Election Campaigning and the New Media

Between 2004 and 2005, Italian political communication moved toward its own version of postmodern campaigning, which, like every model, has had to be rooted in the Italian context. While in other Western countries developments in electioneering have resulted by and large from technological and market changes (i.e., the decline of broadcasting, the increase of available media outlets, the diffusion of talk radio, the increasing relevance of the internet, the possibilities offered by mobile phones), in Italy the centrality of broadcast television still persists almost unchallenged. However, the demands of significant parts of society have forced politicians to overhaul their methods of relating to voters, though slowly and by trial-and-error, which has led to the introduction of more participatory styles than allowed for by mass communication. As a result, generalist television, while still the main contact channel with the electorate for most politicians, must now be part of a larger communication strategy by which different types of media are included and integrated to perform specific goals and engage various types of citizens. The 2006 elections, however, have marked a halt in the still-unfinished Italian transition to postmodern campaigning. The central role of television was reinforced and grassroots engagement was significantly feebler than in the 2004-05 cycle, thus weakening the relationship between politics and society, which was slowly and partially being reconstructed. A similar pattern was observed in the 2008 elections, when grassroots campaigning was limited, apart from mass rallies with national party leaders, the internet was left on the sidelines, and television was once again the central political battlefield, even in the absence of a debate between the two coalition leaders. The 2006 and 2008 general elections warn us not to postulate that models of electioneering can spread in a linear way, although postmodern campaigning has already been successfully experimented both abroad and, at least in some local contests, in Italy as well. The fact that national and local, proportional and majoritarian elections provide different opportunities for campaigning helps to explain why modern and postmodern approaches were feasible and effective to different extents at these two moments, but agency-related factors must not be overlooked. Parties, candidates, and their consultants have the last word in political communication decision-making: it is they who eventually decide whether to adopt a traditional or innovative set of techniques. Moreover, as the effects of the electoral law reform on campaigning have shown, political actors can actively shape the context of the election in favour of one or another model of campaigning. Finally, the almost complete lack of a journalistic profession autonomous from the political system (Roncarolo 2002), contributes to preserving the modern model by allowing politicians to exploit television as an almost unconstrained propaganda outlet, where they can by and large freely lay their claims without being kept accountable for their statements by attentive and combative journalists. However, even after the 2006-08 election cycle, the need for a renewal in political communication practices and philosophies in Italian democracy still appears inescapable. Campaigns are a crucial aspect of the relationship between citizens and politics; their development toward the postmodern model can offer a (partial and perfectible) response to the desire for engagement and inclusion that a significant part of the Italian population has been voicing for years. Voters surveyed during the 2008 election claimed to be unsatisfied overall with the political information they receive from television and a majority declared that they trust the opinions of other people more than either television or newspapers (Vaccari 2008b). Thus, while mass communication is still a more convenient and cost-effective...