Does populism go viral? How Italian leaders engage citizens through social media

Bracciale, Roberta; Andretta, Massimiliano; Martella, Antonio

doi:10.1080/1369118x.2021.1874472

Cited by 34 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…The electoral campaign before the 2018 general elections was marked by an intensive use of the social media (Mazzoleni 2018). The analysis by Bracciale, Andretta & Martella (2021) of digital campaigns conducted by Italian party leaders on that occasion supports the theorization of populism as a communication strategy. Thus, stylistic aspects were effective elements in engaging social media audiences.…”

Section: Populist Political Communication During 2018 Election Campaignmentioning

confidence: 61%

“…Salvini induced much more engagement on FB by ostracizing immigrants, while Di Maio's critics against the elites performed better on Twitter. Therefore, the success of populist communication on social media is the result of multiple factors, including political positioning (challenger vs. incumbent), platform characteristics (demographics and uses), and the precise communication strategies which are adopted to 'perform' populism, in its various forms (Bracciale, Andretta & Martella 2021).…”

Section: Populist Political Communication During 2018 Election Campaignmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Information Sources Shared on Facebook and Networking by Populist Leaders in Italy

Bertero¹

2021

SPS

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Social media (Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube) seem to be the key tool for accessing news in Italy. Coincidentally, they are also the key tool for communication and (internet-based) organisational aspects of two rather different populist parties (5SM and League) and their leaders, Di Maio (until January 2020) and Salvini. Salvini and Di Maio's FB pages shared contents that were not exactly analogous but still they present some similar characteristics. Among differences one can note that Salvini in contrast to Di Maio shared more frequently local content. Moreover, Salvini virtually ignored European sources. Network analysis showed that Salvini's FB page network was relatively far more extensive than Di Maio's. Interestingly, FB groups and pages sharing Di Maio's posts were rather symbolic in numbers and mainly organized as bottom-up initiatives by small groups of militants that were not directly or formally linked to the 5SM. Conversely, those FB pages and groups more prone to share Salvini's contents tended to perceive themselves as local sections of the party. Both leaders tended to share content that supported their arguments, or at least content that they could use to support their own interpretation.

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Section: Populist Political Communication During 2018 Election Campaignmentioning

confidence: 61%

Section: Populist Political Communication During 2018 Election Campaignmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Sources Shared on Facebook and Networking by Populist Leaders in Italy

Bertero¹

2021

SPS

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show abstract

“…Finally, we coded for the tone employed in these publications (such as emotional, informational, belligerent, etc.) (Bracciale et al 2021). Posts could be included in more than one category (for example, if they were characterized by both religious and antagonistic discourses).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…He occasionally used Facebook to clarify his opinions as a candidate on various issues (12% of his posts) and barely elaborated on his political plan (only 3% of posts). Previous research has noted the importance of simplification in populist communications (Bracciale et al 2021). Alvarado employed this strategy by dichotomizing "us" and "them" in the products he shared on Facebook.…”

Section: Communication Style Elementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Populism, Religion, and Social Media in Central America

Siles

Guevara

Jiménez

et al. 2021

The International Journal of Press/Politics

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This paper analyzes how presidential candidates Fabricio Alvarado and Nayib Bukele used Facebook during the elections in Costa Rica (2018) and El Salvador (2019) respectively to develop a particular style of communication that blended populist elements and religious discourse. This style of communication extended traditional modes of populism that have prevailed in Latin America since the turn of the century (emphasizing the notion of the hero who comes to rescue “the people”) but expressed them in an explicitly religious way (stressing the role of a “messiah” who comes to alter the established political order). We conducted both content and multimodal discourse analyses of 838 posts made by these candidates on Facebook during their respective electoral campaigns. We argue that the study of these campaigns would be incomplete without accounting for the relationship between populism, religion, and social media. While populism gave political validity to religious discourse, a religious imaginary provided populism with charismatic and messianic authority. This populist/religious reason found an ideal expression in Facebook and, simultaneously, was resignified by this platform's affordances. In this way, we assess how fundamentalist Christianity has become a legitimating force of knowledge and politics in the context of epistemic tensions that shape contemporary Latin-American societies.

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“…Tale obiettivo è perseguito attraverso l'analisi della comunicazione del leader politico italiano che con maggiore efficacia costruisce il discorso anti-immigrazione sfruttando il potenziale comunicativo dei social media (Bracciale, Andretta, & Martella, 2021;Milazzo, 2020;Ziccardi, 2016). L'analisi è sviluppata all'interno della pagina Facebook del leader della Lega Matteo Salvini e si concentra sulla relazione tra pandemia globale e la migrazione di migranti verso le coste italiane durante il primo anno di emergenza sanitaria (marzo 2020-marzo 2021).…”

Section: Introduzioneunclassified

La comunicazione di Matteo Salvini durante la pandemia: l’immigrazione e la delegittimazione dell’avversario politico

Lucchesi

2021

SComS

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Following the critical discourse analysis approach, this article intends to highlight how the anti-immigration perspective is (re)produced within the Facebook page of the Italian political leader Matteo Salvini during the pandemic scenario between March 2020–March 2021. Quantitative and qualitative analysis have been applied to Salvini’s posts and users’ comments aiming at identifying the linguistic strategies that contribute to instrumentalizing the emergency and aim to reinforce the process of “securitization” of national borders as well as the re-legitimation of national identities. Findings suggest that the main discursive strategies used by the political leader do not include migrants as a danger for the spread of the virus. Rather, Salvini systematically organized the migratory narration on negative campaigning blaming political opponents and recontextualized the moralization of borders. The contribution helps to reveal how the anti-migration discourse is reproduced during the COVID-19 outbreak and how the politicization of the migration serves as a context for the normalization of migrant’s exclusion.

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Does populism go viral? How Italian leaders engage citizens through social media

Cited by 34 publications

References 57 publications

Information Sources Shared on Facebook and Networking by Populist Leaders in Italy

Information Sources Shared on Facebook and Networking by Populist Leaders in Italy

Populism, Religion, and Social Media in Central America

La comunicazione di Matteo Salvini durante la pandemia: l’immigrazione e la delegittimazione dell’avversario politico

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