THE SEMIOTIC CONSTRUCTION OF LEADERSHIP AND CREDIBILITY IN THE POPULIST DISCOURSES OF DONALD TRUMP AND JAVIER MILEI: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Abstract
The research examines the semiotic construction of the political leadership of Donald Trump and Javier Milei. Drawing on Greimas’ structural semiotics and engaging with the works of Barthes, Floch, Landowski, Foucault, Baudrillard, and Eco, the research investigates how images, slogans, symbolic objects, and media performances contribute to the construction of political credibility. The study adopts a qualitative, semiotic-interpretive methodology based on the comparative analysis of a corpus of representative images depicting the two political leaders. The analysis is articulated through multiple analytical levels —including values and identities, semi-narrative structures, emotional configurations, enunciation, actors and spaces, aspectuality, plastic level, processes of resemanticization, and isotopies— with the aim of identifying the principal strategies through which meaning and performative authenticity are produced. The findings highlight two distinct models of mediatized populist leadership: Trump constructs an ethos grounded in strength, dominance, and national restoration, whereas Milei develops a leadership centered on rupture, anger, and the destabilization of the traditional political system. In both cases, digital platforms play a crucial role in transforming politics into a visual, memetic, and algorithmic performance in which political credibility increasingly depends on the production of authenticity effects, emotional engagement, and virality rather than solely on the factual accuracy of political discourse.