Diverging patterns of interaction around news on social media: insularity and partisanship during the 2018 Italian election campaign

ABSTRACT

The paper considers how social media ecologies are affecting partisan engagement around political news and online attention economies by investigating the case of the 2018 Italian general election. By analyzing Twitter and Facebook interactions around political news in the lead-up to the election, we shed light on levels of insularity characterizing sources preferred by different partisan communities and investigate how specific patterns of active attention emerge around different sources and around stories proposing different framing of specific political actors. Our findings indicate that, on Twitter, sources mainly shared by supporters of populist parties (the Five Star Movement and the League) are characterized by higher levels of insularity compared to those shared by supporters of other parties. We also find that, on Facebook, news items published by highly insular sources receive a higher number of shares per comment. Finally, our analyses show that news presenting a positive framing of the Five Star Movement – the unique ‘cyber party’ in the system – receives a higher number of shares per comment compared to items presenting the Movement in a negative light, while the opposite is true for stories on all other political parties.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• attention economy
• ideological self-segregation
• political news
• election campaigns
• Italy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Fabio Giglietto http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8019-1035

Notes on contributors

Fabio Giglietto, PhD, is associate professor at the Department of Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, where he also teaches social media analysis. His main research interests are theory of information, communication, and society with a specific focus on the relationship between social systems and new technologies. On these topics, he has published extensively in journals such as the Journal of Communication; Information, Communication and Society; Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media; Social Media + Society; and Social Science Computer Review. A full, up-to-date list of publications is available at https://goo.gl/pbXyBd.

Augusto Valeriani (PhD, Siena University, Italy) is associate professor in sociology of communication at the Political and Social Sciences Department of the University of Bologna. His research focuses on political communication, digital media, and journalism. He has authored articles appearing in several international journals, including Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication; New Media and Society; International Journal of Press/Politics; Information, Communication and Society; Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication; Sage Open; and Current Sociology.

Nicola Righetti, PhD in Sociology and Social Research, is a research fellow at the University of Urbino ‘Carlo Bo’, member of the Mapping Italian News team and temporary professor of Sociology at the University of Verona (Italy). His research interests lie in the field of sociology of culture and communication, with a focus on digital and computational methods, data mining and text mining techniques, and R software.

Giada Marino is a PhD candidate at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo in Communication and Social Sciences. Her dissertation is focused on ephemeral user generated content and online self-presentation. Since 2019 she is one of the research team members awarded the Social Media and Democracy research grant by Social Science One. She is coauthor of the book chapter ‘Binge-watching the algorithmic catalog: Making sense of Netflix in the aftermath of the Italian launch’ in the volume ‘Netflix at the Nexus: Content, practice, and production in streaming television’ edited by Peter Lang (2019). Since December 2017 she is a member of ‘Mapping Italian News Media Political Coverage in the Lead-up of 2018 General Election’ research team as a junior research assistant.

Notes

1. Those polling at 1% or more in the latest December 2017 YouTrend’s average of polls (see https://www.youtrend.it/2012/02/10/tabella-riepilogo-sondaggi-politici-elettorali-storico-2008-2009-2010-2011-2012-2013-2014-2015-2016-2017/).

2. We specifically collected tweets that matched a «retweets_of:» rule for the following Twitter accounts: angealfa, alternativa_pop (Popular Alternative, or «Alternativa Popolare»), bealorenzin, civica_popolare (Popular Civic List, or «Civica Popolare»), giulianopisapia, campoprog (Progressive Camp, or «Campo Progressista»), giorgiameloni, fratelliditaIia (Brothers of Italy, or «Fratelli d'Italia»), forza_italia, berlusconi (Forza Italia), verditalia, insieme2018, partsocialista (Together, or «Insieme»), pbersani, articolounomdp, si_sinistra, nfratoianni, possibileit, civati, pietrograsso, robersperanza, lauraboldrini, liberi_uguali (Free and Equal, or «Liberi e Uguali»), matteosalvinimi, leganordpadania, noiconsalvini, legasalvini (Northern League, or «Lega Nord»), luigidimaio, beppe_grillo, mov5stelle (Five Star Movement, or «Movimento Cinque Stelle»), matteorenzi, pdnetwork, paologentiloni (Democratic Party, or «Partito Democratico»), emmabonino, radicali, piu_europa (+Europa), maurizioacerbo, direzioneprc, potere_alpopolo (Power to the People, or «Potere al Popolo»).

3. https://github.com/digitalmethodsinitiative/dmi-tcat/wiki.

4. 1 February 2018 was the official starting point of the electoral campaign, subsequently closed by the election day on 4 March 2018.

5. For an assessment of MP-MPAS method against survey data please see Giglietto et al., 2019.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Foundation Open Society Institute in cooperation with the Information Program of the Open Society Foundations: [grant number OR2017-38824].