The Rise of the “6000 Sardine” Movement. A “Social” Movement Against Populism in Italy.

The “6000sardine” (6000sardines) movement (SM) has been determinant for the defeat of the League (a right-wing populist party) and its leader Matteo Salvini in the January 2020 regional election in Emilia-Romagna. The SM was born on 14 November 2019 in the city of Bologna, a left-wing stronghold, with a flash mob organised by four friends to oppose a possible victory of the League’s candidate Lucia Borgonzoni, but rapidly spread all over Italy. Initially, the goal of the movement was to attract more participants than Salvini’s supporters in each square. Consequently, the name of the movement comes from the expression “packed like sardines” to indicate a huge number of people rallying against populism. The successful mobilization of the SM can be associated with an extensive use of digital social media as a central element of its communication style. This work focuses on the discourses of the SM and aims at identifying and disentangling specific patterns of communication and the elements that most of all have contributed to its successful campaign. The dataset used in this work comprises 1) all the tweets (about 750) of the movement, and 2) a sample of about 70.000 tweets downloaded selecting eight hashtags related to the SM, namely: 6000sardine (6000sardines), sardine (sardines), sardina (sardine), iostoconlesardine (IAmWithTheSardines), bellaciao (a popular anti-fascist song), sardinecontrosalvini (SardinesAgainstSalvini), 14 dicembre (December 14 th , the date of a rally held in Rome with more than 100.000 participants), and facciamorete (LetUsNetwork). Quantitative methods, including the analysis of the networks of words and words co-occurrences, as well as qualitative inspection of the tweets, were used to identify recurring patterns in the rhetoric of the sardines and their opponents. The analysis firstly focuses on the most typical patterns of the SM communication style; secondly, It is expanded to the hashtags related to the movement in the attempt to capture the broader framework and the reactions of the counter-parts; finally, it includes a short investigation of Salvini’s efforts to oppose the movement. It is showed how the sardines efficiently used social media to communicate their scope. The image of the movement resulting from Twitter is simple, but very clear, and this played a key role in the success of the mobilization. This aspect is to some extent similar to the communication strategy of the populist parties in Italy. Although the movement refuses to converge in a political party, and proclaims to be critical toward the Italian left-wing parties, the values emerging from this analysis are on the same page with the left. What makes the movement new in the context of the Italian politic scenery is the efficient use of the social media - determinant for the success of the populists in the recent years - as an instrument to activate people against populism.