Unity and coherence: the mobilizing effect of valence attributes in the 2022 Italian elections

Andrea Ceron, Sara Berloto and Jessica Rosco

South European Society and Politics, 2025, vol. 30, issue 1, 35-56

Abstract: The 2022 Italian election compelled nearly all political parties to form pre-electoral coalitions. This paper investigates whether communication strategies emphasizing valence issues related to intra-party politics, such as coalition/party unity and coherence, pay off in terms of users’ engagement and positive reactions on social media. To answer this question, we manually coded 4,827 Facebook election posts to create an original dataset. Results demonstrate that positive campaigns, such as emphasizing a party’s or coalition’s unity or coherence, lead to higher levels of users’ engagement and support. However, the impact of negative strategies matters only when focusing on parties rather than coalitions. Thus, parties remain the pivotal actors in this campaign.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13608746.2025.2453538 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:fsesxx:v:30:y:2025:i:1:p:35-56

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/fses20

DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2025.2453538

Access Statistics for this article

South European Society and Politics is currently edited by Susannah Verney

More articles in South European Society and Politics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().