An Analysis of Italian Politicians' Facebook Pages

Seattle.
The second presenter in this AoIR 2011 session is Mario Orefice, whose focus is on the political uses of Facebook and other Web 2.0 platforms. There is a growing mistrust of political institutions and actors in western countries, due to a gradual loss of their representative and democratic mission, increased disruptive influence exerted by lobbyists, and the disappearance of traditional forms of identification and effective systems of representation between citizens and parties. This has led to a shift from dutiful citizenship (imposed by the state) to self-actualising citizenship (determined by personal goals).

Mario’s project examined the top ten most-liked Facebook pages of Italian politicians (with likes seen as an indicator of popularity); the content of these pages was analysed using Discovertext between 25 June and 26 September this year. Coding categories for this content were support, action, organisation, and representation.

Limitations include a strong difference between the amount of likes and the level of active participation; the inability to examine individual users’ motivations; and differences between being a fan and a voter. Discovertext also has problems with large, long-term datasets; cannot define taxonomies; and cannot export large datasets. Of the ten politicians examined, three were government and seven were opposition politicians.

Government politicians tended to call their followers to action from their formal role – there were no references to NGOs, unions, or other forms of political actors; their communication style followed a broadcasting model. Opposition politicians tended to engage in more direct communication with their followers. Responses to government politicians tended to include many references to their private life as a form of protest, while for opposition politicians such references tended to indicate deeper connections with their followers.

Facebook still operates more as a laboratory for interaction with voters in these opposition cases; this may also be driven by the comparatively low age of opposition supporters, compared to the government.