Building upon the literature on new information environments, this article explores how citizens make sense of hyperreal politics. To that end, it turns to the particularly illustrative case of Volodymyr Zelensky's 2019 presidential campaign, characterized by the complex fusion of fact and fiction, unclear truth statements, and prevalence of populist narratives.In 25 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, the article examines how Zelensky's voters and viewers of the Servant of the Peoplea television comedy series featuring Zelensky in the role of the Ukrainian Presidentinterpreted the populist hyperreality of the series, navigated between various mediated representations of Zelensky, and evaluated him and his fictional counterpart after the former became the President of Ukraine in reality. The findings show that the populist hyperreality of the series affected not only its viewers' desire to vote for Zelensky, but also their overall perception of the Ukrainian politics by highlighting some of its aspects and ignoring others. The obtained data also suggest that for most interviewees, there was no strict demarcation between the images of Holoborodko, Zelensky-actor and Zelensky-politician. The study points to the need to reassess our understanding of informed citizenship in the new information environments.

Against a background of increasing electoral support of populist political actors in Europe and beyond, this study offers an exploratory inquiry into modern Ukrainian populism. The article examines populist communication, broadcast on the most highly rated Ukrainian television political talk shows, on the eve of the 2019 presidential election, which was completed in two rounds. A qualitative content analysis of populist communication acts (n=283) shows that Ukrainian viewers were exposed to diverse political discourses containing empty, anti-elitist, emergency, and complete populism, depending on which channel(s) they watched. The dominance of one or another type of populism on the studied channels mirrors the dynamics of media-political parallelism typical of Ukrainian commercial television. The study also examines the roles of different actors—moderators, journalists, and politicians—in either restricting or facilitating populism in the talk show studios. The populism-related reactions collected during this analysis (n=145) are discussed through the prism of normative roles, with a focus on gatekeeping, interpretation, and initiation. Implications for the stakeholders involved in the process of production, moderation, and consumption of political talk shows are presented.

In transitional democracies, the boundary work of defining journalism and through this, ousting certain media actors as illegitimate and threatful to national security and/or democratic stability can hold a particular urgency. This article considers the sanctions against three Russia-affiliated TV channels by the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council adopted in February 2021 – and the ensuing public debate on this decision – as a particularly informative case of such boundary work. Using thematic analysis of materials from Ukrainian news sites and TV talk shows, the article maps out how media regulators and representatives of the sanctioned and non-sanctioned media outlets competed over the authority to define the boundaries of legitimate journalism in Ukraine amid growing security threats. The findings show that the regulator labeled the sanctioned TV channels as “parasites of journalism,” situated within the Ukrainian media system, yet functioning in the interest of a foreign state. In turn, the sanctioned media actors styled themselves as repressed opposition media, attacking both regulators and non-sanctioned media for undemocratic intervention and a lack of professional solidarity, respectively. Lastly, non-sanctioned media actors have largely supported the sanction decision and detached from the sanctioned actors’ self-legitimation discourse. The study contributes to the literature on boundary work in journalism and showcases how a novel theory of parasites of journalism can enhance the analysis of complex discourses surrounding antagonistic media actors, including in non-Western contexts.

Due to continued mediatization of politics, storytelling plays an increasingly important role in political communication. Against this background, it is often argued that populist narratives are essentially more appealing than non-populist political narratives, yet empirical evidence to support this assumption was missing. A multi-message experiment was conducted among U.S. citizens (N = 206) to compare how populist and non-populist political stories affect narrative transportation—a psychological state strongly associated with narrative enjoyment. The results show that populist framing significantly increases the ability of political narratives to cause transportation, controlling for the political partisanship and populist predispositions of the participants. This effect is mediated by the identification with story characters and feelings of anger and anxiety. The positive impact of populist framing extends to the story-consistent attitudes of the participants, suggesting a parallel–serial mediation model. The study enhances our understanding of psychological responses to populist storytelling.

This paper overviews scientific narratives surrounding communities and networks both off- and online and criticizes the dichotomous approach to the topic, according to which each social structure can be classified as either a community or a network. It is argued that such a division does not facilitate comprehension of the contemporary online social structures with their complexity and dynamism. The study provides an alternative view on the issue assuming that community and network are not mutually exclusive concepts and can be studied holistically. The proposed theoretical statement is operationalized and piloted on the example of ‘Aarhus Internationals’ Facebook group – an online venue for international expats in Denmark. A content analysis of the group`s posts showed how exactly community and network aspects of social structures may coexist and interact online.