Relatore:
Federico Boffa
- Libera Università di Bolzano
martedì 18 novembre 2025
alle ore
12.00
Aula Vaona
We examine how Italian parties use social media to shape voter priorities and electoral support. We use machine-learning techniques to identify immigration- and economy-related events in news, which we link to parties’ online messaging, issue salience, and polling data. High-frequency analysis shows that the social media communication campaign by the Italian right-wing populist party sharply raises immigration salience, along with its electoral support. A structural model of political competition informed by the relationships uncovered by our reduced-form indicates that strategic online communication explains more of the support for the party than events, highlighting the central role of online political communication.
