Populism can be defined as an ideology,political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social movements (a form of mobilization that is essentially devoid of theory). It is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as "political ideas and activities that are intended to represent ordinary people's needs and wishes". It can be understood as any political discourse that appeals to the general mass of the population, to the "people" as such, regardless of class distinctions and political partisanship: "a folksy appeal to the 'average guy' or some allegedly general will." This is in opposition to statism, which holds that a small group of professional politicians know better than the people of a state and should make decisions on behalf of them. Nevertheless, populist discourse frequently (often, but not always, in the Latin American case) buttresses an authoritarian top-down process of political mobilization in which the leader addresses the masses without the mediation of either parties or institutions.

Elizabeth Warren (born June 22, 1949) is an American bankruptcy law expert, policy advocate, Harvard Law School professor, and Democratic Party candidate in the 2012 United States Senate election in Massachusetts. She has written several academic and popular books concerning the American economy and personal finance. She contributed to the oversight of the 2008 U.S. bailout program, and also led the conception and establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Warren attended The George Washington University and the University of Houston. She received a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 1976. Warren taught law at several universities and was listed by the Association of American Law Schools as a minority law professor throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the wake of the U.S. financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program in 2008. She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under U.S. President Barack Obama.

Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh President of the United States (1829–1837). Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814), and the British at the Battle of New Orleans (1815). A polarizing figure who dominated the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s, as president he destroyed the national bank and relocated most Indian tribes from the Southeast to west of the Mississippi River. His enthusiastic followers created the modern Democratic Party. The 1830–1850 period later became known as the era of Jacksonian democracy.

Jackson was nicknamed "Old Hickory" because of his toughness and aggressive personality; he fought in duels, some fatal to his opponents. He was a rich slaveholder, who appealed to the common men of the United States, and fought politically against what he denounced as a closed, undemocratic aristocracy. He expanded the spoils system during his presidency to strengthen his political base.

Paul Taggart (born 1980) is an American photographer and writer best known for his photographs from the Middle East and Africa.

Taggart was one of the few unembedded western journalists to cover the month long battle and siege of Najaf, Iraq in 2004 between the Mahdi Militia and the coalition forces. Other prominent news stories Taggart has covered have been Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan in 2007 and the dual bombing of her convoy after leaving the airport, the Tsunami in Banda Aceh, the 2005 famine in Niger, the 2005 elections in Liberia, the 2006 war in Lebanon, and the 3-month-long siege of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon in the summer of 2007.

Taggart's work has appeared in Newsweek, New York Times, US News and World Report, Boston Globe, National Geographic Adventure, and the Times of London.

In October 2004 Taggart was kidnapped while working in Sadr City outside of Baghdad, Iraq and held hostage for three days before being released as a result of pleas from Muqtada Al Sadr.

Ruth Wodak is Distinguished Professor and Chair in Discourse Studies at Lancaster University. She moved from Vienna, Austria, where she was full professor of Applied Linguistics since 1991. She has stayed co-director of the Austrian National Focal Point (NFP) of the European Monitoring Centre for Racism, Xenophobia and Anti Semitism.

Besides various other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein-Preis in 1996. Her main projects focussed on "Discourses on Un/employment in EU organizations; Debates on NATO and Neutrality in Austria and Hungary; The Discursive Construction of European Identities; Attitudes towards EU-Enlargement; Racism at the Top. Parliamentary Debates on Immigration in Six EU countries; The Discursive Construction of the Past - Individual and Collective Memories of the German Wehrmacht and the Second World War." In October 2006, she was awarded the Woman's Prize of the City of Vienna.

Her research is mainly located in Discourse Studies (DS) and in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Together with her former colleagues and Ph.D students in Vienna (Rudolf de Cillia, Gertraud Benke, Helmut Gruber, Florian Menz, Martin Reisigl, Usama Suleiman, Christine Anthonissen), she elaborated the Discourse Historical Approach in CDA" (DHA) which is interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, and analyzes the change of discursive practices over time and in various genres.