The Italian election campaign is played on TikTok

As if the same guru had explained to them at the same time that on TikTok there is a huge banquet of members of generation Z who have no idea which party they will choose for the Italian elections on September 25.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
02 September 2022 Friday 04:30
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The Italian election campaign is played on TikTok

As if the same guru had explained to them at the same time that on TikTok there is a huge banquet of members of generation Z who have no idea which party they will choose for the Italian elections on September 25. The politicians of this country have decided to suddenly land on the favorite social network of the youngest, even at the risk of becoming a meme, aware that there are many of the undecided who will vote for the first time.

The last to land on the platform was the octogenarian Silvio Berlusconi, former prime minister and telecommunications tycoon, who quickly went viral on Italian networks. "Hi guys! Here you have me. I welcome you to my official TikTok channel. On this platform, you are 5 million. And 60% of you are under 30 years old. I am a little envious”, he confessed, in his first video, promising benefits to companies that hire young people.

It has been successful. In just 24 hours, he has amassed 324,500 followers. The most followed Italian politician is the leaguer Matteo Salvini, who has been there for three years and has 545,000. In his second video, the president of Forza Italia has already started with one of his jokes, a joke that included Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin and the Pope. “You must know at least ten jokes, they are therapeutic”, he recommended to young people. That yes, Berlusconi does not take off his characteristic blue suit nor does he depart from the same desk that he has been using for years for his appearances. "I don't understand why it looks like an ad from the 1980s," one user commented. "Looks like a mattress ad," wrote another.

Berlusconi is not the only one who has done TikTok this week. At the same time, former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has joined. The Florentine appears hand in hand with former minister Carlo Calenda with a center coalition that has 5% in the polls. He commands the language of this platform somewhat better, where he explains that when he governed he had the idea of ​​creating a cultural bonus for those who turned eighteen after the November 2015 attack in Paris.

"It is the first electoral campaign that is played more on the networks than in the squares," political scientist Nadia Urbinati commented yesterday. At the moment, there is no electoral debate planned on television after the big parties have refused to allow the formations with less support in the polls to participate. One had been organized on Italian public television, Rai, between the leader of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, and the general secretary of the Democratic Party (PD), Enrico Letta, but it has been prohibited by the Communications Guarantor Authority.

During this first phase of the campaign, Italian politicians are dedicating themselves to visiting as many towns in the country as possible, and their speeches find much more repercussion on social networks than on the news. The country has gone from being dominated by the television empire of Mediaset to the revolution of the networks that the 5 Star Movement (M5E) initiated during its beginning. Now even traditional politicians have succumbed to this formula.

The most seasoned on TikTok is Salvini, thanks to The Beast, the League's massive propaganda system that propelled him into Italian politics. The far-right leads users through the Lampedusa immigrant center, offers free school books, visits kennels or posts his celebration of Milan's victory in Serie A. Giorgia Meloni, who will win the elections according to the polls, is not far behind : on TikTok he counts the points of his electoral program one by one but also shows the panzerotti (a type of fried empanadas) that he prepares with some women from Apulia. Calenda, an associate of Renzi, from the Acción party, admitted that he does not know how to dance, because he looks like a “drunk bear”. “I can't give makeup tricks because I have a belly and I'm ugly. But I can talk to you about politics.”