Marco Valbruzzi

THE CYBER ELECTIONS ERA: FROM E-VOTING TO ELECTORAL DIGITIZATION

The article aims to analyze the main characteristics of e-voting and its worldwide diffusion. After suggesting a new classification scheme for different e-voting systems, the author develops an original proposal for measuring the degree of digitization of the main stages of the electoral cycle (i.e., collecting/compiling, casting, counting) that allows a comparison, in terms of technological progress, between different states or between groups of countries aggregated by level of economic development or democratic quality. As is discussed in the second part of the article, it is not only democracies that are now investing in the field of e-enabled elections. In fact, in recent years even authoritarian regimes have introduced technological innovations in the electoral process with the aim of strengthening their power. Finally, in the last part of the article, survey data are analyzed to investigate Italians’ attitudes toward online voting, considered by many as a possible remedy to declining voter turnout.

KEYWORDS: E-Voting, Electoral Integrity, Electoral Digitization, I-Voting, Icts.

LEGGI QUI: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.53227/107474

Domenico Giordano, Maria Cristina Antonucci

THE STRATEGY OF NORMALIZATION: GIORGIA MELONI’S ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN ON SOCIAL NETWORKS IN THE 2022 GENERAL ELECTION

Giorgia Meloni’s electoral campaign on social issues as the leader of FdI distinguished her from her competitors by a fundamental strategy: videological normalization she managed to achieve this normalization for a party positioned to the far right by the means of pragmatism in the topicalization of politics and the simplification of electoral issues. At the same time, a strategy of leaderization and personalization, based on a gender-specific identity (mother, daughter, sister) constituted the second leverage for Meloni’s campaign on social networks; a campaign which always aimed at proposing viral contents to the social network users

Alfonso Amendola, Martina Masullo

ELECTION AND SOCIAL NETWORK: THE EFFECT OF (ULTRA)POP POLITICS ON Z GENERATION

The election campaign for the 2022 Italian general elections was the most social ever. The determination to intercept the new voter – member of Z generation – made the political leaders of the main parties approach the social universe without actually fully knowing its operating rules. However, despite the fact that politicians have for months inhabited the same «places», used the same hashtags, and participated in the same challenges, the young and very young continue to perceive their language as distant from that typical of Z generation. This is confirmed by a survey conducted by Freeda on a sample of voters under-34: in 80% of cases, voters do not feel represented either by the content published through social media by political leaders or by the election programs proposed by parties. The decision on the part of Italian politics to be present on the main social media platforms constitutes the pursuit of a transformation that was already under way – and is, still today, in continuous evolution – towards the concept of «pop politics», whereby political discourse is no lonmger seen as being of a higher level, but rather uses the process of disintermediation as a solid basis from which to branch out into the dimension of intimate politics. The electoral race no longer develops within well-defined and precise temporal boundaries but becomes a «permanent campaign». Starting from these theoretical assumptions, the aim of this paper is to examine the main strategies introduced in the social sphere by Italian political leaders during the 2022 elections and intercept the effects they had on Z generation to understand how much they really affected the voting choices of post millennials. By reviewing the most popular trends and content published during the election campaign – with an eye always on televised political propaganda, which is the indispensable starting point for examining the new languages of contemporary politics – we will come to draw a broad and complete picture of the contemporary social-political universe

KEYWORDS: Pop-politics, Z Generation, Social Network, Berlusconism, TikTok

LEGGI QUI: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.53227/107480

Laura Minguzzi

A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING POLITICAL COMMUNICATION: THE SPECTRE OF POPULISM ONLINE

The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated major changes in contemporary society, particularly in regard to communication. Within the political sphere, leaders had to increasingly rely on social media to communicate with the electorate. In many countries, this transition, far from affecting only the period of pandemic emergency, has gone hand in hand with the contemporary populist wave. The paper aims to investigate how political communication of party leaders on social media has been influenced by «populist rhetoric», focusing on the pandemic influence on this shift. This was done by comparing the Facebook posts of populist and mainstream party leaders in three different Western European countries – Italy, the United Kingdom, and Spain – and analyzing the language they used to interact with followers, starting from, with a comparison of periods before and after the pandemic. We identified four essential characteristics of populism Chameleon nature, Manichaean dialectic, Anti-elitism, and Charismatic leadership – which provide the theoretical basis for the content analysis carried out on the reference sample. These changes were observed in a period of rapid socio-cultural transformation. Indeed, the pandemic seems to have pushed the leaders of the parties analyzed toward a more populist vocabulary, even when they were not originally leaders of parties definable as such. This could be traced back to the inherent characteristics of social media, which rely more on the visual medium than on written text; prompting leaders to rely on more direct and impactful rhetoric to convey their message. However, «populist contagion» goes beyond the simple use of communication techniques, and the results of the analysis seem to confirm how populist rhetoric also affects the way leaders (and thus parties) choose to address certain policy and programmatic issues, moving them, in some cases, away from their traditional agendas

KEYWORDS: Populism, Political Communication, Social Media, Content Analysis, Personal Leadership

LEGGI QUI: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.53227/107481

Paolo Feltrin, Giuseppe Ieraci

FACILITATING VOTING AND ELECTORAL PARTICIPATION IN ITALY. ON SOME POSSIBLE MEASURES TO CONTRAST INVOLUNTARY AND IMPOSED ABSTENTIONISM

Voter abstentionism and declining voter participation are widespread phenomena in European democracies. Recently, the decline in electoral participation has also reached alarming proportions in Italy. However, a non-negligible share of abstentionism is not due to political attitudes or protest, but simply to objective impediments to going to the polling stations. These impediments include work and study in locations other than that of residence and electoral registration, as well as illness or physical immobility. The article emphasizes the possibility of limiting this imposed or involuntary abstentionism by using postal voting, deferred voting or free voting at any polling station, and above all by introducing digital voting supported by web platforms.

KEYWORDS: Abstentionism, Italy, Postal Voting, Deferred Voting, Digital Voting.

LEGGI QUI: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.53227/107475       

Laura Minguzzi

A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING POLITICAL COMMUNICATION: THE SPECTRE OF POPULISM ONLINE

The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated major changes in contemporary society, particularly in regard to communication. Within the political sphere, leaders had to increasingly rely on social media to communicate with the electorate. In many countries, this transition, far from affecting only the period of pandemic emergency, has gone hand in hand with the contemporary populist wave. The paper aims to investigate how political communication of party leaders on social media has been influenced by «populist rhetoric», focusing on the pandemic influence on this shift. This was done by comparing the Facebook posts of populist and mainstream party leaders in three different Western European countries – Italy, the United Kingdom, and Spain – and analyzing the language they used to interact with followers, starting from, with a comparison of periods before and after the pandemic. We identified four essential characteristics of populism Chameleon nature, Manichaean dialectic, Anti-elitism, and Charismatic leadership – which provide the theoretical basis for the content analysis carried out on the reference sample. These changes were observed in a period of rapid socio-cultural transformation. Indeed, the pandemic seems to have pushed the leaders of the parties analyzed toward a more populist vocabulary, even when they were not originally leaders of parties definable as such. This could be traced back to the inherent characteristics of social media, which rely more on the visual medium than on written text; prompting leaders to rely on more direct and impactful rhetoric to convey their message. However, «populist contagion» goes beyond the simple use of communication techniques, and the results of the analysis seem to confirm how populist rhetoric also affects the way leaders (and thus parties) choose to address certain policy and programmatic issues, moving them, in some cases, away from their traditional agendas

KEYWORDS: Populism, Political Communication, Social Media, Content Analysis, Personal Leadership

LEGGI QUI: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.53227/107481

Gianluigi Spagnuolo

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE END OF ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDINGS

The progressive evolution of the use of It in the exercise of administrative power has invested the public administration and the public decision-making process, redesigning its form and substance, influencing organisation and procedures. The automation of administrative proceedings not only allows to redesign internal processes to increase efficiency and improve organizational performance, but also changes the very nature of the proceeding: cancelling the traditional sequence of acts, flattening all the phases, rendered contextual, thus determining the end of the administrative proceeding as known up to now. The use of Artificial intelligence (Ai), which is often seen as a panacea to the problems of the Pa, must not confuse the neutrality of the instrument (enough to credit it) with the neutrality of the method. Indeed, the Ai has itself become the subject of decisions, in administrative proceedings, as in the legal system itself. It is therefore crucial to analyse the design of algorithms, with regard to the opacity of design and transparency on the values they incorporate, in particular with regard to possible unequal treatment resulting from Machine learning (Ml). The analysis of concrete cases highlights the possible repositioning of the different actors involved in the automated administrative proceeding, compared to the redesign of public services and participation in decision-making processes.

KEYWORDS: Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models, Machine Learning, Automated Proceeding, Administrative Simplification.

LEGGI QUI: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.53227/113720

Sara Concetta Santoriello, Agostino Stavolo

MILLENNIALS DIGITAL MOBILIZATION. ELLY SCHLEIN’S POLITICAL COMMUNICATION FROM 2013 TO 2023

The rise of general secretary Elly Schlein in the Italian Democratic party (Pd) primary elections highlights the influence of generation y as politicians. Popularly known as millennials, they are born in the 1981-1995 cohort, grown up with technology and familiar with computers and mobile phones at the same time. Schlein’s account on social media and her shrewd skill in using these platforms to popularize her program and mobilizing voters exemplify this trend. A common ground with Western generation y can be detected in the political use of Instagram with live video and stories filters to inform, chat and engage the followers. This analysis examines the communication strategies employed on Facebook and Instagram during European (2014), regional (2020), national (2022) and primary (2023) elections, which contributed to enhance her character. By studying Elly Schlein’s leadership, we can identify notable changes in her main issues and highlight their trajectories in the agenda. The research proposes a quantitative analysis of the political language used during these periods, implementing topic modeling techniques to identify recurring themes in her communication style and visualize its evolution over time, examining the terms most closely associated with these topics.

KEYWORDS: Elly Schlein, Partito Democratico, Italian Left-Wing, Millennials, Social Media, Topic Modeling.

LEGGI QUI: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.53227/113724