58 Research Studies Communication Today Antonio MOMOC ABSTRACT: Like in many other Central and Eastern European countries, in 2016, Romanian populist parties were voted by the ‘silent’ citizens, by those feeling deprived and not represented properly. Shortly before that, in 2015, the tragic Colectiv nightclub fire had given birth to a new party: Save Romania Union ( USR) that promotes a populist discourse on the ‘corrupt elite’ versus the ‘pure people’. At the beginning, however, the new party did not disseminate messages specific to the nationalist or radical right-wing populists. Another party, en- dorsed by a news television channel Romania TV , almost succeeded at overpassing the electoral threshold in the 2016 parliamentary election: United Romania Party (PRU ) used xenophobic and anti-EU messages dur- ing the 2016 general election campaign. My hypothesis is that the extremist electoral messages, the expres- sions of hatred towards foreigners and Western businessmen or the EU institutions were spread through social networks. Using a content analysis, I shall verify the extent to which the official Facebook pages of the Social Democratic Party (PSD, the direct successor of the Romanian Communist Party), the United Romania Party (PRU ) and the Save Romania Union ( USR) reflected the antagonism of the ‘pure’ people versus the ‘corrupt’ elite and I shall reveal who these parties identified as the so-called ‘people’s enemies’. KEY WORDS: democratic theory, digital democracy, etymological democracy, new media, online political communication, people’s enemies, political marketing, populism 2.0, populist discourse Introduction When Donald Trump won in the US and in the BREXIT voting Leave (the European Union) defeated Remain (a member of the EU), the winning elements were actually the populist speeches of leaders like Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage, as well as the participation of marginalised categories of voters who had previously refused to vote due to being ignored by the political elite. In 2016, Western representative democracy in Eu- rope and North America and its fundamental institutions – political parties and Parliaments – seemed to be dominated by euro-sceptical, isolationist or nationalist trends. According to Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwaser, 1 populism appears to be in conflict with liberal democracy. Similar to the two researchers, I believe that in order to comprehend this conflict between 1 MUDDE, C. et al.: Populismul în Europa și în cele două Americi. Ameninţare sau remediu pentru democraţie? Iași : Institutul European, 2015, p. 329. POPULISM 2.0, DIGITAL DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW ‘ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE’ Assoc. Prof. Dr. Antonio Momoc, PhD. Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences University of Bucharest Bvd. Iuliu Maniu 1-3 061071 Bucharest Romania antonio.momoc@fjsc.ro Antonio Momoc is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences and the Director of the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Communication, University of Bucharest. He earned his Master’s degree in 2002 in communication sciences, and another Master’s degree in 2005 in po- litical science. Since 2008 he has a PhD. in sociology from University of Bucharest. He also has a degree from the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Bucharest (2002). During years 2010-2013, he held an EU postdoctoral research scholarship, studying the relationship between populism and new media at LUISS Uni- versity in Rome. In 2013, he received a Summer United States Institute scholarship on Journalism and Media at University’s Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University. His selected publications include: Web 2.0 Communication. New Media, Participation and Populism, 2014, published in Romanian; The Political Traps of Interwar Sociology. Gusti’s School between Monarchy and Legionary Movement, 2012, published in Romanian. Communication Today, 2018, Vol. 9, No. 1