The Populist Tendencies Of Hot Issues Research Network

Since Populism created a practical precedent in the U.S. and Russia in nineteenth century, it has been active in the stage of history. Populism appears in different historical periods, different countries or different political and cultural environment. It has been wandering around the world, like a ghost. Populism is a product of modernization, when a weak link emerges in the process of social modernization, it will arise at the historic moment. At present, our country is in the social transition of modernization process. This transition has caused a lot of changes and adjustments in the social structure and social mechanisms, which lead to a lot of social conflicts. As the era of Web2.0comes, because of its quickness, convenience and equality, network has become a quick and direct channel for the public to express their opinions. In the current Internet, various of network hot events have emerged. During the process of netizens expressing opinions on the network hot events, they have showed a deeply adoration of people at the bottom of the society and criticism of the elite authority class, which has an obvious tendency of populism. Populism is an extremely complex phenomenon which has two different sides. Caring for vulnerable groups, supervising the authorities and elites is the positive side. Irrationality and artificially deepening the class antagonism is the negative side. Therefore, the populism tendency of netizens in the network hot events should cause our attention and further study.This article will begin with defining the network hot events and populism, and then select a typical network hot event to do case analysis. Based on the essential features of populism, I will analyze the situation of netizens’ opinion in the developing process of the network event to demonstrate that there is populism tendency in the current network hot events, and discuss the civilian, irrational and critical traits of the populism tendency in network hot events. Then I will explore the causes of populism tendency from three angles of social reality, network technology and netizens. For these reasons, I will discuss how to deal with populism tendency from three aspects of constructing a harmonious social environment, participating in the network communication and improving the comprehensive quality of netizens. Then treating populism tendency of the network hot events with caution to prevent its negative impacts and build a healthy network environment.