Social political communication to the test of social distance. The case of the Apulian 2020 election campaign.

Il caso della campagna elettorale pugliese del 2020

Abstract

The administrative and regional elections of 20 and 21 September 2020, together with the constitutional referendum on the cut in the number of parliamentarians, were the first occasions that saw Italian politics put to the test of the electoral consultations, in the era of Covid-19.

This aims to analyze the social communication of the three main candidates for the presidency of the Puglia Region during the election campaign period, and the reactions of users to some content published by the candidates on their Facebook pages. The objective of the analysis is to detect if and how the pandemic has shaped the forms and contents of the online Apulian electoral campaign.

Social media are today a fundamental environment for political communication. It is customary for a character to use his social account not only as a showcase - a widespread approach in the first phase of rapprochement between the web and Italian politics - but as a direct and privileged communication channel with users, whose engagement is sought.

In a context such as the one in which the electoral campaign for the 2020 Apulian regional elections took place – in which all the dynamic relations and social relations in general have undergone a drastic downsizing – the candidates have relied above all on social communication to get closer, albeit not physically, to the Apulian voters. From this fact emerged the questions that guided the analysis in question and to which we will try to answer in the following pages: What were the peculiarities of the candidates' social political communication? What role did the pandemic play in their narration?