Populism and the Pandemic: How the Covid‐Sceptic Movement Mobilised Opposition to Covid Measures

The Covid‐19 pandemic constituted a radically new social reality in which people were asked to observe an unprecedented set of regulations. This paper uses a Structural Analysis of Group Arguments (SAGA) framework of the speeches and campaign materials of the Covid‐Sceptic movement to demonstrate how the movement provided a way for people to make sense of this new reality. We provide an explanation drawing on social representations theory, the social identity approach, and identity leadership perspectives on collective mobilisation. Specifically, we show that the Covid‐Sceptic movement used populist social representations that framed the pandemic as a tool of elite domination over ‘the people’. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the dynamics of social mobilisation, the construction of social representations, and the role of populism as a collective process for making sense of new realities.