Like, share, influence: The role of populist content in shaping social media user engagement - A systematic review

Abstract

This systematic review synthesizes existing recent knowledge on the relationship between populism and user engagement on social media. The objective is to understand how populist communication style impacts user interactions on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Employing the PRISMA methodology (Moher et al., 2009), we conducted a comprehensive search across Sage Research, Web of Science, and Scopus databases for articles and book chapters published between January 1, 2019, and January 1, 2024, using the keywords “populism,” “user engagement,” “social media,” and “populist.” Thirty-six sources met the predetermined eligibility criteria for full-text review, which were then analyzed and coded. Our findings suggest a positive association between populist content and visibility on social media, although conflicting evidence exists in the literature. Hence, populist communication style and message features tend to drive higher levels of user interactions, but variations arise due to platform affordances, user attitudes, and contextual elements (i.e., level of polarization). Additional factors, such as content subject, matter, and negativity also play significant roles. Moreover, given the relevance of social media for political communication, this research highlights the implications of populist messaging for democratic discourse, political polarization, and misinformation spread on the Internet. However, further research is still needed to explore mechanisms driving engagement with populist content, particularly on visually oriented platforms, and the influence of linguistic aspects (i.e., metaphors) on engagement levels.