Polls, on social networks anger and fear towards the Meloni government. Favorite minister? Antonio Tajani. The last one? Salvini

In the first month of government, the premier Giorgia Meloni received mainly negative reactions from social networks. This is what emerges from the monitoring of Twitter and Facebook carried out by Izi Spa in the period 21 October – 22 November. “Although the government’s measures are enjoying a large majority and consensus is growing in terms of polls for FdI, social users are showing criticism”, reads the report. Of the total interactions generated on the two social networks, a largely negative feedback emerges. The sentiment attributable to anger, in fact, prevails with 807,000 interactions, while that attributable to joy has a much lower number of interactions (168,000).

It is a trend, the one photographed by Izi, which can also be found during the first days of government and driven by hashtags such as ‘government of the worst’, ‘conflict of interest’, ‘government of horrors’. During the period October 21-26, in fact, the new executive collected a very negative sentiment, equal to 85 percent of the interactions analysed. On the positive side, for the premier, there is the relevance in the social debate that she managed to obtain during the first month of government, even compared to the other executive ministers. Engagement peaks (the level of interactions with content posted on social media) correspond to moments highlight of the first month of government: Meloni’s keynote speech given in front of parliament, but also the controversial anti-rave decree and the tug of war on migrants carried out against the NGOs.

Although these issues involve more government officials – such as Matteo Piantedosi on the rave case and Antonio Tajani on the diplomatic crisis with Paris – it is Meloni’s account, together with the official one of the prime minister’s office, that gains more visibility on social media. An analysis of the accounts of the main ministries also shows a negative prevalence of the sentiment analysed. In the lead is the Ministry of Infrastructure led by the leader of the League Matthew Salvini (92.8 percent of interactions), follows the Minister of the Family Eugenia Rockella (91.5 percent) e Daniela Santanche, owner of Tourism, with 90 percent negative sentiment. The most welcome is Antonio Tajani, Minister of Foreign Affairs. Despite the mainly negative feedback, Forza Italia’s number two is the one who records the highest percentage of positive sentiment: 18.2 percent.

As regards the separate analysis of the two social networks, Facebook compared to Twitter gives the government a higher number of encouraging feedbacks. Here the positive sentiment of pages connected to the executive reaches 48 percent. The lowest point (20 percent) was recorded on November 7, during the diplomatic crisis that broke out between the French and Italian governments, to then go up again as a result of the press conference in which the prime minister commented on the case Ocean Viking and illustrated the Aiuti-Ter decree. Conversely, on Twitter the positive sentiment on the government drops to 14.6 percent, but the prime minister manages to assume centrality with respect to the other government players. In the period 21 October – 22 November, the words ‘Meloni’, ‘Giorgia Meloni’ and ‘Government Meloni’ collected the most significant amount of published content.