ROME. When he was there, the posts arrived on time and above all they went viral. Luca Morisi, however, at least for the moment, is gone and everything seems to fall, so much so that Matteo Salvini has decided to counterattack: from autumn we will return to more aggressive messages on identity issues, first of all that of pensions and immigration, an old workhorse, less usable after the pandemic.
The guru of social communication who gave Matteo Salvini years of glory has stepped aside after a personal mishap, without legal consequences, but serious enough to no longer want to drive the propaganda machine that has gone down in history as the Beast. From that moment everything went wrong, despite the team of 4-5 boys, very popular in the League, bequeathed by the boss. At every misadventure of Salvini, from the Quirinale to the trip to Poland, ending up with the mission in Moscow, many shake their heads in the League: “Ah, if there were Luca …”.
In absolute numbers, Salvini’s Facebook and Instagram profiles are losing users, but what strikes the experts more than quantity is quality, the interaction rate is in fact plummeting: -26,000,000 users on Facebook and -30,000 on Instagram, taking under review the last three months (official Facebook data). From September to today, that is, since Morisi’s farewell, Salvini, although they remain the most followed politician and the one who invests most in economic terms, has lost 172,748 users, a figure exceeded only by Beppe Grillo, now in fact semi-withdrawn from the scene public, while Giorgia Meloni in the same period bought almost 13 thousand (source Politics on Facebook). “Salvini has many followers and in itself it can be normal to lose some – explains Pierluigi Vitale, professor at the University of Salerno, who constantly monitors the profiles of politicians – but what we record is a constant trend and this is a worrying fact for him. “.
From the League, the data are observed and the causes preceding Morisi’s farewell are identified: Covid has monopolized the attention and imposed greater rigor, at least at the beginning, on the messages to be sent; the entry into the Draghi government has put Salvini some stakes and Giorgia Meloni, with a social communication inspired in part by that of the League, has become a formidable competitor. “The decline had already begun in 2019 – confirms Alex Orlowski, one of the leading cyber propaganda experts – Morisi knows a lot, but any technical work on social media has limited success because users’ tastes have changed, people get older, Facebook does not it has the strength of the past and focuses everything on groups. Today on social networks Paragone is stronger ».
For Orlowski there is a political problem: “We are facing the decline of a leader who has based his success on social networks and users are now demanding an account of those unfulfilled promises.” Professor Vitale came to a conclusion: «It is not true that the League has changed strategy, the fact is that there is no longer that skill on algorithms and choice of trends in which Morisi is the best. Everything changes very quickly and there is no longer that flexibility to adapt ». Professor Vitale, however, believes that not much will change in the coming months: «On the official website of the League there are links that refer to Salvini’s social profiles: it means that he is the party. If you wanted to change the secretary, at least from a social point of view you would have to start from scratch and this would involve enormous work “.
While waiting for Morisi to return to his place – everyone awaits him with open arms in the staff – Salvini has decided a change of pace for next year, or a return to a more aggressive style, with strong themes to impose, without being dragged by controversy not dictated by its agenda. The topic on which the leader of the League will focus is pensions, with a message that he has already begun to launch, and which will become clearer from next autumn: if we go back to the Fornero law I will bring down the government. Maybe with a post.