Politicians and Media as Influencers of Social Media Polarisation during the Qatargate Scandal

The next speaker in this I-POLHYS 2024 session is Rita Marchetti, who shifts our attention to another scandal: the Qatargate case. She notes the limited attention of media scholars to corruption issues, even in spite of growing funding for anticorruption studies of legacy media – the potential role of social media in anticorruption activism has received very limited attention, in particular. There is more interest from economics than media scholars in this, it seems.

Italy has long been perceived as suffering from corruption, and this is frustrating citizens and politicians – but recent corruption indices do document that corruption remains high here in comparison with other European countries. Allegations of corruption are also used for political gain, to discredit political opponents and assassinate their characters.

This study focusses on the Qatargate scandal in the EU Parliament, where Greek and Italian parliamentarians were found to have received cash payments from Qatari sources in return for favourable policies. In media reporting this was connected in part to stereotypes about Italian political corruption (with headlines like “Italian Job”), and such reporting can be instrumentalised to reinforce political polarisation, too. The study drew on some 14,000 posts from Facebook pages and groups, and classified actors and conducted a network analysis of these data.

Entities posting on the topic were dominated by supporters and opponents of politicians, and communities not normally interested in politics; some 48% of these did not have standing in mainstream media coverage. They formed various separate networks around the content they shared, from right-wing and populist groups to conspiracist communities, and often promoted media content attacking their adversaries.

Politicians and journalists therefore continue to play an important role in shaping even social media discussions, therefore; their contributions are amplified by partisans, but also by other non-institutional actors.