ELITES AND SOCIAL MEDIA. EXPLORATORY STUDY ON ELITES' BEHAVIOUR ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND TECHNOCRATIC, TECHNO-POPULIST AND POPULIST ATTITUDES
Tesi di Dottorato
Data di Pubblicazione:
2022
Citazione:
ELITES AND SOCIAL MEDIA. EXPLORATORY STUDY ON ELITES' BEHAVIOUR ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND TECHNOCRATIC, TECHNO-POPULIST AND POPULIST ATTITUDES / M. Bordignon ; tutor: G. Legnante ; direttore: M. Jessoula ; coordinatore: L. Papavero. Università degli Studi di Milano, 2022 Jul 25. 34. ciclo, Anno Accademico 2021.
Abstract:
In light of the vast literature on populism, populist leaders and especially their communication,
the general research aim underlying the present work is to explore elite actors, their behaviour
on social media and their connection with populism, elitism and technocracy. Such research
goals are addressed in this work in three autonomous sections, introduced by an overview of
the literature on the concepts that are common to all chapters and concluded by a recapitulation
chapter.
The first chapter explores and updates the research on elite actors in Italy. Taking our cues
from Carlo Carboni’s efforts in mapping and analysing elite members, we identify, by means
of positional approach, 5246 people at the top of the main elite sectors commonly identified in
political science: politics, public administration, armed forces, private businesses, mass media,
academia and education and voluntary association. To these main sectors, we add those actors
who are part of the religious and cultural elite (i.e. museums’ director) as established by the
literature. Thus, compared to Carboni’s works, we identify the 2.000 core members of the
elites, we underestimate the “second circle” of 6.000 of important, but not all-powerful, actors
in the Italian society. We also collect socio-demographic information about these actors,
including date and place of birth, gender, level of education, type of education, subject of
specialization, position held and institution the actor works for. These allow us to test some
confirmatory hypothesis that vastly confirm Carboni’s analysis. While elite actors become
increasingly diverse in all sectors, with more women participating to the upper echelons of
society, the political elite appears to be most heterogeneous also in terms of education and
provenance. Conversely, we do find a greater representation of economic (20%) and hard
sciences’ degree (around 15%), which goes in contradiction with some of Carboni’s arguments. In particular, linking several of the flaws of the élite class to their education: specialized in
subject useful to maintain consensus (i.e. literature and law) but lacking the technical
competence and knowledge to mobilize it towards innovation.
The second chapter explores elite actors’ behaviour on social media. In particular, we choose
to analyse Twitter for a number of reasons; first, by demographics, it appears to be the one
most adopted by elite actors. Second, and more substantially, Twitter is one of the ‘most open’
social media platforms in terms of data collection. We compile an extensive database of elite
actors on social media, with more than 1500 actors; by means of REST API (application
programming interface), we collect ids, number of followers, network of following of each
member. We test several hypotheses on both the propensity of activation, adoption and early
adoption. Among the other findings, members of the political elite are more likely to both adopt
and being active. Interestingly, however, members of the mass media elite seem to have
embraced social media before. Second, we observe some variations in terms of the field of
specialization; in particular, and as posited by the literature, those specialized in STEM subjects
are less likely to adopt social media. On the other hand, we analyze the networks of following.
By means of exponential random graph model (Ergm), we find significant levels of homophily
within each elite. On the other hand, we test several hypotheses on the likelihood of being a
central actor within the general and restricted networks.
The third chapter explores elites’ attitudes in terms of populism, technocracy and techno-
populism. Researc
Tipologia IRIS:
Tesi di dottorato
Keywords:
elites; social media; political communication
Elenco autori:
M. Bordignon
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