Political campaigns, debate and engagement has become increasingly digitalised in Italy. In the run up to the 2018 Italian elections, social media and websites (vs. traditional methods of news such as print newspapers) played an integral part of campaigns and were a key source of information.
However, this digitalisation has raised concerns, ranging from security flaws with software to facilitate voting and engagement with party members, to the use of Facebook to target voters and shape their perception of the electoral context, as well as for sharing disinformation, misinformation and inflammatory content.
A number of these issues were delved into in a report by Tactical Tech.
Before and after the Italian election on 4 March 2018, concerns were raised about the spread of misinformation, disinformation and inflammatory content through a network of news sites and Facebook pages. In November 2017, in the run up to the election, Buzzfeed reported on links between a large
In an experiment conducted by Fabio Chiusi and Claudio Agosti during the 2018 election season and set out in detail in their report for Tactical Tech, the duo sought to investigate the Facebook algorithm that powers users’ news feed and the algorithm’s treatment of political content. One of the
The Five Star Movement, a populist party, which is currently in power along with the League in Italy initially grew out of Il Blog delle Stelle (formerly Beppe Grillo’s blog). The Five Star Movement was founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, along with Gianroberto Casaleggio, a web strategist in 2009. As
