Populism in the Age of Social Media: A Systematic Review of Recent Digital Populism Research

TY - JOUR

T1 - Populism in the Age of Social Media

T2 - A Systematic Review of Recent Digital Populism Research

AU - Yilmaz, Ihsan

AU - Bliuc, Ana-Maria

AU - Norrie, Robb

AU - Smith, Chloe

AU - Smith, James

AU - Evans, Cerys

AU - Courtney, Daniel

AU - Barnett, Daniel

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

PY - 2026/2/20

Y1 - 2026/2/20

N2 - Digital platforms have become central infrastructures of contemporary populism, shaping how actors communicate, mobilise supporters and contest democratic norms. This article offers a systematic, cross-disciplinary review of empirical research on digital populism published between 2015 and early 2025. Analysing 188 studies from political communication, media studies and political science, we map how platform affordances structure populist communication, how digital populism is conceptualised and how it is studied. The literature portrays digital populism as the communicative enactment of populist ideology in environments that privilege personalisation, affective intensity and direct leader–follower engagement. Methods span qualitative, computational and experimental designs, with research concentrated on Twitter/X and Facebook. Most studies examine exclusionary, right-wing cases in European and Western contexts and associate them with polarisation, misinformation and declining institutional trust. Evidence remains largely correlational, and inclusionary or participatory variants are underexplored. We identify key gaps and call for greater analytical precision in assessing democratic consequences.

AB - Digital platforms have become central infrastructures of contemporary populism, shaping how actors communicate, mobilise supporters and contest democratic norms. This article offers a systematic, cross-disciplinary review of empirical research on digital populism published between 2015 and early 2025. Analysing 188 studies from political communication, media studies and political science, we map how platform affordances structure populist communication, how digital populism is conceptualised and how it is studied. The literature portrays digital populism as the communicative enactment of populist ideology in environments that privilege personalisation, affective intensity and direct leader–follower engagement. Methods span qualitative, computational and experimental designs, with research concentrated on Twitter/X and Facebook. Most studies examine exclusionary, right-wing cases in European and Western contexts and associate them with polarisation, misinformation and declining institutional trust. Evidence remains largely correlational, and inclusionary or participatory variants are underexplored. We identify key gaps and call for greater analytical precision in assessing democratic consequences.

KW - Digital populism

KW - populism

KW - social media

KW - systematic review

U2 - 10.1177/14614448261420218

DO - 10.1177/14614448261420218

M3 - Review article

SN - 1461-4448

JO - New Media and Society

JF - New Media and Society

ER -