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Facebook Ads: Politics of Migration in Italy

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Social Informatics (SocInfo 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12467))

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Abstract

Targeted online advertising is on the forefront of political communication, allowing hyper-local advertising campaigns around elections and issues. In this study, we employ a new resource for political ad monitoring – Facebook Ads Library – to examine advertising concerning the issue of immigration in Italy. A crucial topic in Italian politics, it has recently been a focus of several populist movements, some of which have adopted social media as a powerful tool for voter engagement. Indeed, we find evidence of targeting by the parties both in terms of geography and demographics (age and gender). For instance, Five Star Movement reaches a younger audience when advertising about immigration, while other parties’ ads have a more male audience when advertising on this issue. We also notice a marked rise in advertising volume around elections, as well as a shift to more general audience. Thus, we illustrate political advertising targeting that likely has an impact on public opinion on a topic involving potentially vulnerable populations, and urge the research community to include online advertising in the monitoring of public discourse.

After first author, the author names are in alphabetical order.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://migration.iom.int/europe?type=arrivals.

  2. 2.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43167699https://www.politico.eu/article/italy-immigration-debate-facts-dont-matter.

  3. 3.

    https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/api.

  4. 4.

    The full list of authors excluded is reported in Appendix A.

  5. 5.

    https://www.wikidata.org.

  6. 6.

    https://dait.interno.gov.it/elezioni/open-data/dati-amministratori-locali-carica-al-31-dicembre-2018.

  7. 7.

    See for instance The Atlantic, “The New Populist Playbook” (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/09/matteo-salvini-italy-populist-playbook/597298/) and Reuters.com, “Chestnuts, swagger and good grammar: how Italy’s ‘Captain’ builds his brand” (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-politics-salvini-socialmedia/chestnuts-swagger-and-good-grammar-how-italys-captain-builds-his-brand-idUSKCN1MS1S6).

  8. 8.

    https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Camera_2018_Partiti.svg.

  9. 9.

    E.g., using the hashtag #portichiusi – “close the ports”.

  10. 10.

    The definition of “rights and duties” for immigrants is PD’s first point of intervention for their integration (see https://www.partitodemocratico.it/archivio/il-pd-e-limmigrazione/).

  11. 11.

    E.g., https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?id=2095571910748061.

  12. 12.

    https://github.com/PotenteOpossum/Facebook-Ads-Politics-of-Migration-in-Italy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ISI Foundation, Turin, Italy

    Arthur Capozzi, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales, Yelena Mejova, Corrado Monti, André Panisson & Daniela Paolotti

Authors
  1. Arthur Capozzi
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  2. Gianmarco De Francisci Morales
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  3. Yelena Mejova
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  4. Corrado Monti
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  5. André Panisson
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  6. Daniela Paolotti
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yelena Mejova .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

    Samin Aref

  2. University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Kalina Bontcheva

  3. King’s College London, London, UK

    Marco Braghieri

  4. Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Frank Dignum

  5. ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy

    Fosca Giannotti

  6. University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Francesco Grisolia

  7. University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Dino Pedreschi

A Appendix

A Appendix

Table 1. Top 10 words for each party by odds ratio of presence in migrant ads compared to all political ads (translated to English).
Full size table

List of Ad Authors Manually Removed: ‘Move To Canada Today’, ‘Patagonia’, ‘VisaPlace - Niren & Associates Immigration Law Firm’, ‘Immigration Spot’, ‘Battlefield Italia-La pagina’, ‘Videodrome’.

Keywords Used to Retrieve Ads from the Facebook Ads Library: ‘migrante’, ‘migranti’, ‘immigrato’, ‘immigrati’, ‘immigrata’, ‘immigrate’, ‘ius soli’, ‘ius culturae’, ‘sbarchi’, ‘sbarco’, ‘migrazioni’, ‘migrazione’, ‘clandestino’, ‘clandestini’, ‘clandestina’, ‘clandestine’, ‘profugo’, ‘profughi’, ‘profughe’, ‘profuga’, ‘scafisti’, ‘scafista’, ‘extracomunitario’, ‘extracomunitari’, ‘extracomunitaria’, ‘extracomunitarie’.

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Capozzi, A., De Francisci Morales, G., Mejova, Y., Monti, C., Panisson, A., Paolotti, D. (2020). Facebook Ads: Politics of Migration in Italy. In: Aref, S., et al. Social Informatics. SocInfo 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12467. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60975-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60975-7_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-60974-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-60975-7

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