Post Politics: Morphology of a Social Campaign

The 2018 Italian general election subverted the national political landscape. The wind of anti-politics violently hit the parties’ system that had ruled the country over the past 25 years, leading to the formation of an unprecedented dual-vocated populist government. The new digital media ecosystem has played a decisive role in accompanying this mutation process of the national political body. The affirmation of League and Five Star MoVement, two parties attributable - even in the difference of their respective political identities - to the broad category of populism, has also passed through a distinctive ability of their leadership to be present on social media. Reconstructing the morphology of the first fully social campaign that has marked Italian politics, the paper aims to expose the meaning of the affinity relationship that seems to link, not only at the national level, populism and social media. The analysis is conducted by using original data collected during the 2018 elections by Tuscia University, partner in the Research Network of National Interest (PRIN 2015) Personalization, institutionalization and deinstitutionalization: the new dynamics of power in the post-democratic society.