Populist narrative power in a globalised infosphere: a cross-language analysis

Abstract Populism constitutes one of the greatest challenges to democratic systems, and understanding its dynamics is key to combating it. In this article, we present a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the conversation on Twitter around the anti-Covid protests in China, a seismic political event which at first glance seems wholly unconnected to populist movements in the West. However, our study shows that Western right-wing populists used the opportunity to draw parallels between Chinese and Western anti-lockdown protesters, furthering their agenda of painting democratic governments as authoritarian and tyrannical. Our analysis of over four million tweets in English, German, and Chinese shows that populists were the dominant voices in the English and German debates. Traditional media outlets largely ceded their editorial and interpretative power online, and were merely used as a source of footage. As we demonstrate, this is structurally visible in the underlying conversation network. Compared to the German sphere, English-speaking populists displayed a high degree of sophistication in constructing their narratives. Our research uncovers previously overlooked populist communication strategies, especially in relation to popular movements in non-democratic countries, and illustrates how, beyond outright misinformation, ‘reframing’ of factual news is an effective way of strengthening populist narratives.