being part of a supra-national project like the European Union or electing the US Head of State would be decided predominantly based on the assessment of economic and political factors.
These issues addressed here through a study of populist nationalist positions expressed on social media and linked to the Brexit referendum, Italian populist politics in the last decade and up to the 2018 General Election, and the United States in the ‘Trump era’.
An excerpt from chapter 1 of Heritage and Nationalism: Understanding populism through big data, by Chiara Bonacchi.
About the Author
Chiara Bonacchi is Chancellor's Fellow in Heritage, Text and Data Mining and Senior Lecturer in Heritage at the University of Edinburgh (from March 2022).