This research project aims at thinking about the relationship between the new prevalence of mass media and the rise of contemporary populism, by analyzing how Ernesto Laclau's "populist reason" (Laclau, 2006) takes form within mass-media content during national election campaign periods, in contemporary France and Japan. This research aims at extending a research conducted a few years ago, for a PhD dissertation presented at SciencesPo Paris (CERI) in 2016, entitled "the mediatic composition of populisms: a Japan-France comparison (in French: "la composition mediatique des populismes: une comparaison France-Japon").

The research project outcome consists, at this time, in two publications and one presentation in an academic seminar. First, an analysis of the French politician Nicolas Sarkozy’s discursive populism, focusing on how his concept of "May 68" has implemented a "populist reason" during the 2007 presidential election campaign (to be published in 2020 in the French journal Quaderni). Second, an analysis on how political distrust among young people can be connected to the Japanese style of populism (published in the French journal Etudes in November 2019). Third, an oral presentation entitled "Populism and distrust in contemporary Japanese politics" on February 6^th 2020 in Paris University, in an academic seminar on Japanese studies.