Representations of Italian populism and Immigration on Facebook. A comparison of the posts by Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini (2014-2018)

The investigation explores the representations of Italian populism and immigration on social media. Although social media are the preferred vehicle of populist communication, their role has only begun to be studied in recent years. We are part of this new attention by focusing on both communication and its impact on followers of two populist leaders, the politically transversal oriented Luigi Di Maio, and the far-right oriented Matteo Salvini. In line with the theory of social representations (SR), our starting point is that language is opaque and capable of promoting and directing inferences through specific linguistic markers that widely use the emotional register to make communication more effective. Our study focuses on how the populism and immigration issues are represented on Facebook by the two populist leaders. We chose to treat the two representations at the same time because of the strong connection that binds them. The posts of two leaders, general and immigration-focused, were compared for their language patterns, emotional characterization, and followers’ approval. The language used and the topics covered highlighted the coexistence of different representations of populism, which coexist giving a clear signal of widespread forms of cognitive polyphasia. We noticed a greater use of the emotional register in Salvini, compared to Di Maio. In Salvini this register is more accentuated in the posts on immigration, characterized by a negative tone and with the highest rate of popularity among his followers, both compared to generalist posts and compared to Di Maio's posts. The results are discussed with respect to the literature on social representations and their impact at the societal level.