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How do Italian politicians use Facebook as a propaganda tool
One of the big issues at stake since Trump was elected to the USA 2016 presidential election is political propaganda on Facebook.
Is it true that the elections were manipulated through Facebook? Is it true that people can be influenced by social media? Is it true that I can send targeted messages to individuals by leveraging their weaknesses thanks to all the data collected on this platform?
The answers to these questions risk being too partial.
We know that by using advanced Facebook tools I can send differentiated messages to groups of people with specific interests, in a fairly precise manner. However, we do not know how this is converted into an effective vote.
Zuckerberg’s platform has subjected to checks and identifications all those who deliver advertising campaigns on sensitive topics and “of national interest”. They took the election issue so seriously, this time. Even the editorial staff of Slow News – the Italian digital magazine I manage – had to undergo this identification, given that we deal with the environment, power, emergencies, racism, feminism and so on: these topics are considered “of national interest” and even if we use Facebook just as a marketing tool for our journalistic works, we are subjected to same checks and identifications as politicians.
But then, approaching the 2019 European elections, Facebook has done something more, completely new.
It has created a real search engine for rotating advertising campaigns on Facebook. A free consultation search engine, which you can check too.
The Facebook Listing Library tool
The home page looks like this. As you can see, at the top you can decide which country to search.
Inside the search bar, you can type anything (names, topics, organizers and so on).
Since this tool was born essentially for political campaigns, I went to look at several Italian political pages, to see if we can get some information from them. But first of all — I…
