Giorgia Meloni in the spotlight. Mobilization and competition strategies in the 2022 Italian election campaign on Facebook

ABSTRACT The 2022 Italian election campaign, taking place as it did in the middle of the summer following a government crisis, offered interesting suggestions concerning leaders’ and media strategies aimed at mobilizing people in a challenging context. Our results show that the ‘expected winner’, Giorgia Meloni, was able to focus the attention of leaders, the media and users on herself despite competing with leaders and parties (Matteo Salvini and the Five-star Movement) that were more established online. Although the competition took place in the context of an electoral system having a majoritarian component, Meloni’s main competitor, Democratic Party leader, Enrico Letta, does not seem to have been able to polarize the competition sufficiently due to the fragmentation of the parties of the centre-left. In contrast, ex-prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, and the leader of the third pole, Carlo Calenda, deployed contrasting but successful strategies on Facebook, ones that may have contributed to their electoral performances. In this context, the limited media attention devoted to the campaign seems to have mirrored citizens’ feelings of disaffection and distrust: feelings that were, in all probability, heightened by the incomprehensibility of the government crisis that led to the elections.