Facebook, digital campaign and Italian general election 2018. A focus on the disintermediation process activated by the web

The digital media convergence has innovated all the information and communication channels. ICTs have adapted to the reticular structure, which can be interpreted as a paradigm of today's Network Society, invoking a reorganization of man-machine relationship, interpersonal interactions and the ways of collecting, processing and storing data. Political communication and its processes of participation are not exempt from this evident change. The aim of this paper is to investigate the transformation dynamics that have taken place through the Internet and social networks, as effectively more democratic tools that are able to stimulate a bottom-up and grassroots participation, in some respects a disintermediate participation compared to the typical unidirectionality of analogue media. In identifying the specific characteristics of the interaction spaces offered by the web, we have examined the digital campaign strategy devised by the political parties during the Italian general election (4th March 2018). The results have returned an unprecedented scenario, in which the social media strategy plays a leading role in the different dimensions of political marketing. The web is proposed to become the ideal social arena for the meeting between political offer and demand.