Lu Lan: From "Responding to Virtual Shocks" to "Governing the Symbiosis of Virtual and Reality": An Inquiry into the Social Quasi-Reality Turn of Ideological and Political Education
Whether it is the continuous rise in daily internet usage, mobile phone unlocking frequency, and social media access time among digital natives, or the increasing emergence of "ACGN [1] existentialism," all indicate that the continually expanding cluster of digital-intelligence technologies is restructuring the underlying architecture of human practical activity through self-iteration and social penetration. The diverse, symbiotic, and constantly evolving new scenes, structures, and cognitions spawned therein have triggered a revolution in human interaction. Consequently, the phenomenon of "spatial escape" in ideological and political education—moving from the "tangible" to the "virtual"—has become increasingly prominent. Beneath this appearance of social quasi-reality lies the fact that digital-intelligence technology is becoming a major driving force in the reconstruction of society. To achieve the civilizational goal of "tech for good," ideological and political education workers urgently need to construct a transmission mechanism for mainstream ideology that "transcends the virtual." In 2022, the Ministry of Education launched the National Strategic Action for Educational Digitization, steering ideological and political education to first "respond to virtual shocks" and subsequently "harness virtual-real symbiosis." The Opinions of the State Council on the In-depth Implementation of the "AI+" Action, issued in August 2025, proposed a timetable for the popularization of a new generation of intelligent terminals and agents, as well as the exploration of new organizational forms for philosophy and social science research adapted to the era of Artificial Intelligence, thereby expanding the horizons of research and observation. In the face of this new situation, the proposal of a "social quasi-reality turn" is timely; it aims to reconstruct an integrated concept of time and space that encompasses both the physical and the virtual to cover the full experience of human communication, thereby providing important theoretical basis and practical nourishment for the spatial turn and rise of ideological and political education. Although current academic research on the phenomenon of social quasi-reality has not yet reached a high level of theoretical maturity, "social quasi-reality" as a phenomenon has already arrived. Based on this, we propose a new set of conceptual propositions and analytical frameworks for the social quasi-reality turn of ideological and political education, hoping to open a new window for the study of ideological and political education in the digital-intelligence era.
I. Virtual Shocks: Piercing the Cognitive Boundaries of the Spatiotemporal View of Ideological and Political Education
Along with the development of the behavioral relationship between humans, ideological and political education, and digital-intelligence space; the gradual strengthening of the desire for emotional reliance and trust construction; and the simultaneous development of basic theoretical construction for ideological and political education alongside the refinement of visualized intelligent tools, research into the social quasi-reality turn of human society has gradually become a hot topic. It has entered the field of vision through a whole system of questions, impacting the cognitive boundaries of existing domains in ideological and political education: Is the concept of social quasi-reality, initially set with the virtual as a benchmark, sufficient to cover the complex and diverse interpersonal (including human-machine) interaction practices in reality? Are there still a large number of invisible communicative actions occurring in the underlying technical environment, unfolding in more subtle ways? How can we reconstruct the integration of virtual-real symbiosis to pierce the boundaries of ideological and political education space?
(1) Tracing the Origins: Social Quasi-Reality as a New Form of Human Practice Under Technical Mediation
Modern information technology has rewritten the dependence of space and time on reality and materiality. The interactive penetration of the real world and virtual space has continuously strengthened the integration of the virtual and the real in society. Social quasi-reality, a combination of virtual and real, has become a new reality. It encompasses the "mirroring of reality" from the tangible to the virtual and the "dynamic simulation" from the virtual back to the tangible, directly intervening in all aspects of human social practice.
Regarding whether it possesses reality and how it represents reality, social quasi-reality is a new kind of reality, distinct from traditional reality, generated by the intervention of digitalization and intelligence into human society and daily life. The structure of social quasi-reality differs from traditional social structures. It is a deep integration of virtual and physical space, forming interwoven social relations and lifestyles (as shown in Figure 1). The complexity of its structure lies in the fact that it does not empty or subvert existing social structures and historical memories, nor does it recreate an entirely new social structure outside of the traditional one. Instead, it comprehensively penetrates new social scenes and embeds new social structures within the existing real world; that is, social quasi-reality and real society are complexly nested together. In social quasi-reality, digital-intelligence technology becomes an indispensable power connecting social subjects and social scenes, granting people more room for choice and practical possibilities. Here, the "disembedding" [2] actions of individuals become freer, and the boundaries between reality and the virtual become more blurred, resulting in an astronomical expansion of social interaction space and making social relationship variables exceptionally complex. This is precisely because "new technological media make new forms of social interaction possible, changing or breaking down old forms of interaction, and creating new centers and venues for behavior and interaction."
Regarding its relationship with technology, social quasi-reality is a technologically derived social structure. It is shaped by digital-intelligence technology and has become an important spatiotemporal domain for human habitation and practice. It must be clarified that social quasi-reality is not a "simulated reality" based purely on technology. Simulated reality consists of digital scenes or mirrored spaces built by VR, AR, MR, and digital twins, the purpose of which is to create a 1:1 copy of the real world to provide new virtual fields for entertainment, cultural consumption, and interactive communication. In contrast, social quasi-reality is a deep integration of the virtual and the real catalyzed by technology. Its birth was not the result of an intentional construction but rather a paradigm of production and life interwoven with the virtual and real, formed alongside the deep intervention of digital-intelligence technology into human existence. If simulated reality focuses on whether visual effects are lifelike and interaction experiences are rich—representing a virtual space construction achieved by humans actively harnessing technology—then social quasi-reality focuses on how the relational dimensions and practical orientations of social reality are mapped into virtual space, to what extent and for what reasons this mapping suffers distortion and mutation. Therefore, what it represents is the "projection" of human society between the virtual and the real under the reflection of the technological existence paradigm. Its internal elements come from the subjective construction of human individuals manipulating technology, while the interaction, collision, rupture, and fusion between these elements do not come from deliberate subjective imitation, but are symbolic representations of the technological existence paradigm. Therefore, viewed from the technical dimension, social quasi-reality is closely related to the simulated reality constructed by multi-element and multi-dimensional digital-intelligence technologies, yet the two must never be equated (as shown in Figure 2).
Figure 1: Defining Social Quasi-Reality from the Perspective of its Relationship with Reality Figure 2: Defining Social Quasi-Reality from the Perspective of its Relationship with Technology
Regarding how it serves as a new field of human practice, practice in virtual space still belongs to a special form of human objectified activity; indeed, the virtual is an even more important dimension for understanding life itself. Whether quasi-reality can establish a connection with traditional reality and human practice depends on whether it can "be based on traditional reality and interact with it in real-time, with human practice running through it." In social quasi-reality, although interpersonal interaction possesses great freedom of choice and convenience—allowing for disembedded travel and communication within a spatiotemporal realm free from materiality and spatiotemporal constraints—because human interaction and action are inherently social, it is impossible to empty them of all social experience and learned socialization, nor is it possible to eradicate human pre-social memory. People in virtual space still enter new scenes and carry out new interactions while bearing existing social experiences and structural memories. These new scenes and interactions portend a major adjustment and turn in the "structurational" [3] production of human practice. The dominant position originally held by structurational production (based primarily on tangible structural resources and elements) has begun to shift toward structural elements from technical systems based on digital-intelligence technology. The generalized connection and empowerment of digital-intelligence technology have broken the stipulations of space and time imposed by traditional social structures. Social scenes, social roles, social actions, and long-evolved institutions and cultures have all undergone structural transformations. This brand-new scene of social interaction, integrated with the virtual and the real under the blessing of digital-intelligence technology, has caused social quasi-reality to become "real-ized."
(2) Defining Boundaries: Differences and Limits Between Social Quasi-Reality and the Virtualization of Social Reality
The concept of social quasi-reality is not a tree without roots; its theoretical roots are deeply planted in Marxist praxeology and historical materialism. From a realistic perspective, social quasi-reality is a new social existence under technological mediation; from a theoretical perspective, we are not following a Baudrillardian "hyperreality" nihilism that announces the "death of the real." On the contrary, we insist that "quasi-reality" is the product and field of new types of practical activities for humans in the digital-intelligence era. It is not a pure game of signs detached from a material basis, but a profound reflection in the superstructure of digital capital, digital-intelligence technology, and the platform economy. Virtual practice remains an objectified activity of humans and must be understood within the dialectical materialism of "practice-knowledge-re-practice."
First, the social quasi-reality turn manifests in the prominence of the "symbolic power" and "energy fields" it triggers. As software coding connects humans and machines, creating a human-machine embedded social system, the configuration of humans and the environment (natural and man-made objects) gradually becomes a dynamic, holistic system of connection, transformation, and generation. It integrates into society as non-material symbolic technology, expanding the world of human experience and reconstructing a de-materialized field. Human interaction has shifted from "matter-tool" oriented technology to "culture-symbol" oriented technology; the "symbolic system" has become a characteristic system of the human organism. "Man no longer lives in a merely physical universe, man lives in a symbolic universe," constructing a "web of human experience." It is precisely by means of culture-symbol oriented technology that humans use symbols to transcend the individual and construct a larger web of meaning. It must be clarified that social quasi-reality is not a simple replica of physical space, but generates a new network of meaning through the re-encoding of symbols. As digital objects increasingly become the realistic basis of daily human practice, relying on symbols to salvage fragments of civilization from the digital flood is a way of reconstructing another form of multi-point perspective. In this process, the energy field is both an amplifier of symbolic power and a buffer layer against symbolic alienation.
Second, if symbolic power shapes the cognitive dimension of quasi-real space and the energy field endows it with dynamic characteristics, then the social quasi-reality turn of ideological and political education aims to continuously reconstruct the way symbols and energy function. When the density of symbols in virtual space exceeds a critical threshold, the self-organizing characteristics of the energy field will trigger a revolution in cognitive paradigms; this is the core mechanism of the quasi-reality turn in ideological and political education. The emotional resonance triggered by digital symbols that transcends physical space builds an invisible ideological magnetic field; even the "collective effervescence" [4] described by Durkheim achieves digital translation here. In this context, social media is no longer a cold information pipe, but an energy furnace for cultivating community spirit. Every share and "like" adds magnetic field lines to the electromagnetic field of ideology, allowing the weak currents of individuals to aggregate into the thunder of the era. The internet is no longer a carrier for transmitting information but a field of problems into which we pour our intellectual concern. Here, symbolic power and energy fields cause the fission and rebirth of the carrier; here, we highlight the truth, face problems directly, and seek potential goals for ideological and political education and flowing symbols to carry the "genetic code" of ideology, sprouting new green shoots in the cognitive soil of digital natives.
Finally...
Incorporating "socio-quasi-reality" into the research horizon of ideological and political education is a faithful implementation and development of the fundamental principle that social existence determines social consciousness in the contemporary era. The quasi-reality turn in ideological and political education aims to open up technology, reconstruct scenes, reinvent processes, and reshape narratives. This turn is a systemic transformation rather than a mere layering of technology; it involves questions such as: Does the quasi-reality turn in ideological and political education remain faithful to the rules of ideological and political education in the traditional sense? What impact does the popularity or even the mainstreaming of socio-quasi-reality have on ideological and political education? When ideological and political education connects with the masses and presents an aesthetic or even sensational experience, is it still ideological and political education as traditionally understood and defined?
The socio-quasi-reality turn brings significant changes to ideological and political education, such as the diversification and virtualization of subjects, the fragmentation and customization of educational content, and the double-edged sword effect of value guidance. A difficult problem requiring an urgent solution—which also represents an opportunity for the development of ideological and political education research—is how to prevent people, amidst the interweaving of the real and the virtual, from replacing embodied [5] social interaction with symbolic interaction, which leads the subjects of education to gradually lose their capacity for critical reflection within the data stream, falling into a phenomenon of "suspended meaning" and "dispersed values." In the socio-quasi-reality turn of ideological and political education, the reinvention of subjective capacity is essentially a revolution in the "digital existence" [6] of human beings. When educators and the educated together navigate the cognitive interface of virtual-real fusion and achieve the dialectical unity of Marxist anthropological theory and technical rationality within a digital twin society, ideological and political education completes a paradigmatic leap from "subjectivity" to "intersubjectivity," a dimensional upgrade of the digital literacy of educational subjects, and an awakening of critical capacity.
(3) Extension of Horizon: The Spatiotemporal Expansion of the Ideological and Political Education Research Paradigm by Socio-Quasi-Reality
The more authentic and immersive experiences brought by digital intelligence technology have advanced ideological and political education from narrative practice toward sensorialization, extending from a single physical field to a composite field where the virtual and real intersect. This coordinates the interaction between real and virtual spaces, forming a three-dimensional educational network. The "human cultivation-innovation space" has undergone an evolution from "physical-real space" to "virtual-flow space," and finally to "virtual-real combined space." Therefore, the socio-quasi-reality turn in ideological and political education is both a result of the requirements of the era and driven by its own internal development.
On one hand, the quasi-reality turn in ideological and political education is necessitated by the development of the era of digital intelligence. Accompanying the expansion of the "social space for communicating subjects to freely express, show, and release themselves," as well as the weakening of the integration power of the mainstream ideology due to the value hedging between virtual and real spaces, individuals fall into cognitive drift and the deconstruction of meaning within digital simulations. Traditional research in ideological and political education took communication in physical space as its core problem domain, implying that "regarding 'being present in person' as the only way to ensure the quality of communication as much as possible, 부여ing 'bodily presence' with significant meaning"—that is, the subject is present and establishes a connection with the field. However, as some scholars have pointed out, smartphones have made "being present without communicating" a new characteristic of offline social interaction among young people; this affirms the possibility of "bodily presence with mental absence." As for "semi-presence," it lies between presence and absence, acting as an intermediate state. This change in the communicating subject—presence, absence, and semi-presence—is not at the individual level but "moves toward a holistic process of socialization." Emphasizing the sociality of man rather than the technicality is a deep reflection on the concept of communication by communicative action. Therefore, the turn toward socio-quasi-reality and the fluid characteristics of the body force the socio-quasi-reality turn of ideological and political education.
On the other hand, the quasi-reality turn in ideological and political education is driven by its own internal development. "The space of primitive man is a space of action"; humanity "only acquired the concept of abstract space through a very complex and difficult mental process—it is this very concept that not only opened the way for man to a new field of knowledge but also opened a brand new direction for man's cultural life," and the value of physical space subsequently began to wither. Since man was defined as a "symbolic animal" and began to focus on the vast world of thought, "as much as man’s symbolic activity progresses, physical reality seems to retreat accordingly." It is worth noting that this "spatial escape" phenomenon dissolves the spatiotemporal boundaries and subjective authority of ideological and political education; the physical space of traditional ideological and political education faces a crisis of deconstruction.
On one side, excessive addiction to virtual space brings about the self-loss of the educational subject, who falls into a mirror world and subsequently develops confusion regarding the cognitions and values of the real world. On the other side, the multi-dimensional penetration of information under "technological empowerment" causes the educator's discourse power to face the continuous erosion of "algorithmic black boxes" and "stratified barriers" [7]; non-mainstream ideologies take the opportunity to penetrate and form "cognitive undercurrents," causing the educator's discourse power to be continuously diluted within the tension between the virtual and the real. This inevitably requires ideological and political education to break through the limitations of linear time and space, turn toward the construction of multi-dimensional space, and, on the basis of coordinating the interactive relationship between real and virtual spaces, reconstruct a value consensus of virtual-real symbiosis to resolve the risk of "virtual space alienation" in ideological and political education. Therefore, within a three-dimensional socio-quasi-reality scene integrated with virtuality and reality—a composite of physical, psychological, and virtual space—interpreting the quasi-reality turn of ideological and political education and its fusion of objective value, experiential value, and constructive value is a requirement of its own development.
2. Virtual-Real Interweaving: Promoting Academic Innovation in the Virtual-Real Integration of Ideological and Political Education
The interdisciplinary diffusion of knowledge in ideological and political education is the result of its own development combined with external power systems like intelligent technology. New digital systems are becoming the guiding forces that govern and structure society, serving as the indispensable foundation and driving system for all other human practices. "Many narrow and misleading hypotheses of old theories still profoundly influence our thinking when, in fact, they should not. These hypotheses, once considered to be intellectual liberations, have today become core rational obstacles to our useful analysis of society." As the specific targets of ideological and political education change, the chain of cultivating people will undergo corresponding changes. We attempt to provide a solution—returning to the space of virtual-real integration, constructing the socio-quasi-reality turn of ideological and political education, and treating it as a path to explore communication in virtual space. This seeks to break through the limitations of traditional linear time and space, allowing the vitality of ideological and political education to gradually emerge through continuous dislocation and reconstruction, and continuously promoting academic innovation in the field.
(1) New Logic: Reproducing the Paradigm Shift of Ideological and Political Education via the "Form" of Virtual-Real Fusion and Digital Twins
The new logic and cognitive leap in ideological and political education catalyzed by the empowerment of digital intelligence technology are not merely a layering of technology, but a revolution in the paradigm of ideological and political education, ensuring that it always "rides the crest of the waves" and achieves "cross-modal intelligence enhancement." The new logic is manifested in reshaping the theoretical and practical forms of ideological and political education through the "form" (式, shì) of virtual-real fusion and digital twins, and anchoring the essence of cultivation through the "truth/essence" (是, shì) of humanistic values. The cognitive leap is manifested in activating critical cognition, dissolving the opposition between "virtual" and "real," extending the educational field to the "digital twin society," and committing to the construction of thinking abilities within virtual-real interaction.
Internally, space carries rich social relations: "The social strata, social classes, and other group boundaries we concern ourselves with, as well as the social power relations between them, are all embedded in certain spaces." Digital intelligence technology has released individual vitality; individual visibility has broken through spatiotemporal limitations, shifting to digital scenes and forging new social relations. Digital intelligence technology stimulates the "re-socialization" of individuals in digital space, expanding the fields of individual speech and action, and increasing the power to construct the self and social relations. Communicating subjects possess significant mobility; therefore, when individuals break through specific spatiotemporal limitations and finite relational constraints to turn toward the socio-quasi-reality facilitated by Web 3.0 and AI technology, their individuality is no longer blurred, their subjectivity becomes increasingly prominent, and their self-visibility is amplified. At the social level, due to the technological construction of the self, individuals can present themselves multi-dimensionally, which brings enhanced mobility to communicating subjects and creates more diverse ties—even resulting in the phenomenon of human-machine collaborative learning—thereby enhancing subjective vitality.
With the interactive fusion of space and technology, virtual existence and virtual action have become increasingly prominent in social practice. The body in virtual space presents two forms: "digital doubles" and "digital avatars." The former is a simulation and emulation of real identity, acting as a surrogate to cope with multi-tasking challenges or alleviate work and social pressure; the latter is more directly associated with the physical body, carrying a heavy imprint of the real body. In the process of using digital intelligence media to interact with objects, the subject can transform their own life activities into objects of will and consciousness, allowing their creative thinking, abstract thinking, artistic aesthetics, and emotional consciousness to be released, and asserting themselves in the world of objects with all their senses. This means that amidst the flood of information where the virtual and real are interwoven, the core of reinventing subjective capacity lies in cultivating "algorithmic immunity" and "value discernment." Through virtual simulation experiments, ideological and political education gradually forms an autonomous identification with the mainstream ideology, enabling the educated to transform from passive recipients into producers of meaning in the virtual-real field, assisting in the awakening of their critical capacity.
Furthermore, digital intelligence technology catalyzes a new "human-machine-human" interaction paradigm, making it possible for subjects to establish "digital empathy" connections. Exploring the "quantified self" and shaping "digital humans" in the field of ideological and political education aims not only to understand oneself through data but also to start from interpersonal interaction to broaden the capacity and methods for building relations, as well as to extend the individual's social practice and their connection with the external world, reshaping the subject's behavioral habits and cognitive patterns. Educators, through virtual-real hybrid narratives, co-construct cognitive landscapes with students. For example, "body data practices" using digital devices such as smart rings and data-collection software for behavioral, positional, and physiological tracking have expanded the degree of participation in ideological and political education practices and the digitalization process of subjective participation. This "form" of virtual-real embedding and digital twins not only brings about the reconstruction of the theoretical form of ideological and political education but also leads to an empirical strengthening of its paradigm's "experience-orientation" and a return to the "cultivation essence" of its critical function.
(2) New Structure: Reshaping Spatiotemporal Relations in Ideological and Political Education via the "Field" of Socio-Quasi-Reality
As a new element entering the discourse of ideological and political education, digital intelligence technology not only causes changes in the educational space but also alters the relationship between elements. However, no element can exist independently of a specific social context and the social relational networks and structures formed within that context. Proposing the socio-quasi-reality turn aims to tap into social potential, enhance social vitality, and form a development pattern that is "for society," "through society," and "belongs to society."
The foundation lies in the fact that the socio-quasi-reality turn reshapes the field of social interaction through the revolution of digital intelligence technology. Individuals reconstruct social relations in virtual scenes, increasing the complexity of social relations. Beyond the authoritative interpretation of the mainstream ideology, a popularized and personalized space for interpretation has been released as never before. Socio-quasi-reality allows the subjects of ideological and political education to expand into multiple identities, such as "digital humans" in virtual space. Subjects can transcend the boundary between reality and virtuality, participating in ideological and political activities through identities like digital twins and virtual digital humans, which enriches educational subjectivity and promotes the personalized and intelligent development of the educational process. Technology has also transformed from its previous role as a medium into a practical object or even a subject, achieving spatial expansion, temporal extension, and functional elongation. It has also shifted ideological and political education from an authority-dominated model to a multi-party game [8], and from one-way transmission to two-way interaction.
However, excessive reliance on technology and algorithms to conduct ideological and political education may also lead to real interaction between educators and the educated being replaced by data mediation, resulting in the phenomenon where the central position of the traditional educator is weakened and subjectivity is dissolved. In particular, the diffusion of non-mainstream ideological content in cyberspace through algorithms forms a deconstructive force against mainstream discourse, all of which brings risks to ideological and political education to a certain extent. At the same time...
The new scenarios and boundless immersion created by artificial intelligence (AI) have not only achieved a shift between "presence" and "absence," but have also propelled ideopolitical education from physical space toward digital narratives, broadening the field of inquiry in ideopolitical education research. The power of data-intelligence technology has altered the constituent elements of the ideopolitical education environment and overturned human modes of scenario perception. The ability of individuals to freely connect and switch between online and offline spheres has made possible face-to-face, many-to-many, and trans-spatio-temporal interaction and communication between the two parties of education. The characteristics of information sharing and mobility have not only increased the convenience with which people obtain information but are also quietly altering cognitive channels. This makes it difficult for traditional ideopolitical education spaces to cover the fragmented and mobile scenarios of modern life, manifesting significant multi-dimensional changes such as "spatial escape" from physical scenarios and "value suspension" in virtual spaces.
In essence, this stems from a mismatch between the educational paradigm of the industrial age and the structural nature of a data-intelligent society. Traditional educational models struggle to construct profound connections with everyday life experiences, causing ideopolitical education to exhibit a cognitive rupture between theory, practice, and life. Within virtual communities, ideopolitical education is no longer an authoritative proclamation in "Capital Letters" but a fragmented collage of "lowercase" lives; it is a spiral chain of interaction where two-way dialogue forms a process of "emotional resonance – rational reflection – value clarification." This interactive reconstruction shifts ideological dissemination toward the "negotiation of meaning," advancing the reconstruction of "intersubjective" interactive modes and providing high-quality growth and companionship. The turn toward social quasi-reality allows ideopolitical education to move from merely resisting the threats of virtual space to actively exploring the possibilities of virtual-real integration.
Consequently, the utility of discovering the quasi-real field for ideopolitical education lies in our ability—through the grasp of and intervention in this intermediary level—to better perceive how the real acts upon the virtual and how the virtual influences the real. This allows us to fully utilize various technical means and potentials within the field of quasi-reality to better achieve cognition and intervention. After all, direct intervention in "real society" is beyond the reach of education alone and is difficult to execute holistically, particularly in a society of "compressed modernity" [9] with extremely high complexity; conversely, direct intervention in "virtual society" is blunt and superficial, treating the symptoms rather than the root cause and potentially triggering resistance. The "quasi-real society" is precisely the interface and crucible where the two undergo a chemical reaction and mutual transformation. Here, values are encoded into symbols, experiences are translated into narratives, and real-world contradictions are shaped into spectacles. If ideopolitical education remains confined to traditional physical space, it is equivalent to abandoning this vital new frontier of ideological struggle. By seizing this interface, one seizes the switch that influences the transformation between virtual and real; ideopolitical education thus shifts from a passive respondent to an active architect and guide. It no longer seeks a holistic, "one-size-fits-all" solution, but rather leverages the entire system by precisely intervening in key intermediary nodes (namely the various narratives, symbols, and spectacles within the quasi-real field), guiding its evolution in the desired direction.
(3) New Nodes: Activating the Potential to Govern the Symbiosis of Virtual and Real through the "Art" of Data-Intelligent Mimetic Applications
The virtual world is not a harbor for escaping reality, but a prism for re-understanding the world. Transcending the virtual aims to form a new pattern of integrated virtual-real ideopolitical education, which helps realize innovations in research paradigms and promotes a leap in cognitive logic. The drive for this academic innovation stems from the coupling effect of behavioral data aggregation, emotional algorithmic analysis, and value-consensus generation between the subjects and objects of education across virtual and real spaces. This breakthrough innovation marks the transition of ideopolitical education from "coping with virtual shocks" to "governing the symbiosis of virtual and real," injecting new life into ideopolitical education theory.
The virtual itself is an important dimension for understanding real life; when the sensory density of a scenario exceeds a certain threshold of reality, virtual existence can similarly stimulate authentic life experiences. Currently, the application of quasi-real technologies such as virtual simulation teaching and immersive experiences has not changed the goal of ideopolitical education—to cultivate the Core Socialist Values—but rather enhances educational appeal through technical means, prompting a shift toward interactive participation and finding a balance between the virtual and the real. Thus, the social quasi-reality turn in ideopolitical education involves extracting information from mobile devices, social media, and sensor transaction data to establish application scenarios. Within these near-real scenarios, we engage in dialogue and deep collaboration, creating cognitive models and ways of thinking that match the intelligent era, thereby proposing innovative models for ideopolitical education suited to the development of the data-intelligence age.
In fact, while the application of VR technology in ideopolitical education has brought about a turn toward "dematerialized" scenarios, human qualitative environmental perception remains irreplaceable in areas such as value internalization and emotional resonance. In particular, the material environment continues to act on human cognition through geographic space and cultural symbols; this "permeation that moistens things in silence" [10] is an effect that short-term virtual experiences find difficult to replicate fully. Since perception is fundamentally built on interaction, it requires a more complete real material space to nourish the "thickness of life." This necessitates a shift from "coping with virtual shocks" to "governing the symbiosis of virtual and real" to change the subject's way of thinking, break through traditional educational models, and promote a transformation from value cultivation toward core cognitive innovation and capacity building. This achieves a "cognitive leap" in ideopolitical education—that is, breaking the shackles of traditional models and moving toward the generation of critical thinking within "human-machine-human" interaction. Because the unidirectional theoretical critique of the traditional ideological critique paradigm struggle to penetrate the cognitive mist of intertwined virtuality and reality—revealing methodological limitations in capturing virtual community behavior and quantifying ideological flux—ideopolitical education in this intertwined cognitive field must both critique the deconstruction of mainstream values by "algorithm cocoons" [11] and rebuild theoretical explanatory power within fragmented experiences, facilitating a leap into new logic and cognition.
Overall, the intertwining of different technologies creates a "1+1>2" synergistic effect, unfolding through the integration of "technology clusters." As this moves the structure of ideopolitical education from linear improvement toward an exponential leap, technology itself shifts from linear iteration toward a networked innovation ecosystem. It transcends the superficial stacking of technologies, giving rise to new structures in ideopolitical education, facilitating image-based narratives and multimodal interactions, and reshaping cognitive paths. Through the dual expansion of subjective vitality and spatio-temporal structures, we focus on these new structures, identify the crux of structural problems brought by new fields, and enrich the toolbox for innovative research in ideopolitical education. Consequently, the quasi-real turn in ideopolitical education utilizes the resonance mechanism of "scenario-emotion-cognition" to construct an observation system for practices intertwined in virtuality and reality, achieving a deep coupling of historical memory and value identity.
III. Symbiosis of Virtual and Real: Reconstructing the Practical Prospects of the Quasi-Real Turn in Ideopolitical Education
In essence, ideopolitical education promotes spiritual and emotional exchange and interaction between the two parties of education through physical spaces of "co-presence." The spiritual dialogue and emotional exchange between entities cannot be replaced by virtual space; it grants ideopolitical education a "warmth of presence," as its emotional interaction is a dialogue and understanding between one life and another. Whether in the quasi-reality, substantiality, or presentiality of ideopolitical education, the core lies in using the "virtual" to strengthen the "real" rather than using the "virtual" to replace the "real," thereby extending the educational functions of physical space.
(1) The Convergence and Dissemination of Pluralistic Narratives: Broadening the Discursive Domain of Ideopolitical Education
Daily life on touchscreens is increasingly becoming a virtual existence floating in the air, accelerating and merging across boundaries within data streams and new scenarios, giving rise to a multi-domain linked educational ecosystem. When various social trends of thought take this opportunity to pour in, filling the gaps between every scenario with "fast-food" content, those blood-boiling ideals and viewpoints worth savoring will drift away from us. This necessitates weaving a web of meaning for ideopolitical education that interlaces the virtual and the real, forming a foundation for an unceasing cycle.
Since social quasi-reality is a process of complex interface fusion and mutual construction, the quasi-real turn allows ideopolitical education to break through the rigid framework of traditional static texts and transform toward embodied, scenario-based "liquid narratives." It has undergone a process of moving from textual narratives to digital narratives, and from abstract theory to situational concretization. This "liquid narrative" possesses spatio-temporal elasticity, morphological plasticity, and emotional viscosity; it is a dialectical unity of the liquid and the solid. This involves transforming ideopolitical education content into interactive, iterable "information flows" and "meaning flows" diffused within the field of social quasi-reality, thereby ensuring that ideopolitical education shifts toward the "weaving of meaning."
The difficulty lies in the fact that liquid narratives require a greater focus on anchoring "solid values"—that is, using Core Socialist Values to demarcate narrative boundaries and establishing meta-propositions such as the essence and laws of ideopolitical education as the "narrative genes." The new structure of ideopolitical education triggered by the quasi-real turn is, in essence, a dialectical process of symbolic power reconstructing the order of meaning within an energy field. It is precisely because social quasi-reality uses technologies like digital twins and the metaverse to "deterritorialize" physical space into a fluid symbolic matrix that ideopolitical education is no longer confined to physical fields. Instead, it constructs a hyper-real cognitive interface through symbolic systems such as code, images, and virtual avatars. When symbols penetrate the boundary between virtual and real, the energy field exhibits dynamic characteristics akin to quantum entanglement. During the educational subject’s immersive experience, cognitive penetration of values is conducted, ensuring that "red genes" [12] of solid value are preserved within the surging liquid carriers. By using technical interfaces to "unconceal" and analyze the logic of value penetration within algorithmic recommendation mechanisms, we can identify the motives of information sources and establish a dual-track mode of thinking for information filtering and value judgment. This connects the interfaces of ideopolitical education theory and practice, driving the transformation of people's critical faculties from virtual cognition to real-world action.
It must be clarified that the social quasi-reality turn in ideopolitical education is dedicated to expanding the world of human experience, covering human life scenarios with digital symbolic systems and opening new apertures in narrative strategy. Since pure linguistic models struggle to fully express human social existence, data-intelligent carriers must also include non-linguistic modalities such as images and video. Therefore, with the help of wearable devices, the specific forms of social existence are pushed toward a visual and multimodal transformation, allowing multimodal knowledge expression systems to break through linguistic barriers, thereby providing a concrete carrier for the value guidance of ideopolitical education. Thus, by building a bridge merging technology with ideopolitical education, social quasi-reality can bridge the distance between the virtual and the real, reducing obstacles to spatial communication and providing a carrier and space for the deepening of emotional projection in ideopolitical education. Through the mutual construction of the virtual and the real, a paradigm leap from knowledge transmission to meaning construction is achieved.
(2) The Boundless Shaping of Immersive Scenarios: Extending the Perceptual Domain of Ideopolitical Education
The process of digitalization is profoundly reconstructing human life scenarios and systems of knowledge and experience, making it possible for ideopolitical education to break through the constraints of time and space. The multi-dimensional virtual-real fusion space constructed by data-intelligence technology provides an immersive practice foundation for ideopolitical education. The quasi-real turn helps ideopolitical education project a stronger and clearer "voice" in new scenarios, ensuring that respect for life and the preservation of the educational foundation become the enduring backdrop of the ring-like chain of ideopolitical education.
On one hand...
On the other hand, the social quasi-realization of ideological and political education focuses on how to use digital intelligence technology clusters to construct interactive educational scenes that connect "educator-agent-educand," thereby achieving the precision and personalization of ideological and political education. The scene is the educational site; the scene is the solution. Through the injection of high-quality data into selection pools, we create a clean and upright field of intelligent recommendations and digital scenes. With all-weather perception and content supply driven by algorithmic recommendations, these act like an accelerator for thought, "sparing the user the active process of judgment, screening, and critical thinking while searching for information." Consequently, ideological and political education must use values as an engine to guide flow and empower development, pushing the humanistic significance of new scenes to a higher level. This ensures they are permeated with a cultural temperament, sway with ideological essentials, and nurture spiritual character, rather than being mere "rain that barely wets the pavement" [13] activities or "passing wind" [14] superficialities.
In other words, technological empowerment—through the superposition of scenes and the restructuring of elements—forms a "ideological and political education + technological immersive experience." On one hand, this endows educational scenes with the capacity for intelligent perception, analysis, and decision-making. It promotes scene construction, problem identification, task design, and the transformation and application of technological creations, thereby enhancing the effectiveness and relevance of ideological and political education and generating personalized needs based on "one policy per person." On the other hand, it realizes a shift toward the personalized supply of ideological and political education content, releasing a multiplier effect. It not only responds timely to extreme speech on social platforms but also transforms the subjects of education from passive recipients of knowledge into co-creators of ecosystem values. This further activates a virtuous cycle where demand feeds back into supply, shifting from one-on-one Q&A to emotional communication and dynamically generating solutions tailored to "a thousand faces for a thousand people."
(III) The Interactive Nesting of Systemic Ecology: Upgrading the Dimensionality of the Practice Domain of Ideological and Political Education
New scenes and boundless, immersive social quasi-reality provide the subjects of behavior with unprecedented increases in activity fields and degrees of freedom. This also promotes the integration of online and offline spheres and the linkage of theory and practice, forming an all-encompassing, multi-level, and three-dimensional educational ecology. It allows ideological and political education to truly integrate into daily life, expanding its practical space and giving rise to new modes such as immersive experiences, demonstrating the strength of theoretical innovation through the reality of practical implementation.
In the process of continuously absorbing the "digital dividend," the interface and integration of digital scenes allow the domain of ideological and political education to obtain near-infinite potential for expansion. When digitalization becomes a ubiquitous practical tool and object within the life-world, people gain greater freedom within space. Even if the human body cannot escape from physical space, intelligent devices shift human attention to virtual space; thus, physical presence can be transformed into a spiritual absence. Conversely, in virtual scenes, people can participate in activities through text, images, video, or even 3D methods, achieving "spiritual presence" or "partial physical presence" in various contexts. This means that regardless of whether the body is manifest, spiritual presence becomes possible. Moreover, people can appear in multiple scenes simultaneously and allocate their physical and spiritual presence according to their needs, tightly connecting the relationships between people and ideological and political education, platforms, objects, and other individuals. This builds a "Internet + intelligent scenes + ideological and political education" macro-platform, increasing the coverage of education. By cultivating niche sectors and strengthening the new structure of virtual-real integration, we can use digital intelligence technology as the warp and weft to reconstruct the spatio-temporal coordinates of the ideological and political education ecology. Ubiquitous scenes catalyze the deterritorialization and restructuring of educational elements, achieving a qualitative transformation of educational supply from "extensive flood irrigation" [15] to "targeted infiltration."
Furthermore, the free flow of people within space causes the relational dimension of ideological and political education to expand from "human-human" relations to a multi-element connectivity of "human-intelligence-object." The Internet has profoundly reconstructed the network of human social relations. Its open, equal, and interactive characteristics break traditional hierarchical modes of communication, granting marginalized groups the right to speak and giving everyone the power to express themselves freely across space-time boundaries, forming a spiritual landscape of pluralistic dialogue and multi-directional interlacing. This new structure takes the "traffic entrance" of ideological and political education as the coordinate for the free and well-rounded development of the individual. The identities of the educational subject and object collapse into a synchronic existence within virtual interaction, while emotional resonance and value identity form a state of superposition through data flows. This non-localized exchange of energy allows the theoretical and practical activities of ideological and political education to break through traditional spatio-temporal constraints, achieving a wave-function-like probabilistic coverage. The two parties in education upgrade from a "key-to-key" digital connection to a "heart-to-heart" concrete interaction, achieving a deep collision of thought within the intertwined social network of the virtual and the real.
The fundamental point is that we must fully recognize that social quasi-reality is an extension of reality. It involves mobilizing the emergence of multi-modal information dissemination and, more importantly, enhancing the substantiality and presence of ideological and political education based on the concepts of "embodied cognition + social interaction," thereby better achieving the goal of "fostering virtue through education" (lìdé shùrén). In fact, the issue of technological iteration is both a technical and a social problem; it requires restructuring new social relations, interactions, and structures. It involves finding the key logic, pivotal problems, and core contradictions in the development of ideological and political education, followed by breakthroughs in frontier technology clusters, the creation of application scenes, and the formation of diverse subjects to achieve a chain-like transformation of human-computer interaction and co-creative sharing. Therefore, using technological empowerment to realize cross-system integration of ideological and political education resources ensures an adaptation to intelligent forms—driven by data, human-machine coordination, cross-border integration, and co-creation—while avoiding the weakening of the essential attributes of education due to over-reliance on algorithms. This injects vitality into educational innovation. For example, using avatars and multi-dimensional interaction technologies to design cross-dimensional social practice tasks can concretely interpret the "grand narratives" of ideological and political education. This helps transform the physical space of traditional education into "holographic interactive cabins," forging every scene into a "fission reactor" for enhancing educational effectiveness, leaping from the transmission of knowledge and information to experience and exploration, and recreating new subjects and new digital educational scenes.
Conclusion
Facing the surging tide of the era of digital intelligence technology, the "AI Plus" action aims to "promote the broad and deep integration of artificial intelligence with various industries and fields of the economy and society, reshaping the paradigms of human production and life, promoting a revolutionary leap in productive forces and a deep-level transformation of relations of production, and accelerating the formation of new forms of intelligent economy and society characterized by human-machine coordination, cross-border integration, and co-creation and sharing." Social quasi-reality is precisely the theoretical anchor point through which the discourse of ideological and political education conforms to this trend and responds to its inquiries, thereby seeking to manifest its own epochal significance, reshape spatio-temporal relations, and expand its field of practice.
In revealing the "social quasi-reality" turn of ideological and political education, we must incorporate "fostering virtue through education" into the value priority of educational innovation. Interdisciplinary tools—such as tracking the value evolution of virtual communities and quantifying the acceptance of ideology—should be used as the technical support for systemic innovation in ideological and political education, promoting the transition from "problems" to "potential." In the constant pursuit, struggle, and exploration of the relationship between technology and emotional fission, we must confront internal limitations and contradictions to draw the nourishment and fuel of life. In short, the social quasi-reality turn of ideological and political education—by rebuilding new scenes, logic, and structures, and through mutual tempering with life and living—always integrates digital precision with the density of meaning. It is committed to subverting impetuousness, evading assimilation, and resisting vulgarity, allowing the flow of emotion and the touch of the spirit to pry open a crack in the hard reality of the world. Through this crack, those quasi-realities that have long since become symbols of the era take on multiple references: shifting from pointing toward the state of survival in physical space to becoming a value carrier referring to spiritual existence. This uses spatio-temporal topology to establish "blank space and innovation," forming an independent knowledge system of ideological and political education that "suits the trend of the world and meets the needs of the people" [16] in terms of fostering virtue, technological governance, and structural innovation.