Politicians Under Fire: Citizens’ Incivility Against Political Leaders on Social Media

This research uses artificial intelligence and manual content-analysis to examine the diffusion of incivility against political leaders on Twitter during the 2022 Italian election campaign. Using a mixed approach (artificial intelligence and manual content analysis), we examined 22,465 uncivil tweets posted in the 4 weeks before the vote. Results show that hostility toward leaders increases as voting approaches and as candidates’ public visibility grows, and that it affects frontrunner leaders the most. Furthermore, the analysis of the different forms of incivility showed that it changes depending on the target it hits, revealing unexpected aspects: contrary to expectations, incivility against the only female leader (Giorgia Meloni) are not “sexist attacks” but forms of demonization (i.e., association with figures/symbols concerning totalitarian regimes); while against Giuseppe Conte, accusations of “illegality,” lies and “misinformation” prevail, that is, the same kind of incivility that he and his party use against opponents. Finally, we found that the authors of uncivil attacks are mainly ordinary/sporadic users, with all the consequences that this implies in terms of a normalization of incivility in public debate.