Monica Poletti

Between partisanship and cynicism: Italian journalism in a state of flux

The performance of political reporters in liberal democracies is often criticized for its near anti-political stance, an observation shared by politicians, scholars and even journalists themselves. The notion of journalistic cynicism vis-a-vis politics, however, is ambiguous and the picture emerging from research is flawed by its often originating in the USA. Here, a multidimensional conceptualization is proposed — focusing on mistrust, negative tone, irony or sarcasm, and scandal orientation — and tested in a study of newspapers in Italy, a country characterized by a strong partisan tradition but demonstrating recent signs of commercial media logic. Contrary to much of the US findings, however, the media in Italy show a decrease of cynicism in three out of four of the dimensions.

Renzi's Honeymoon Effect: The 2014 European Election in Italy

The 2014 European Parliament election in Italy took place 15 months after the electoral earthquake of the 2013 national election and almost three months after a non-electoral change of government that saw the newly elected Secretary of the centre-left Democratic Party, Matteo Renzi, become prime minister. While some second-order election (SOE) model expectations, such as lower turnout and electoral gain by minor parties are fulfilled, some other expectations seem to be challenged by the exceptional electoral victory of the pro-European incumbent party. In this article we show that in Italy the 2014 European election can still mainly be considered a second-order one because the broken SOE expectations are related to exceptional national dynamics that began with the 2013 general election.

Availability or Disengagement? How Italian Citizens Reacted to the Two-Faced Parliamentary Grand Coalition Supporting the Monti Government

Times may come in which democracies have to suspend electoral competition for the sake of the general interest. Wars, divisive memories of past conflicts, a prolonged economic crisis, but also electoral outcomes without a clear and politically viable governing majority are the challenges that may oblige ideologically distant parties to join forces in a grand coalition government. In 2011, Italian parties found themselves in such a situation. Starting in the summer, the Italian financial situation worsened to the point that, between October and November 2011, the risk of a sovereign default was tangible. The common wisdom within as well as outside the country was clear. Italy needed urgent structural reforms capable of restoring confidence among its Eu partners and financial investors. The expectation was that only a grand coalition between the main parties would have been able to overcome the several veto points that over the years have led Italy to the edge of the cliff. Although such a decision might have been seen as necessary, this is a difficult move for any party in any country, since it may alter the conditions under which voters usually make their voting choices at the following election. When the contraposition between government and opposition is suspended, voters might find it hard to take into account what has been done and who is responsible for what. Moreover, when this comes together with the discovery of a vast web of political scandals, citizens’ political disengagement is likely to further increase. Nonetheless, the way Italian parties decided to respond to the challenge was highly peculiar in four aspects, at least in comparison with the

Why do only some people who support parties actually join them? Evidence from Britain

Abstract What makes people join a political party is one of the most commonly studied questions in research on party members. Nearly all this research, however, is based on talking to people who have actually joined parties. This article simultaneously analyses surveys of members of political parties in Britain and surveys of non-member supporters of those same parties. This uniquely enables us to model the decision to join parties. The results suggest that most of the elements that constitute the influential ‘General Incentives Model’ are significant. But it also reveals that, while party supporters imagine that selective benefits, social norms and opposing rival parties’ policies are key factors in members’ decisions to join a party, those who actually do so are more likely to say they are motivated by attachments to their party’s values, policies and leaders, as well as by an altruistic desire to support democracy more generally.

Media and campaign effects on vote choice at national elections in Europe: A review of a multilingual research landscape Medien- und Kampagneneffekte auf Wahlentscheidungen bei nationalen Hauptwahlen in Europa: Literaturbericht über eine vielsprachige Forschungslandschaft

This article reviews the empirical research literature on campaign and media effects on vote choice at national elections in European countries for the post-World War II period. Particular efforts are undertaken to obtain a comprehensive picture by including publications in many different languages. With regard to the amount of research, but also the topics addressed, the survey reveals considerable differences between countries. Studies of campaign effects have focused on the temporal dynamics of campaigns, on the modes of campaign communications (such as personal contacts at the local level, advertising on TV and in the press or online social media) and on certain aspects of its content. Research on media effects has explored the role of partisan bias and certain topical categories of news (climate of opinion, issue and candidate coverage) as well as specific new media formats, notably televised candidate debates and vote advice applications (VAA). Overall, the review reveals that there is little in the way of an integrated and consolidated body of campaign and media effects research on national elections in Europe. While political communication research increasingly acknowledges the potential importance of news media and political parties’ electioneering for voting behaviour, there appears as of yet to be little convergence regarding approaches and research findings. Particularly striking is the degree to which research questions are guided by national institutional contexts.

Media and campaign effects on vote choice at national elections in Europe : a review of a multilingual research landscape

This article reviews the empirical research literature on campaign and media effects on vote choice at national elections in European countries for the post-World War II period. Particular efforts are undertaken to obtain a comprehensive picture by including publications in many different languages. With regard to the amount of research, but also the topics addressed, the survey reveals considerable differences between countries. Studies of campaign effects have focused on the temporal dynamics of campaigns, on the modes of campaign communications (such as personal contacts at the local level, advertising on TV and in the press or online social media) and on certain aspects of its content. Research on media effects has explored the role of partisan bias and certain topical categories of news (climate of opinion, issue and candidate coverage) as well as specific new media formats, notably televised candidate debates and vote advice applications (VAA). Overall, the review reveals that there is little in the way of an integrated and consolidated body of campaign and media effects research on national elections in Europe. While political communication research increasingly acknowledges the potential importance of news media and political parties’ electioneering for voting behaviour, there appears as of yet to be little convergence regarding approaches and research findings. Particularly striking is the degree to which research questions are guided by national institutional contexts.

When responsibility is blurred: Italian national elections in times of economic crisis, technocratic government, and ever-growing populism

In the decades after the Second World War, electoral competition in Italy was constantly organized along the lines of left-right ideological divisions (see Bellucci and Segatti 2011). However, the parliamentary election of 2013 seems to have broken this tradition. The greatest symptom of the left-right parties’ failure to provide citizens with guidance for their voting decisions is the significant and largely unexpected success of a new political subject that has deliberately positioned itself outside of the traditional ideological dialectics: the Five Star Movement (M5s). Founded in 2009 by the comedian Beppe Grillo, the M5s is the political derivative of a grassroots movement mainly based on the web, which emphasizes in its program issues such as free access to the internet and on-line deliberation as an alternative to representative democracy (Biorcio and Natale 2013; Corbetta and Gualmini 2013). Since its foundation, the M5s has been claiming to be «neither left nor right», a position justified by the assumption that the ideological labels are just tools employed by the political parties to fool the electorate. In fact, this position comes in conjunction with a straightforward accusation that the main parties are colluding with each other against the people’s will, which has increasingly strengthened the movement’s reputation as an «anti-politics» party. Previous local elections had signaled the growing electoral success of the M5s. In March 2010, at the regional elections in Piedmont, the party was accused of taking votes away from the left-wing, after the right-wing candidate won against the incumbent governor with a margin of 0.4% of the votes. On that occasion the M5s obtained 4% of the votes. In 2011 and early 2012 the party

Participating Locally and Nationally: Explaining the Offline and Online Activism of British Party Members:

Drawing on survey data on the members of six British parties gathered in the immediate aftermath of the general election of 2015, this article addresses the question of what members do for their parties during campaigns. It identifies a key distinction between traditional forms of activity and more recent forms of online campaign participation. While the well-established general incentives theory of participation continues to offer a useful basis for explaining both types of campaign activism, we find that our understanding is significantly enhanced by considering the impact of national and local political contexts. Whereas the former chiefly adds explanatory value to the model of online participation by party members, the latter considerably improves the model of offline participation.

‘All mouth and no trousers?’ How many Conservative Party members voted for UKIP in 2015 – and why did they do so?

A survey of ordinary members of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party carried out in 2013 revealed that nearly 30% of them would seriously consider voting for the country’s radical right wing populist party (United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)). However, we show that at the general election in 2015, only a very small proportion of them – around 5% of Tory grassroots members – actually did so, driven it seems mainly by alienation from the leadership and David Cameron in particular, as well as, perhaps, by concerns about the Conservative-led government’s austerity policies. However, those party members who did eventually vote for UKIP were still much more likely to have expressed a propensity to vote for it in 2013 than those who did not. Since the Conservative Party has not experienced the same increase in membership as some of its competitors, and since members are an important part of parties’ electoral campaigning, they should avoid alienating those members they do have – something of which Theresa May appears to be aware.

European Research into Media and Campaign Effects on Voting at National Elections: More Gaps than Substance, but the Substance Is Sound

This article reviews the empirical research literature on campaign and media effects on vote choice at national elections in European countries for the post-World War II period. Particular efforts are undertaken to obtain a comprehensive picture by including publications in many different languages. With regard to the amount of research, but also the topics addressed, the survey reveals considerable differences between countries. Studies of campaign effects have focused on the temporal dynamics of campaigns, on the modes of campaign communications (such as personal contacts at the local level, advertising on TV and in the press or online social media) and on certain aspects of its content. Research on media effects has explored the role of partisan bias and certain topical categories of news (climate of opinion, issue and candidate coverage) as well as specific new media formats, notably televised candidate debates and vote advice applications (VAA). Overall, the review reveals that there is little in the way of an integrated and consolidated body of campaign and media effects research on national elections in Europe. While political communication research increasingly acknowledges the potential importance of news media and political parties’ electioneering for voting behaviour, there appears as of yet to be little convergence regarding approaches and research findings. Particularly striking is the degree to which research questions are guided by national institutional contexts.