Making Sense of Populist Hyperreality in the Post-Truth Age: Evidence from Volodymyr Zelensky’s Voters

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