ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some definitions of, and elements related to, populism to arrive at a working definition that is well suited to research on political communication. It discusses some key elements and distinguishes several types of populist political communication resulting from combinations of those key elements. The chapter presents a preliminary model of the causes, forms, and effects of populist political communication, which can be used as a heuristic for the national literature investigations. Several scholars argue that populists overemphasize the importance of the people's sovereignty as a pillar of liberal democracy. The four key elements are located on three levels of social analysis: Structural and situational contexts on the macro-level; parties, movements, and their representatives on the meso-level; journalistic and social media on the meso-level; and individual citizens on the micro-level. The concept of the people shows that communicatively constructing or priming a specific sense of social identity seems to be at the very heart of populism.
