Crisi di fiducia, legittimità delle istituzioni e nuove modalità di comunicazione

Le istituzioni pubbliche attraversano ormai da molti anni una crisi di legittimità, diffusa in tutte le democrazie occidentali ma particolarmente acuta in Italia. Per superare questa crisi, la comunicazione assume una valenza fondamentale non solo come trasmissione di messaggi dalle istituzioni ai cittadini, ma anche come condivisione di contenuti attraverso uno scambio bidirezionale che dovrebbe avvenire in modalità quanto più possibile dialogiche e paritarie. D’altra parte, il processo di “apertura istituzionale” in direzione di una propensione maggiore al dialogo e al riconoscimento dei cittadini come interlocutori e non come destinatari può anche produrre tensioni e generare dinamiche contraddittorie. La diffusione di modalità di comunicazione aperte, inclusive e continue si inserisce inoltre in un processo più ampio di trasformazione strutturale del funzionamento e della concezione normativa delle amministrazioni pubbliche, nel senso di un allontanamento dal modello classico weberiano in favore di una concezione certamente più adatta a rispondere alle sfide della complessità, ma anche meno chiaramente incardinata nella teoria democratica

Party Campaigners or Citizen Campaigners? How Social Media Deepen and Broaden Party-Related Engagement

Digital media are often blamed for accelerating the decline of political parties as channels for citizen participation. By contrast, we show that political engagement on social media may revitalize party activities because these platforms are means for both party members and ordinary citizens to discuss politics and engage with and around political parties. Using online surveys conducted in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, we find that party members engage in a wider variety of party-related activities than average respondents, but the same can also be said of nonparty members who informally discuss politics on social media. Moreover, the strength of the relationship between party membership and engagement decreases as the intensity of political discussion on social media increases. This suggests that political discussions on social media can narrow the divide in party-related engagement between members and nonmembers, and to some extent flatten rather than reinforce existing political hierarchies. Finally, we find that the correlation between party membership and engagement is stronger in Germany, where party organizations are more robust, than in Italy and the United Kingdom, highlighting the role of party organizational legacies in the digital age

Social Networks, Political Discussion and Voting in Italy: A Study of the 2006 Election

This article analyzes the role of interpersonal discussion networks and television as the key mediators of political information that can potentially drive citizens’ electoral choices. The research relies on survey data of Italian voters in the aftermath of the 2006 general election. Findings show that the partisan intensity of discussion networks significantly affects the vote, so that citizens embedded in homogeneous partisan networks are more influenced than those who discuss politics within heterogeneous networks that do not uniformly support a unified political position. The effects of television news programs and talk shows turn out to be comparatively smaller than those of interpersonal networks, but are still significant for those programs and formats that attract politically diverse audiences. We interpret this result as a consequence of the increasing relevance of selective exposure in the Italian electorate, which has largely been documented by previous research. Thus, while the effects of interpersonal discussion networks seem to depend on the degree of their partisan intensity, the impact of television seems to be enhanced, in the Italian context, by a program’s ability to present itself as less openly biased than most of the competitors, thus failing to elicit selective exposure by the viewers. The main implication of this study is that interpersonal communication has a remarkable influence on citizens’ choices, and it should be studied together with mass communication, as they both constitute crucial components of voters’ information environments, although their effects depend on partially different factors

What a Difference a Critical Election Makes:Social Networks and Political Discussion in Italy Between 2008 and 2013

This article offers an analysis of the factors associated with frequency of political discussion among representative samples of Italian voters during the general election campaigns of 2008 and 2013. This diachronic comparison allows us to assess how political discussion was shaped in two campaigns characterized by widely different opinion climates, with the 2013 one marked by widespread political disaffection. Our findings show that political discussion notably increased in 2013 and the factors driving political conversations changed substantially. Whereas in 2008 those who voted out of protest and were part of politically homogeneous groups were less likely to talk about politics than the rest of the sample, in 2013 the interaction between protest voting and network homogeneity strongly boosted political discussion

Of Echo Chambers and Contrarian Clubs:Exposure to Political Disagreement Among German and Italian Users of Twitter

Scholars have debated whether social media platforms, by allowing users to select the information to which they are exposed, may lead people to isolate themselves from viewpoints with which they disagree, thereby serving as political “echo chambers.” We investigate hypotheses concerning the circumstances under which Twitter users who communicate about elections would engage with (a) supportive, (b) oppositional, and (c) mixed political networks. Based on online surveys of representative samples of Italian and German individuals who posted at least one Twitter message about elections in 2013, we find substantial differences in the extent to which social media facilitates exposure to similar versus dissimilar political views. Our results suggest that exposure to supportive, oppositional, or mixed political networks on social media can be explained by broader patterns of political conversation (i.e., structure of offline networks) and specific habits in the political use of social media (i.e., the intensity of political discussion). These findings suggest that disagreement persists on social media even when ideological homophily is the modal outcome, and that scholars should pay more attention to specific situational and dispositional factors when evaluating the implications of social media for political communication

Social media, political polarization, and political disinformation: a review of the scientific literature

The following report is intended to provide an overview of the current state of the literature on the relationship between social media; political polarization; and political “disinformation,” a term used to encompass a wide range of types of information about politics found online, including “fake news,” rumors, deliberately factually incorrect information, inadvertently factually incorrect information, politically slanted information, and “hyperpartisan” news. The review of the literature is provided in six separate sections, each of which can be read individually but that cumulatively are intended to provide an overview of what is known — and unknown — about the relationship between social media, political polarization, and disinformation. The report concludes by identifying key gaps in our understanding of these phenomena and the data that are needed to address them

Social media, political polarization, and political disinformation: a review of the scientific literature

The following report is intended to provide an overview of the current state of the literature on the relationship between social media; political polarization; and political “disinformation,” a term used to encompass a wide range of types of information about politics found online, including “fake news,” rumors, deliberately factually incorrect information, inadvertently factually incorrect information, politically slanted information, and “hyperpartisan” news. The review of the literature is provided in six separate sections, each of which can be read individually but that cumulatively are intended to provide an overview of what is known — and unknown — about the relationship between social media, political polarization, and disinformation. The report concludes by identifying key gaps in our understanding of these phenomena and the data that are needed to address them

Accidental exposure to politics on social media as online participation equalizer in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom

We assess whether and how accidental exposure to political information on social media contributes to citizens\u2019 online political participation in comparative perspective. Based on three online surveys of samples representative of German, Italian, and British Internet users in the aftermath of the 2014 European Parliament elections, we find that accidental exposure to political information on social media is positively and significantly correlated with online participation in all three countries, particularly so in Germany where overall levels of participation were lower. We also find that interest in politics moderates this relationship so that the correlation is stronger among the less interested than among the highly interested. These findings suggest that inadvertent encounters with political content on social media are likely to reduce the gap in online engagement between citizens with high and low interest in politics, potentially broadening the range of voices that make themselves heard