Politicization and domestication of European issues: Italian citizen engagement on social media during the 2024 European election campaign

The second-order election (SOE) paradigm suggests that citizens generally perceive European elections as less important than national ones. However, recent research shows that European Union (EU) politicization has increased the salience of its institutions and policies in national political debates. This growing prominence is often accompanied by contentiousness, marked by critical and negative tones from political actors and the media. Moreover, progressive expansion of EU competencies has blurred the line between domestic and European politics, fostering the normalization and domestication of EU issues. This paper investigates how Italian citizens engaged with social media during the 2024 European Parliament election campaign. Specifically, it examines whether politicization and domestication influenced citizen engagement—measured through likes, shares, and comments. Analytically, the paper utilizes original data comprising the complete set of Facebook posts published by the leaders of the five principal Italian parties during 2024 EP elections. Our results suggest that Domestication may represent a driver for social media engagement compared to Europeanized contents. Negative sentiment is confirmed to be a factor eliciting users’ interaction with social media contents, but when applied to EU related issues the interaction produces mixed results.