Explaining the Success of the Populist Five Star Movement at the 2013 Italian General Election: An Analysis of the Role Played by the Anti-EU Rhetoric and the Traditional Media

The current communication environment – thanks to the possibilities offered by the internet and the social media – seems to favour the emergence and the success of new populist political formations by giving them the opportunity to communicate their ideas directly to the voters, without the risk to be censured by the information gatekeepers. Nevertheless, traditional media still play a crucial role in influencing the voters’ opinions on political parties: television and newspapers remain fundamental in the ‘media diet’ of the majority of voters and can decide whether to support or distort the message expressed by the new populist formations through their self-directed communication. Consequently, in order to understand the electoral success of a new populist party, it is necessary to look both at the party’s direct communication on different media channels and at the party coverage by the traditional media. Even more importantly, it is essential to verify whether the issues tackled by the populist party and/or covered by the media correspond to the issues perceived by the voters as the most urgent to be addressed. This research assesses this topic by focusing on the case of the Five Star Movement (M5S), a new Italian populist party that gained a huge electoral success at the 2013 Italian General Elections thanks to its anti-political rhetoric and its strong criticism against the European management of the 2008 economic crisis. The research analyses both the M5S self-directed communication, its coverage by the traditional media, and the profile of its voters. The analysis of the M5S direct communication allows to reveal the issues on which the M5S has focused its campaign as well as to clarify its ideological positioning. The analysis of the media coverage allows for the identification of similarities and differences between the party’s message and the party’s portrayal by the media. Finally, the analysis of the Italian voters’ profile reveals whether the M5S supporters effectively shared the party’s issue priorities and ideological positioning and - in case of lack of correspondence between M5S direct communication and its coverage by the media – whether the voters’ patterns of media consumption (traditional vs. internet-oriented) have played a role in (dis)favouring the support for the party. The communication analysis is conducted by means of an original and detailed codebook; it is applied on the M5S direct communication on different platforms – party’s web site, official social media pages, speeches at the electoral rallies, party manifestoes – and on the political news about the party appeared on the first page of five Italian newspapers and in four Italian television news-programs during the last week of the 2013 electoral campaign. A comparison with the communication – both directed and mediated – of the Democratic Party, an Italian traditional party commonly considered not populist, is provided in order to offer a more consistent interpretation of the results. The analysis of the voters’ issue positioning and ‘media diets’, is based on the post-electoral survey data collected in the framework of the 2013 Itanes National Election Study.