https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9159-0688
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ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 health emergency increased disinformation’s role and fostered a growing fragmentation between conflicting opinions on COVID-19 causes, vaccination policies, and government measures to deal with the pandemic. Studies have found that disinformation sources included private citizens, independent organizations, mainstream online newspapers and even public figures such as politicians, commentators, bloggers etc. In Italy, the Twitter debate ignited a conflict between mainstream positions in favour of restrictions, and more libertarian opinions extremely critical of government measures. Our research investigates, through a computational approach based on digital methods and social network analysis (SNA), opinion leaders’ roles in the Italian green pass debate on Twitter that surfaced in the second half of 2021. Drawing on the classic two-step model of communication, our essay identifies the Italian opinion leaders on Twitter and their content dissemination strategies. Our analysis reveals a limited number of dominant voices interacting in segregated networks of users. These networks can be considered echo chambers given the verbose and self-referential tweeting activity of their opinion leaders. Moreover, such activity involves spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories through a dissemination strategy aimed at diverting the audience from Twitter, towards ‘below-the-radar’ environments (e.g. Rumble), where political views are more radical.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6424693.
Notes
1. Green pass is the name of the Italian certification which attests the full anti-COVID-19 vaccination cycle, or recovery from COVID-19; https://www.dgc.gov.it/web/.
2. Hootsuite Inc., Digital 2022 - Social Media Marketing & Management dashboard. Hootsuite. Retrieved April 9, 2022, from https://www.hootsuite.com/resources/digital-trends.
3. Starri, M. (2022, 1 February). Digital 2021 - I Dati Italiani. We Are Social Italy. Retrieved 9 April 2022, from https://wearesocial.com/it/blog/2021/02/digital-2021-i-dati-italiani/.
4. Academic Research Access allows the data access to students working on a thesis, PhD candidates working on a dissertation, or research scholars affiliated with or employed by an academic institution. https://developer.twitter.com/en/products/twitter-api/academic-research.
5. 4CAT is a shared platform that allows users to collect and analyse data from different Social Media Networks; the platform has been developed thanks to the collaboration between the Amsterdam based organizations OILAB (Open Intelligence Lab) and Digital Methods Initiative. For more informations.
Peeters, S., & Hagen, S. (In press). The 4CAT Capture and Analysis Toolkit: A Modular Tool for Transparent and Traceable Social Media Research. Computational Communication Research, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3914892
6. DMI- TCAT (Digital Methods Initiative – Twitter Capture and Analysis Toolset) is a software tool developed by Digital Methods Initiative that focuses on Twitter’s analysis. For more informations: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDmiTcat.
7. In correspondence with the 6 peaks we found approximately the 48% of the total collected tweets.
8. Ruggiero, di G., Cigna, Y., Puente, D., & Redazione. (2021, October 22). A Trieste Almeno in 20 Mila contro il green pass, scatta l’allarme per gli infiltrati violenti. Puzzer Scaricato Anche Dai no vax. Open. Retrieved April 9, 2022, from https://www.open.online/2021/10/21/trieste-manifestazione-venerdi-22-ottobre-allarme-infiltrati-violenti/.
9. The super green pass could be obtained only after a full COVID-19 vaccination cycle or after recovery from COVID-19. The green pass could be obtained by a negative COVID-19 test.
10. GEPHI is the leading visualization and exploration software for all kinds of graphs, especially suitable for visualization and analysis of social networks; https://gephi.org/.
11. This qualitative survey was based on the desktop analysis of the top mentioned Twitter profiles; in consideration of the popularity of the opinion leaders mentioned in the Italian political debate we could easily infer their critical views on the green pass adoption; see.
Wikipedia contributors. (2021, July 21). Claudio Borghi (politician). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia. Retrieved 19:52, April 11, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Claudio_Borghi_(politician)&oldid=1034676658
Wikipedia contributors. (2022, April 7). Francesca Donato. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia. Retrieved 19:52, April 11, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Francesca_Donato&oldid=1081513765
Wikipedia contributors. (2022, April 9). Matteo Salvini. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia. Retrieved 19:53, April 11, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Matteo_Salvini&oldid=1081773380
12. TCAT allowed us to translate 95.77% of the URLs (the remaining 4.23% were bad links) and put this entity in relation to the users we focused on.
13. Wikipedia contributors. (2022, March 28). Lega Nord. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia. Retrieved 19:54, April 11, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lega_Nord&oldid=1079739365.
14. ByoBlu is listed on different Italian fact-checkers black list such as BUTAC (The black list: BUTAC – Bufale un tanto Al Chilo. Butac. (n.d.). Retrieved April 1, 2022, from https://www.butac.it/tag/the-black-list/).
15. By ‘qualitative analysis’ we meant thoroughly reading the opinion leaders’ Twitter profiles to identify their opinions.
17. Roberto Burioni is an Italian virologist, physician and academic. He’s one of the most authoritative voices in favour of the mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign and the green pass in Italy, and he has prominent visibility in the Italian mainstream media (TV, newspapers, radio etc.), see.
Wikipedia contributors. (2022, January 14). Roberto Burioni. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia. Retrieved 19:57, April 11, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roberto_Burioni&oldid=1065528031
18. The profiles refer respectively to the Italian national newspapers La Repubblica and Il Corriere della Sera.
19. Maria Giovanna Maglie is a well known Italian journalist and opinionist; during the nineties worked for the main TV networks and collaborated with multiple national newspapers. In 1993 she resigned from Rai due to a scandal concerning alleged reimbursements of expenses inflated during her stays abroad, see.
Maria Giovanna Maglie. (27 marzo 2022). Wikipedia, L’enciclopedia libera. Tratto il 11 aprile 2022, 20:01 da//it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_Giovanna_Maglie&oldid=126477676.
20. ‘Maria Giovanna Maglie Claudio Borghi Aquilini Presentano Italiani Dannati’ (2021). YouTube. Retrieved April 1, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyflQObl36E&t=1822s.
21. ‘Maria Giovanna Maglie Attualità E Nefandezze Quotidiane’ (2022). YouTube. Retrieved April 1, 2022, from https://youtu.be/AlzHjD1ilCk.
22. The video sharing platform (https://rumble.com/) had an impressive increase during the last two years and has been repeatedly accused of fuelling misinformation and conspiracy theories, such as QAnon, see.
Opinion, W. (2021, May 11). Rumble sends viewers tumbling towards misinformation. Wired. Retrieved April 9, 2022, from https://www.wired.com/story/rumble-sends-viewers-tumbling-toward-misinformation/;
Reuters. (2021, December 15). Trump social media company partners with Canadian Video Platform, rumble – national. Global News. Retrieved April 9, 2022, from https://globalnews.ca/news/8451636/donald-trump-social-media-canada-rumble/.
23. Green pass E vaccini: Giù Le Mani Dai minorenni – Claudio … (n.d.). Retrieved April 9, 2022, from https://www.byoblu.com/2021/07/26/green-pass-e-vaccini-giu-le-mani-dai-minorenni-claudio-borghi-e-barbara-balanzoni/.
24. Is it worth noting that Barbara Balanzoni is a specialized anaesthesiologist and not a virologist or an epidemiologist; https://barbarabalanzoni.it/.
25. This study offer a systematic review of other 42 studies carried out in order to argument the vaccine anti-Covid-19 efficacy.
Mohammed et al. (Citation2022). The efficacy and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines in reducing infection, severity, hospitalization, and mortality: a systematic review. Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics, 18(1), 2027160.
The second one is another study proving the efficacy in risk reduction of the main vaccines introduced in Western countries in 2020 and 2021: Olliaro, Els, and Vaillant (Citation2021). ‘COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness – the elephant (not) in the room.’ The Lancet Microbe 2.7 (2021): e279-e280
26. Wikipedia contributors. (2022, March 31). Pizzagate conspiracy theory. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia. Retrieved 15:34, April 9, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory&oldid=1080340911.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sara Monaci
Sara Monaci is an Associate Professor in Media and Communication, DIST – Politecnico di Torino (IT).
Simone Persico
Simone Persico is a Phd Student, DIST – Politecnico di Torino (IT).