Assessing public sphere influence on political attitudes across generations: a mixed-methods study of generational political structuring in Italy
We present a project investigating the impact of social media on ideological structuring of political attitudes in a generational perspective, with Italy (around the 2024 European Parliament elections) as a case study. We introduce an innovative mixed-methods, sequential, quantitative-driven, multi-stage design combining surveys, qualitative interviews, and social media data, which effectively integrates qualitative and quantitative components to analyze the effect of social media influencers on political attitudes across generations. We present project design along with interaction and integration among components (methodological innovations include a “Swipe” module for respondents–influencers linkage and use of AI for classifying social media posts). We describe individual components (including first empirical results), an intermediate convergent assessment stage, and directions for data analysis.
Authors
- Elisabetta Mannoni (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8709-9397)
- Margherita Bordignon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0621-1477)
- Jessica Di Cocco (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8355-6730)
- Guido Legnante (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6411-052X)
- Luigi Curini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1974-9815)
- Nicolò Pennucci
- Giovanni Pagano (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7825-3003)
- Arianna Colombo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2827-6810)
- Arianna Piacentini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8522-3697)
- Francesco Marolla (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6561-1329)
- Dario Tuorto (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3655-0528)
- Lorenzo De Sio (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0814-6744)
- Nicola Maggini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6844-1641)
- Asia Leofreddi
- Andrea De Angelis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6866-6683)
- Francesco Piacentini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3605-9517)
- C. Vezzoni
- Matteo Boldrini
Institutions
- University of Milan (IT)
- University of Pavia (IT)
- Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli (IT)
- European University Institute (IT)
- University of Bologna (IT)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Frontiers in Political Science
- Published
- 2026-03-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2026.1720542
- Primary Topic
- Social Media and Politics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00