TikTok Tactics, Far-Right Influence and The Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
What comes to mind when you think of TikTok? Addictive dance routines? Comedy skits by Gen Z? Today, TikTok users are increasingly producing and watching political content. This new avenue of content is causing political campaigns to acknowledge and invest in the platform’s potential to influence young voters.
Italy’s current Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, engaged with the platform during and after her winning election campaign. Meloni is a career politician with experience in delivering overt political messages through traditional channels, and this investigation explores the more subtle style and content of her TikTok posts demonstrating how they bear similarity to other far-right influencers who use tactics to obliquely normalise far-right political views. Specifically, this article draws on the work of two researchers Leidig and Maly who have each identified various gendered-features including ‘metapolitics’ and ‘networked intimacy’ – that are particular to successful female far-right social media influencers.
Meloni’s adoption of gendered-strategies may have helped the so-called girlbossolini, win 24 percent of women voters, more than that of any other candidate.
The 2022 Italian General Election
Italy held general elections on 25 September 2022. The official campaigning period, in which political parties can begin spending and actively advertising their election campaign, began two months earlier on 21 July 2022. The main blocs competing for victory were made up of two coalitions and two stand alone parties:
- the Centre Left coalition (Democratic Party – IDP, Greens and Left, More Europe, Civic Commitment),
- the Five Star Movement,
- Action – Italia Viva
- and the Centre Right coalition (Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy)(FdI), Forza Italia, Us Moderates and the League).
The FdI won almost 26% of the vote, which allowed the Center Right coalition, with an absolute majority, to form a coalition government.
Throughout the election period, and in the aftermath, international media has paid particular attention to the polarising leader of the FdI – and now elected prime minister - Giorgia Meloni. Meloni is the first woman to hold the office of prime minister in Italy, a milestone that might have been perceived as a step forward for gender equality in Italy. However, the celebration has been muted, as Meloni’s politics have been criticised as anti-feminist and the party, Fratelli d’Italia, self-celebrates their direct lineage back to fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and currently promotes an anti-migrant, anti-LGBTIQ+ and anti-abortion agenda.
Despite being a relatively recent establishment – founded in 2012 - the FdI’s roots can be traced back to Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement) (MSI), whose co-founder, Giorgio Almirante, was described as a collaborator in the Nazi puppet state during the Second World War. In 2020 Meloni praised Almirante as a ‘patriot’ for his “unconditional love for Italy”. Meloni has consistently been unapologetic – and yet subtle - in her revisionist beliefs about Italy’s Fascist history. Furthermore, the FdI has also been revealed as making racist, fascist, and sexist jokes, and statements, as a in-depth Fanpage investigation "Lobby Nera" (translated to English as "The Black Lobby") revealed from secretly filmed evidence.
This investigation interrogates Meloni’s use of gendered-tactics common to far-right influencers.
Political TikTok and Meloni
TikTok, owned by parent company ByteDance Ltd., is a video hosting service for short-form videos ranging in duration from 3 seconds to 10 minutes. Initially released in 2016, TikTok surpassed 2 billion mobile downloads worldwide in 2020. ‘Gen Z’ (people who in 2023 were aged 16 to 24), make up 60% of its users. By comparison, roughly 26% of Facebook users are from the Gen Z demographic. This demographic is important as in Italy, during the 2022 elections, the majority of undecided voters in Italy were under 30. Unlike social media counterparts such as Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube, paid political advertising is banned on TikTok. However, politicians can still share political views and engage in political conversation on TikTok through their profiles. Due to moderation, some political accounts, including members of the extreme far-right, have been banned but mainstream far-right politicians like Marine Le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands operate personal accounts.
Meloni’s first interaction with TikTok was not initially intentional. During an FdI rally at Piazza San Giovanni in Rome on 19 November 2019, Meloni stood on stage in front of a crowd of supporters and jubilantly roared at them, “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, and I am Christian, and you cannot take that away from me!” The speech was first parodied on YouTube as an electronic disco anthem and then quickly adopted by divas and drag artists (all too aware of Meloni’s anti-LGBTIQ+ agenda) on TikTok. The hashtag #iosonogiorgia went on to have 20 million views. As more and more people remade and shared the song, it gradually lost its parody value. Ultimately, even Meloni’s campaign embraced the trend, choosing to use the song to introduce Meloni at FdI party events. Meloni went on to title her 2021 autobiography, ‘Io sono Giorgia’.
Meloni embraced the humour of the social media posts to turn criticism back on her detractors and strengthen her position. Humour, as this investigation reveals, is a recurring feature in Meloni’s use of TikTok, to downplay her far-right politics – a common far-right tactic - whilst also playing into a form of authenticity and therefore an intimacy with her network of followers.
Her humour, however, wasn’t enough to combat the hostile reaction she initially received from TikTok’s youth audience when she joined the platform in 2019, so she abandoned her TikTok profile, only returning in February 2022. Meloni only had a small following on TikTok prior to the election but since winning, Meloni’s following has grown to 1,400,000 (as of January 2024); the highest of any Italian politician on TikTok. Many of these followers may be due to an increase in people interested in following the Prime Minister, rather than any specific tactics Meloni is using to engage her following – however, she is actively engaged with this following through a recurrent discursive, humorous, and personality-led profile. Whether her own campaign instincts, or developed by campaign managers, many of the tactics present within her profile bear similarity with identified right-wing influence tactics.
Far-right Tactics: Networked Intimacy and Metapolitics
A new wave of far-right parties has seen increased electoral support across Europe, especially within the identitarian movement which advocates for pan-European nationalism, re-migration and the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. There has also been a shift in traditional, short-term direct political action, such as participating in elections or engaging in street demonstrations, to a focus on a long-term metapolitics with a focus on identity, culture and heritage. Metapolitics is a term to describe an approach to influence which prioritises culture and ideas to realize political change in the long-term. Metapolitics can be seen in actions such as the purging of staff in Italian cultural institutions since the election.
Findings: Presentation, Engagement, and Topics
Presentation of Self
Evaluating the style of presentation of Meloni’s profile was crucial to determining if Meloni employed networked intimacy as a strategy. At first glance, it was striking that many (at least 54 upon later counting) of the videos featured Meloni speaking directly to the camera. Twenty-three videos were shot on a mobile, judging by the proximity of the camera and camera shake indicating a style which is often used to show a crossover between influencer and politician – a tactic that seems to be becoming more common since Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016.
Meloni’s TikTok posts use varying imagery to signal different values. Some of her posts (37 out of 224) contain little to no dialogue, featuring Meloni amongst crowds of supporters. For instance, several videos have footage from campaign rallies in Turin, Mestre, and Perugia, with Meloni on stage or taking selfies with the audience in the background – intended to demonstrate her popularity – a tactic also common within populist movements. Other content shows a friendly, accessible politician with videos of Meloni making ravioli or interacting with animals. There are also selfies, such as with classical music tenor Andrea Bocelli, and – to show humour - “photobombing” another candidate. This is not the same Meloni who roared “I am Giorgia!” to a crowd. Across the videos, Meloni uses wry humour and friendly, familiar and relatable interactions, yet during the campaign none of the posts we adopted and parodied like #iosonogiorgia. These features of humour, personal snapshots, and shows of popularity are all aspects of networked intimacy – creating a sense of a personal connection between Meloni and her audiences.
One particularly notable personal touch of political networked intimacy is from the 1st May 2023. In a post on Labour Day, Meloni introduces a video talking about how the cabinet are meeting to discuss tax cuts on a national holiday. Meloni goes on to walk into the cabinet meeting itself on camera, where she then rings a bell traditionally used to start cabinet meetings. It brings her audience not only into her life as prime minister, but also into the government itself. It’s a unique perspective that Meloni chooses to share, providing an intimacy that is notable and currently unusual in someone holding such high office.
Audience Engagement
Networked intimacy is a theory based on a relationship between an audience and the influencer. This research was examining predominantly only one side of this intimacy – the profile of Meloni. To make an initial statement of whether the relationship was bi-directional, the investigation draws on public platform-provided engagement metrics (Plays, Likes, and Shares).
Figure 1, The Play Counts graph here shows the number of times a TikTok video was played. The election campaign period sees the highest frequency of plays and a possible trend of increasing plays after the election.
Figure 2 (left), The Overall Shares and Comments graph show the number of times a post has been shared or commented on. Figure 3 (right), The Shares and Comments Count Ratio graph shows the engagement ratio of shares and comments.
Analysing engagement over time as seen in Figures 1, 2, and 3, can support view of trends and stand out posts.
The video with the highest number of overall shares and comments (Figure 2), and ranking second in likes, Meloni posted on the day of the election: ‘September 25: I've said it all.’ This was Meloni's most viewed post during the election campaign period with 11,200,000 plays on the video.
Meloni's use of humor through the years comparing the 2013 Instagram post to the 2022 TikTok post.Credits: 2013 image from Polidoro, 2022 image from TikTok
Both TikTok and right-wing influencer tactics thrive on humour, and this post is a significant example of Meloni’s tongue-in-cheek approach to her political profile. This tactic – and in fact post - is not new for Meloni. Wired Italia reported how Meloni previously shared a near identical image on Instagram almost ten years earlier. The post, a play on her surname, was captioned – here in English translation - “Are you Meloni? You have to melon.” It was a facetious callback to the attention she received for writing on social media "Se sei nomade devi nomadare" which roughly translates to "If you are nomad, you have to nomad," in reference to laws she supported forcing Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities to stay in temporary rest areas and move every six months. Making fun of a serious human rights issue while presenting her own position is a tactic seen in many Far Right profiles.
This second post plays on her surname and humour around women’s bodies – a more direct and provocative humour – and at the same time acts as a throwback to her previous political position on Roma – both of these show a soft metapolitical core to the far-right influencer tactics which manage to both send a serious message and hide behind the subtle humour.
The video with the highest share ratio (and second highest overall share of all analysed posts) was posted on the 11th March 2022 protesting the Italian ‘Green Pass,’ a COVID-19 vaccine passport. This heightened level of engagement could be associated with the controversy around responses to COVID-19, with both supporters of the anti-vaccination movements sharing the video as well as people who disagreed with Meloni’s stance. While receiving a lot of shares, the video protesting the ‘Green Pass’ has not been highly commented on. The highest Comment ratio is for Meloni’s post-election New Year 2023 greeting. Although politicians share New Year’s messages across social media, it is still an example of networked intimacy as the post is a personal message from Meloni herself and her TikTok audience responded with their own New Year’s comments. On a metapolitical level, the posts emphasises the Judeo-Christian festive period as one of the only festivities she shares such an announcement for.
The top ten highest Comment ratio videos also include more overt political messages on the cost of living crisis1 on 11th July 2023 and a promise to increase penalties for migrant trafficking on the 9th March 2023, showing the importance of overt politics to Meloni’s profile in amongst the softer metapolitics posts.
The most liked post overall is an explicitly political post from 16th September 2022, in which Meloni says she is not about to change the law on abortion. The highest Like ratio in Figure 5 was a post in remembrance of Silvio Berlusconi, who died on the 12th June 2023. While this could be seen as a form of intimacy between her and her audience, it is also a way of paying respects.
Figure 4 (left), Graph showing Likes on all posts over time between March 2022 - September 2023. Figure 5 (right), Graph showing an engagement count ration of Likes over time
While examining engagement does show aspects of networked intimacy, most engagement from the audience was on explicitly political posts, rather than those showing metapolitics. Therefore, metapolitics is a few key features on Meloni’s presentation and not often engaged with. The impact of metapolitics could still be important as it reaches both the engaged audience and the “lurkers” who watch her profile without engaging. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of what the audience intakes when watching Meloni’s profile, ithe investigation will now examine the topics Meloni presented on TikTok.
Topic Modelling
While tracking engagement suggests what was popular with platform users, examining this engagement alongside the content of Meloni’s Tik Tok posts is a more comprehensive method to gain an understanding of the tactics her messaging. Topic modelling is a way of identifying clusters of topics or themes in a large body of text. These ‘topic clusters’ work both as entry points into the detailed content and a way of identifying a topic’s prominence. In this case, topic modelling not only aided in pinpointing specific themes, like immigration and abortion, but also facilitated an examination of the engagement levels with content related to these specific topics. In Figure 6 is the resulting model showing the frequency of topics.
Figure 6, Bar graph of Count of Topics with the most common topics at the top of the graph
At first glance of Figure 6, one can easily see typical political talking points, including Pensions, Minimum Wage, and Tax, as well as current issues that were specific to the campaigning period, such as Ukraine/Russia, Cost of Living, Voting, Inflation, COVID Mandates, and Petrol Prices. The topics explored in this article demonstrating key terms of interest and the reasons for their prominence.
Using a timeline alongside the topic modelling process allows us to view at which point time topics were prominent and what was talked about during and after notable events such as election day or a key media moment.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/frasercrichton.com.influence.industry/topics-over-time.html
Figure 7, Topics over Time. Figure 7, the Topics Over Time graph shows the frequency of a particular topic at a particular point in time. The highest spike is the "Income", "Minimum Wage", "Work" topic in November 2022.
"The Brothers of Italy" and "We Are Ready"
The most frequent topic identified was Brothers of Italy combined with the topic Italy. The frequency of these topics could be explained by any political party’s common reference to their party’s name and the country they hope to govern. As the FdI party’s identity is strongly based in nationalism and the quantitiy of these references is also a signifier of the values they want to present – their metapolics – to be connected to Italy’s political history. The references on Tik-Tok to their representation of Italy demonstrate a continued subtle metapolitics approach of demonstrating nationalist values often found in the past and present messaging tactics of the far-right.
The We Are Ready topic can be traced from FdI’s campaign slogan 'Pronti a risollevare l'Italia' - 'Ready to revive Italy’. Notably, it also occurs in combination with other topics, revealing themes that are important to their messaging campaign, especially Women, Freedom, and Italy. Freedom is a common contemporary far-right topic, often connected to freedom of speech – an important topic in far-right metapolitics as an important and specifically defined topic. For example, Meloni’s calls for religious freedom are calls for preserving traditional christianity which she sees as under threat from a diverse secular society but freedom around sexuality or to chose abortion are limited by her party. The proximity of Italy to We Are Ready as a topic is, as above, because Italy is referred to as a value of nationalism throughout Meloni’s TikTok posts. The topic Women is examined in it’s own right below.
"Migrants" and Crime
Caption: Figure 8, shows only the "Migrants" topic. In May 2022 the topic has the highest frequency, dropping to low during the election period and spiking around January 2023 after the election.
Prior to the election being called, Meloni had spoken about illegal immigration on TikTok(the spike frequency around March 2022) but throughout the election period there was very little mention of Migrants even though migration is a core FdI issue and mentioned substantially on other social media. The FdI have consistently promoted fears about the increasing rate of illegal immigration and linked this with Italy’s real declining birth rate. The FdI’s 2022 manifesto included sections on measures to block refugee landings and process asylum claims offshore and tax breaks and other measures to increase the birth rate.
The strategy of stoking ethnic replacement fears is part of a global far-right conspiracy theory: the Great Replacement which declares that there will be a great replacement of white, native-born national citizens. It is clear across other social media that feeding into this conspiracy is part of the metapolitics-tactics of Meloni: For example Meloni accusing George Soros on Twitter of financing a “global ‘mass immigration’ that threatens a Great Replacement of white, native-born Italians.”
Yet on TikTok there was little mention of this topic. Only on 22 August 2022 does Meloni share a straight to camera piece regarding Migrants, responding to criticism that she shared a video of a woman who was raped by an asylum seeker – described in the next section.
Infamously in August 2022, on X, formerly known as Twitter, Meloni shared a video that circulated online of a woman being raped in a street in Piacenza. In her post, Meloni also states that she promises to do everything she could “to restore security to our cities.” Although the image was blurred, the platform removed the video and the woman involved later complained to investigators during the trial that she had lost the right to anonymity. Meloni was heavily criticised for this incident by her political opponents and across the media, including internationally, in particular for not centering victims’ rights.
However, using the momentum from the attention, Meloni doubled-down on her stance across platforms. On 22nd August 2022, she responded to criticism of her Twitter post directly on TikTok, again linking sexual violence to immigration and crime, and blaming the previous Partito Democratico (The Democratic Party) government. This link has not been proven as statistics in Italy (and around the world) suggest that most sexual violence is carried out by a person close to the victim. Her TikTok responses to criticism are examples of the far-right practice to use the threats of sexual violence to white womanhood to justify hate for non-whites. Referring to the Twitter post, Giulia Siviero said “[Meloni] uses violence against women not to denounce it or to make proposals on the issue itself, but rather to affirm her racist policies against migrants.” A form of side-stepping also seen in the tactics of humour and metapolitics.
After the election, there was a visible series of spikes in talking about migration that can be seen in the period January and March 2023, usually in tandem with talking about Crime or responding to criticism of her policies. This timeline of the topic of migration - silent on the matter until after the election – is surprising given how important a topic this is in contemporary European politics and to the FdI. However, this also points to a calculated strategy, that is aware of the importance of values in different audiences – and a decision to omit migrants from TikTok messaging, suggests an awareness that other values are important to get that specific younger audience on board. In line with metapolitics approaches: once gentler values based messaging on boards the new audience, action can be taken: since winning a majority in parliament, the FdI have stopped NGO ships from allowing asylum seekers to disembark in Italy.
Topic: "Family"
On TikTok, Meloni made a number of posts that echo a sentiment that can be summed up by a statement in one post: “the family is the essential nucleus of our nation, it is the basic unit of our social life,” The collection of these posts show a subtle approach to conveying her traditional views of family – rather than the specific policies. However, Meloni also posts on TikTok about tax and child benefits policies which discriminate against same-sex families and those who wish to have children through alternative roots. These policies are discussed openly, showing a boldness in the support for this area of values, which are seen in follow up actions after election: Meloni and the FdI have directed local authorities not to register same-sex couples as parents, and argued for non-biological parents to be removed from a child’s birth certificate. Furthermore, Meloni’s government has also criminalised parents seeking surrogacy abroad, which is again promoted by Meloni on TikTok, saying, “It is no longer a taboo to say that motherhood is not for sale, that wombs cannot be rented, that children are not over-the-counter products.”
In another reference to family, one TikTok post shows Meloni decorating a Christmas nativity scene at home. In the video, Meloni says she is decorating the nativity scene for her daughter Ginevra and encourages other families to do the same. She goes on to claim that her celebration of a traditional Christian family Christmas nativity is under attack in schools across Italy, saying, “How does my culture offend you?” This scene and comment are aligned with Leidig and Maly’s far-right networked intimacy as well as shared victimhood exhibited by the influencers Leidig studied. Since the FdI have drafted a law to protect nativity scenes in schools and ban secular celebrations.
Topics: "Fake News" and "Ecological" (Climate)
The topic of Fake News was relatively prominent, and in futher exploration, was revealed to be related to a specific moment within the election campaign: Meloni declared claims she planned to abolish Law 194, which guarantees women’s right to abortion, as ‘Fake News’. In a notable post on TikTok, she responded to “The accusation of an Italian brotherhood that scares us, an unpresentable, xenophobic, fascist movement” on 14th June 2022 as “Delusional”. This response, and especially the use of term fake news - correlates with the far-right tactic, identified by Leidig, of creating a sense of victimhood in response to criticism.
In the investigation, we incorporated a manual check of the translations where necessary and the topic “Ecological” is a translation of “Climate” and is reflective of Meloni’s climate denial beliefs. Significantly, she makes very few direct posts about climate change (there is a post about the importance of water during the election period and no mention of climate during wildfires in Sicily). However, given the prominence of the topic, it is clear that climate is playing a role in the values she hopes to portray to her audience through subtle mentions in line with approaches to using a basis of metapolitics for the party’s long-term policies.
Topic: "Women"
The topic of Women appears regularly in conjunction with Meloni’s references to her own role as a mother, sister, daughter. This reflects her apparently chosen persona: as a "woman of the people" as opposed to a traditional professional politician. This is a common approach within far-right, to eliminate trust in traditional professional politics in favour of their populist presenting representatives. Further, these values form metapolitics which support a limitation of policy’s to support women. In one post, she told her audience on TikTok, “I want to tell the women of this nation that the fact of always or almost always being underestimated is a great advantage, because yes, they often don't see you coming and we must be aware of this advantage, as long as we are not.” Here, she clearly sets metapolitical values of inaction in policy behind the overt support of the role of women. According to her statements, Meloni doesn’t believe in affirmative action, and rejects legal or structural ways to include women in spaces from which they have been historically excluded. In an article in The Atlantic, writer Molly Jong-Fast referred to this contradictory ‘feminism’, as “gender-washing,” saying, “Meloni made fascism look feminist.” Such careful shading has perhaps been part of Meloni’s appeal to women and her party captured 24 percent of women voters, more than any other party.
Critics point out that women have long played a contradictory role in far-right movements. Seyward Darby, author of “Sisters in Hate,” wrote that although the primary role of women according to many values in the Far Right is to have white babies and serve traditional subservient roles to men. Darby goes on to say, women are “bridges” who communicate with the mainstream with ambiguous messaging – which we can see in many of Meloni’s posts such as the two outlined above. Derby says far-right actors use “motherhood status as a shield” to say, “We just want to love our heritage. We just want to love our children. Look at me, I’m just a nice white woman trying to live her life. What could be so bad about that?” Meloni draws on this in her tactics, regularly reinstating her role as a woman as an important aspect of her identity in politics.
Topic: "Abortion"
The time analysis shows that on TikTok, Meloni remained silent on Abortion until two posts just before the election. In the first video, “We do not intend to abolish Law 194”, on the 11th of September she emphasised Law 194’s inclusion of a section on the prevention of abortion and accused other politicians of spreading false claims about her intentions towards Law 194. This content was largely repeated in the second post “Excuse me, do you want to change the 194 or not?” on the 16th of September 2022. Despite Meloni’s rebuttal on TikTok, since winning the election, coalition members have begun drafting “a law giving legal standing to the foetus from conception,” indirectly making abortion illegal. While this is overt political messaging, the silence on TikTok before the election, and denial of abolishment of the law, demonstrate strategic decisions made in the messaging of the campaign.
Meloni and LGBTIQ+ Rights
A notable topic missing from the topic modelling list is LGBTIQ+ rights. Although Meloni has been outspoken in her opposition to LGBTIQ+ rights, she didn’t refer to the topic directly as a talking point in her posts on TikTok. In 2022, shortly before the election was called Meloni spoke at the Spanish far-right Vox Party’s conference. “They will say we are dangerous, extremists, racists, fascists, deniers and homophobes,” she thundered before ending with a crescendo of shouted slogans: “Yes to natural families! No to LGBT lobbies! Yes to sexual identity! No to gender ideology!” Meloni later apologised for the tone, but not for the content of her speech. She has gone on to accuse the LGBTIQ+ community of being, “out to harm women and the family by destroying ‘gender identity,’.” This use of what critics call the gender ideology conspiracy theory again reflects a wider international far-right theme. The silence of all of these values on TikTok is noteworthy, as her opposition to LGBTIQ+ rights through other channels has helped put Meloni in the international media.
There is only one post on Meloni’s TikTok of a man who identified as gay being interviewed on the beach saying that he supported Meloni and “you don’t have to be a communist to be gay”. It’s surprising, and perhaps telling, that Meloni herself says nothing directly about this as a topic on TikTok, unless you are aware of the role of TikTok as the soul of the LGBTQ Internet.
Conclusion
Using open-source tools to scrape data from TikTok provided the investigation with a foundation to examine how Giorgia Meloni leveraged the platform to market herself and her politics to a predominately younger audience. The key question this investigation set out to answer was, are features such as networked intimacy, metapolitics and European New Right discursive strategies such as humour and victimhood, as well as specific far-right theories present in Meloni's use of TikTok? The findings show clear uses of networked intimacy through staged, influencer style presentation-of-self that used informal domestic and office settings, a mobile phone as a prop or to film content, and shaky straight-to-camera presentation. This style works to create an authenticity that makes Meloni relatable to a youth audience. There are also examples of networked intimacy through disclosure of aspects of Meloni's personal life, such as taking us behind the scenes in cabinet. She uses metapolitics to convey her message, such as through the nativity scene. There is humour such as in the ‘Melons’ post but also sarcasm. The metrics (Likes, Comments, and Shares) show that some of these posts resonated with Meloni's audience, but it’s difficult to tell more from the metrics alone.
The topic modelling and analysis of topics over time provided valuable insights into the topics and framings that resonated with viewers, presumably younger voters. Through this, it is clear that metapolitics takes place with many important topics addressed irregularly, and usually in context with value-based words including Women, Freedom, and also in reference to the party or the country. Finally, other far-right strategies including reinforcing victimhood of the party and right-wing perspectives, as well as humour and irony, are used within Meloni’s influence tactics.
Analysis of Meloni’s TikTok videos gives an insight into the - at times wide - disconnect between the cultivated persona and the formal politics of Giorgia Meloni – which may be key to her continuing success with her audience. Umberto Eco says, fascism is "a beehive of contradictions” and Meloni and her strategic use of TikTok to market herself as a populist ‘woman of the people’ while reinforcing far-right policies of limited concepts of freedom and family is undoubtedly one of these contradictions.
Download a PDF Explainer of the author's investigation. Download PDF
About the Author:
Fraser Crichton is a freelance researcher and visual artist. His project The Moral Drift examined abuse in state care in Aotearoa New Zealand and the State's failure to provide redress and accountability to survivors. This project have been exhibited at Toi Tauranga Tauranga Art Gallery and Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery. His writing has appeared in Open Democracy and he attended Tactical Tech's Investigating the Influence Industry: Summer School Lite. Connect with him on Bluesky: @frasercrichton.com
Edited by Amber Macintyre and Cassiane Cladis.
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First published: August 12, 2024