Oscar Mazzoleni is a Professor of political science at the University of Lausanne. He has taught in various universities, including Université de Genève, Università degli Studi di Torino, Sorbonne-Panthéon and Science Po Paris. He is the author of numerous research works on citizen mobilizations, political parties, populism and popular votes. In the context of the summer school “Democracy and Participation – 2022”, Oscar Mazzoleni tackled the link between protest movements and conspiracy theories. He identified four discursive dimensions of conspiratorial populism that can be found in the COVID-19 protests: opposition to the “dictatorship of covid”, threatened freedom of expression and the fight against official media, individual sovereignty as freedom of enterprise and finally individual sovereignty against mass surveillance.