Political Information on Twitter: #elezioni2013 and the role of gatekeeper citizens

Thanks to the possibilities offered by digital media to produce and distribute content to a potential global audience, the political and civic engagement of citizens in public debate is thus expanded and simplified. Citizens can now produce and share their own political content, take part in public debate and influence the political agenda. We use the expression “networked public” to refer to a new kind of “performer public” that seems to contribute actively to the political debate by producing, re-adapting and distributing content autonomously. In this perspective we can observe the transformation of the political communication system in the direction of a new model, more centrifugal than centripetal. This chapter takes up «the challenge for the political communication and information to understand if and how this way of participating in the public sphere “from the bottom” is having a knock-on effect on the traditional political sphere» (Boccia Artieri, 2013, p. 182). To do so we analyse the means through which the “communicative exuberance” (Chadwick, 2009) of the grassroots translates into a more intense participation in the public discussion. The dynamics of online conversation reverberate in public discourse online, and vice versa, and in fact are a key element in the increased hybridization of news systems that are transforming the equilibrium of the system of traditional political communication. In order to understand how citizens, in their everyday lives, can engage with media so as to further democratic participation in the public sphere , Twitter is a privileged observation point. Firstly, Twitter is a channel for public conversation, often used by citizens for political purposes. Discussions on Twitter go beyond the kind of life-sharing typical of interpersonal communication, giving space to sharing and commenting on current events in real time (live-tweeting) (Bruns, Burgess, 2012). Secondly, Twitter has a strong informative connotation: it is a news medium that can increase users’ awareness of what is happening around them. Twitter, as a “social awareness stream” (Naaman, Boase, Lai, 2010) has blurred the differences between news genres (information and entertainment) and hybridised the content shared by users. News, opinions and moods are often entwined, merging into a single stream that is both conversational and informative. Twitter users are thus connected through fluid conversations. In this sense «the ability of tweets to link to other media content and vice versa makes Twitter an integral part of the networked public sphere that emerges alongside the mass-mediated public".