The digital year is going to the attic, leaving us with a second semester marked by two major caesuras that conditioned the qualitative and quantitative results of the presence of political leaders in the network: the first, obviously, was the fall of the Draghi government, while the second is represented by the election victory of the center-right with the arrival of Giorgia Meloni in charge of the country.
On the highest step of the podium of confirmations for listening to the speech that took place online from July to December, therefore not only on social platforms, is Giorgia Meloni for the third consecutive time, the current prime minister has dominated many of the census rankings, surpassing in numbers all the other leaders, starting with the two allies Salvini and Berlusconi.
Another confirmation to highlight is given by the essential need to preside over all social networks and not just a few, not least because Facebook spares no satisfaction when it comes to involving, and therefore polarizing, followers in discussions.
Perhaps the most unexpected novelty was the use by managers, with the exception of Enrico Letta, from TikTok. The entertainment platform, launched just five years ago by the Chinese Bytedance and which grows proportionally more than all the others, so much so that at least in Italy it has surpassed Twitter in number of subscribers, has given social leaders the most brilliant performances and in some cases decidedly stratospheric. As happened with the arrival of Silvio Berlusconi, whose debut video garnered more than 10 million views, 694,000 likes and 43,000 comments. In short, a dowry of interactions so great that it allowed the Knight to take the gold medal of the post with the biggest share of reaction of the entire semester. After all, it was precisely on TikTok and Instagram that the leaders’ official accounts were able to register the most robust percentages of engagement and interaction with the individual posts published.
Going through the other rankings for the semester that is about to end, it is necessary to highlight the primacy of Matteo Salvini who, with a total of 9.5 million followers, remains the Italian politician with the highest number of followers on the four social media platforms. Behind him we find Giuseppe Conte, who reaches 8 million followers, and Giorgia Meloni, who reaches 6.9 million, with an impressive net growth of just under 2 million since July.
Six absolute numbers of individual fandoms mark a follower growth for almost every leader, and if you look closely at them, a pretty heterogeneous situation emerges. For Facebook, in fact, the most significant percentage growth balance was achieved by Carlo Calenda and Giorgia Meloni, respectively with +15%. Behind this couple are Enrico Letta with +9.65% and Nicola Fratoianni who achieves a follower increase of 8.5%. While, Giuseppe Conte is the only leader who has a negative balance in this ranking: -0.36%, which is repeated even if we jump from Facebook to Instagram with the former Prime Minister losing 1.47% and where, on the contrary , alongside the primacy of the «usual» Meloni (+48%) stand out the performances of Silvio Berlusconi +19, Carlo Calenda and Enrico Letta, both with a net growth of 28%.
But the stellar numbers in relation to the increase in followers are all the prerogative of TikTok, where the landing in view of the September 25 vote by Matteo Renzi, Carlo Calenda and, in particular, Silvio Berlusconi and the victory of Giorgia Meloni generated a veritable tsunami. : Cavaliere’s growth percentage was 25,000 percent, while Meloni’s was “only” 737%.
Hearing the daily stories staged by political leaders on social media accounts gives us a huge numerical fracture that separates the first half of the year from the second. In fact, the comparison clearly shows how social channels managed to generate a huge amount of reactions from July to December. If in the first part of the year, Giorgia Meloni collected a total of more than 27 million reactions, from July to December it adds up to 48 million more with a percentage growth of 56%. The gap between the first and second period also accompanies Matteo Salvini’s ability to monitor the platforms, which goes from just under 25 million reactions to 40 million, and Giuseppe Conte, who collects “only” in the first part of the year 11 million reactions and 28 million in the second part.
Before proceeding to the online sentiment check, it is advisable to retrieve general mentions data thanks to Blogmeter’s Liveinsights suite. Thus, if in the first part of the year Giuseppe Conte led this ranking, which has a predictive power that is still erroneously underestimated, in the second half the balance of power between the leaders is inverted and, more importantly, it consistently aligns with the photograph of the ballot boxes. Giorgia Meloni dominates all other leaders and her mentions quintupled in the second half, going from 89 to 429 thousand. Finally, with regard to digital sentiment, Giuseppe Conte and Giorgia Meloni are the only two leaders with a positive share greater than 40%. On the other hand, the losers of humor stocks are Enrico Letta, with a drop of 5%, and Carlo Calenda, who loses between the two analysis periods, 4 percentage points, and Silvio Berlusconi, who drops from 36 to 35%.
*spin doctor from Arcadia.com communication agency
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
