Fake news and politics in Italy

The diffusion of fake news has allowed the public debate to focus on two spe- cific topics: the uncontrollability of the web and the production of grassroots information, but also the transformations due to the advent of an ever more “disintermediated” jour- nalism. If, on the one hand, new production routines require publishing companies to use automatisms in packaging and diffusion of news; on the other hand, users – tied to the digital more than to the “paper” medium – are not able to distinguish “true” from “false” news. For these reasons, the political class have to deal with this phenomenon, especially after arising of many ad hoc platforms with the goal of limiting the dissemination of fake news. At the same time, it is central to pay attention to the relationship between the use of populist rhetoric by the political class, in order to create a “disintermediate” bond between the leader and the voters, and the political strategy which considers the fight against fake news as one of its typical elements.The chapter’s purpose is to analyze how “Pagella Politica” (an Italian web-platform based on a system of fact-checking on politicians’ statements) has successfully made operational a system of checking news spread through the media: from radio-television shows to newspapers, passing over online newspapers and social networks. Firstly, we will analyze topics related to a greater spread of fake news and whether there is a correlation between belonging to a given political group and/or political role and the truthfulness of statements about specific macro-areas of debate (i.e. economy, foreign af- fairs). Secondly, we will proceed with the identification of recurrent elements that allow the emergence of a possible relationship between treatment and use of specific strategies implemented by some political subjects (i.e. the use of fake news for specific issues such as migration) and their potential populist “nature”.