The “Derailment” of Online Populism in China's Post-Epidemic Era

Abstract

In the post-pandemic era, while national credibility and intellectual authority are recovering and rebuilding, online populism is also active. It often appears in the form of public opinion on various Internet platforms. Online populists exploit the Internet's self-media nature and low-cost advantage for dissemination. This makes online populism highly "accessible", easily causing a "square effect" and "polarization effect". It impacts China's social stability and national discourse system construction, thus impeding the building of China's ideological system. However, due to the complexity of the Internet, online populism shows "derailment" tendencies during dissemination, and its irrational factors and logical fallacies are also gradually revealed.