The statistics of 2018 Italian Digital Campaign. Political parties on Facebook and the engaged audience

Since 2013 General Election, in Italy the Social Network Sites have become very important for the political parties strategy during the electoral campaign (Morcellini, Antenore, Ruggiero, 2013). Social networking platforms play a decisive role for the definition of the networked politics (Cepernich, 2015), characterized by a multiplication of touch points between political actors and citizens. In this new phase, political actors have the chance to plan their communication strategy bypassing the traditional journalistic function typical of the mainstream media (Bentivegna, 2014). As an ideal completion of it, through the social network sites political audiences see the opportunity to participate to the political debate in the new public space (Chadwick, Dennis, Smith, 2016). This paper aim is to analyze the communication strategy of the main italian political parties (Lega, M5S, PD, FI, FdI, LeU) on Facebook, through the statistics related to the content published by their official pages during the last four weeks of electoral campaign. We will investigate the response expressed by the Facebook users – such as like, comments, shares, in order to understand how the parties engage their political audience and identify the user profile of each political parties. As a result, Lega shows the highest level of content published followed by low interaction with their audience, unlike M5S and PD certainly show a lower level of publication, but they are able to engage their political audience. References: Bentivegna, S. (ed). (2014). La politica in 140 caratteri. Twitter e spazio pubblico. Milan: FrancoAngeli. Cepernich, C. (2015). “Web politics”. Un bilancio. Storia del pensiero politico. 3. 475-492. doi: 10.4479/82011. Chadwick, A., Dennis, J. & Smith, A.P. (2016). Politics in the Age of Hybrid Media: Power, Systems, and Media Logics. In A. Bruns, E. Gunn & C. Christiansen (Eds.). The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics (pp. 7–22). Abingdon: Routledge. Morcellini M., Antenore M. & Ruggiero C. (Eds). (2013). Talk&Tweet. La campagna elettorale 2013 tra TV e Twitter. Sant’Arcangelo di Romagna: Maggioli.