Going beyond an exclusive focus on populist politics, attention to the signifier ‘populism’ helps elucidate the character and effects of discourses about populism. The aim of this chapter is three-fold. First, we foreground the pivotal role played by politics, media, academia and their dynamic inter-relations in elucidating the character and effects of discourses about populism. Second, we argue that while this has so far been analysed productively in ideological terms, there are good reasons for supplementing these accounts by appealing to factors which go ‘beyond ideology’. Third, we approach the ubiquity of discourses about populism through the concept of ‘populist hype’, showing how its character and ideological effects are a product of processes that go beyond ‘mere’ ideological motivations.