Discursive strategies and partisan agenda-building: a discourse-historical analysis of VOX and Chega’s facebook communication

Abstract

This study draws from the concepts of partisan agenda-setting (McCombs and Shaw, 1972) and agenda-building (Lang and Lang, 2016) to examine how far-right populist parties Chega (Portugal) and VOX (Spain) craft partisan narratives by strategically framing and assigning salience to selected topics. Using Wodak’s (2001) Discourse-Historical approach of critical discourse analysis, this study analyzes posts from both parties’ official Facebook accounts from January to March 2024 to identify the interdiscursive practices and discursive strategies that unveil ideological patterns embedded within partisan discourse. The results indicate that the issues driving VOX’s agenda-building efforts during this period were immigration, separatism, and anti-environmental rhetoric, while Chega’s agenda primarily focused on corruption and anti-system discourses. Law and order discourses similarly emerged as a key priority for both parties. This study contributes to understanding how far-right agenda-building practices are discursively operationalized, highlighting how these processes contribute to public discourse on the aforementioned topics, as well as to the reinforcement of antagonistic frames through the articulation of specific societal concerns and grievances.