Italy: Mixed Populism and Agenda Setting in Election Campaign

The chapter discusses the political context in Italy during the 2019 EP elections and introduces the political communication environment of the country. Particular attention is given to the role of Twitter in Italian political communication and populism in country’s party field during the twenty-first century. The empirical Twitter analysis focuses on 2090 tweets sent from 118 Twitter accounts by various political actors during a one-month period in May 2019. The right-wing oriented politicians were the most active tweeters in the Italian sample, Forza Italia-affiliated actors even beating Matteo Salvini, the leader of populist radical-right League. However, in retweeting and commenting on activities, smaller left-leaning and pro-European actors such as Carlo Calenda from the ‘We Are Europeans’ party were the most salient. Thematic analysis and topic modelling indicate a strong national perspective in Italian Twitter debates, largely deriving from adopted criticism against the EU’s austerity policy as being a threat to national sovereignty. The Italian Twittersphere was highly polarised between the Eurosceptic populist right and pro-European liberals. However, the network analysis also demonstrates a strong position of official accounts of the Democratic Party and the main television channels in the network. There are features of both fringe and mainstream populism in Italian election communication.