Wednesday 20 July, the schedule of Italian televisions has adapted in its entirety to the story of the government crisis: we have seen news specials, insights and links from Montecitorio that have reported live on the vote of confidence and the subsequent fall of the Draghi government. And they did so using recognized formats and professionalism, built over the years and in the maturity of a means of communication that made its debut in our country in 1954.
At the same moments, in a different media space, something happened that was similar and very different at the same time. Even on TikTok there was talk of politics, of possible elections and the consequences that day could have had on the lives of each of us, except that different formats were used, with perhaps not so well known protagonists. And that story was successful: to date, the hashtag #crisidigoverno has over 28 million views. Because social networks (and in particular TikTok and Instagram) they are not just entertainment spaces in the strict sense. They are also places of information, and they are increasingly so.
The witness
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by Emanuele Capone
Spaces for information and the electoral campaign
The way we inform or access the world has never been so fragmented. According to an analysis by Comscore, 65% of respondents between 18 and 24 years revealed that he uses digital more than television; the 25-34 age group shows a more balanced distribution (55% TV and 45% digital), but the weight of television grows with increasing age. In other words, there is a very strong generational difference in the ways of entering the world.
It is an important issue, especially in an electoral campaign which, at least in our country, will see for the first time the presence of a mature social network such as TikTok. ByteDance’s platform has already been a significant battleground in the French elections where, according to a study by Tracking Exposed, over 1 billion videos on the topic were viewed on the platform in the months leading up to the election. Most of which, the researchers explain, did not come from accounts directly linked to candidates or traditional publications; in almost 80% of cases the content was posted by individual users or content producers.
And indeed, apart from a few success stories, TikTok still seems like a space that journalists and politicians struggle to fully understand. Of course, there are the big newspapers (including those of the GEDI group) and projects designed for the digital space, such as Will or Torcha. But most of all the interested parties speakthat is, those boys and girls born and raised using precisely those languages and formats.
The faces of the story of Italian politics on TikTok
In this sense, even in our country there are boys and girls who, within social networks, talk about politics. There are those who do it to carry on an idea or a certain vision of the world (the hashtag #LeftTikTok has over 300 million views) but there are also those who try to tell the political news to their peers. How Andrea Borello, also known as the politoker, which tells in a simple way the topics on the agenda to over 170 thousand followers. His most famous video, which has garnered over 1 million views, is a test to help understand if you are on the right or on the left: in this didactic approach there is a lot of the tone of voice that works when it comes to politics inside. TikTok.
That’s what, in a similar enough way, it tries to do too Alessandro Luna (yes: he is the grandson of the director of Italian Tech), which almost every day publishes videos summarizing and explaining the political situation in our country. His Special Government Crisis, published last July 15, has so far collected almost 200,000 views.
Another an interesting example is @its_selma_, specializing in international politics, whose video explaining the government crisis has been viewed over 440,000 times. But there is much more, in particular the use of trends and viral audio, bent to the needs of the story of a theme such as politics.
The phenomenon
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by Viola Stefanello
The editorial offices of Zeta for Zeta
But there is not only the effort of individuals who, for passion or other reasons, embark on the path of the story of politics on social networks. There are also more structured realities, groups of boys and girls who set up organizations dedicated to telling the news, not just politics, on TikTok and Instagram.
There is, for example, SiamoZeta, a project born on Instagram and then landed on TikTok to tell the world to Generation Z, starting from an editorial staff made up exclusively of people born between the end of the 90s and the beginning of the 2000s. It is a multimedia project, da Instagram is TikTok fino ai podcastwhich focuses on the uniformity of interests and views: the editors themselves are the target of the content produced.
Similar is the work of Politicare and Pop Politikwhich are also born on Instagram, and are instead completely dedicated to political information: “An editorial staff of under 30 – reads the Politicare profile – with the aim of creating information transparent and without involvement“. Instead, Pop Politik’s bio is: “Current affairs, politics, rights and other useless things, explained to the best of our worst”.
And it is precisely these, two of the ingredients that seem to unite each of these experiences, between Instagram and TikTok: on the one hand the personal component which, in this media context, is not only having the same age, but also having the same references and consumption habits; on the other hand, there is the tendency and the need to explain, to to describe in a simple way an apparently complex theme, distant. And shorten a distance, to bring even the youngest to politics.