The representation of Matteo Salvini in gossip magazines: the Ordinary Super Leader

ABSTRACT

One of the most prominent personalities of contemporary Italian politics is Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Lega (League). Salvini is not only a popular politician: he can also be considered a celebrity. He became a recognizable character through his constant presence in the popular media and his habit of appearing in informal contexts. Through an analysis of three of the main Italian gossip magazines (Chi, Oggi and Vanity Fair) between February 2017 and February 2018, we provide an overview of the coverage obtained by Salvini in the gossip press, in order to understand what type of celebrity emerges and how it contributed to conveying his political message. Our main hypothesis is that he has been able to appear both as a ‘super celebrity politician’ and as an ‘everyday celebrity politician’, meaning someone similar to ordinary people.

KEYWORDS:

• Celebrity politics
• Salvini
• gossip magazines
• league
• intimization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See Audipress report 2019 http://audipress.it/pubblicati-dati-audipress-2019-iii-mauri-sostanziale-stabilita-nella-lettura/ (last accessed 6/5/2020).

2. The 2018 Italian general election was held on 4 March 2018.

3. The data used for this article come from a larger research project that concerns all the ‘politically relevant’ actors (not only Salvini) covered by the magazines analysed. The content analysis was carried out by two extensively trained coders. Intercoder reliability was assessed using a random sample of 40 articles independently coded twice by a different trained coder. Krippendorff’s alpha score is 0.822 for the variable, type of intimization; 0.864 for the variable, type of representation.

4. Chi, 27 June 2018

5. Oggi, 13 July 2017

6. Two very popular Italian singers

7. Oggi, 22 February 2018

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marco Mazzoni

Marco Mazzoni is Associate Professor of the Sociology of Communication at the University of Perugia, where he teaches courses on public relations and on the Italian media system. His fields of research are journalism, corruption and the analysis of the different forms of political communication. His work has appeared in a number of international peer-reviewed journals, including the International Journal of Press/Politics, Journalism, Journalism Studies, the European Journal of Communication, the International Journal of Cultural Studies.

Roberto Mincigrucci

Roberto Mincigrucci is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of Perugia. He has been a member of the Perugia unit in the EU-funded Seventh Framework Programme project, ‘Anticorruption Policies Revisited: Global Trends and European Responses to the Challenge of Corruption’ [Anticorrp]. His fields of research are journalism, corruption and the analysis of the different forms of political communication. His PhD thesis deals with political scandals related to corrupt behaviour.