THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL INFLUENCERS IN NEW DYNAMICS OF YOUTH POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT

In recent years, transformations in both political and media landscapes have profoundly reshaped the conditions under which young people engage with politics. The decline of traditional agents of political socialization, alongside the rise of social media as their primary source of information, has opened space for new forms of political mediation outside conventional channels. Among these, platform-native actors, most notably digital influencers, have become increasingly relevant in shaping how political content is encountered, interpreted, and enacted by younger audiences. Yet, despite growing scholarly attention, little is known about how such actors function as political intermediaries, and how young people perceive and respond to their interventions. Against this backdrop, this thesis investigates how social media platforms and influencers shape youth political engagement, situating the analysis within the Italian case and combining theoretical contributions with original empirical evidence to capture both the supply and demand sides of digital political communication. The first paper examines the supply side of political communication on social media in Italy, focusing on the growing presence of new digital actors such as news aggregators and influencers. Based on two years of interaction data, it maps the 1,000 most-interacted-with Italian Facebook and Instagram pages to reconstruct the ecosystem in which legacy and platform-native voices coexist and compete for visibility. The analysis reveals clear platform differences: Facebook remains dominated by traditional political and media actors, while Instagram amplifies lifestyle-oriented and influencer-driven profiles. Although still a minority in quantitative terms, news aggregators and influencers represent a strategically relevant presence within this environment, suggesting a growing role in structuring the spaces where young people encounter political issues. The second paper advances a multidimensional framework for analyzing influencers’ politicization. By crossing two dimensions, political content density and political thematic breadth, it identifies four ideal types: Intensive Political Specialists, Intensive Political Generalists, Sporadic Political Specialists, and Sporadic Political Generalists. This framework highlights how political influence extends across the spectrum of digital creators, who engage with public issues in diverse ways and may assume different political roles: generalists potentially acting as political socializers, and specialists as mobilizers. The third paper turns to the demand side of political communication, through 23 in-depth interviews with Italian young adults (19–26). Findings show that social media serve both as gateways to political information and as arenas of participation, where online actions acquire political meaning through mechanisms of self-presentation, awareness-raising, and debate stimulation. Young users also apply credibility assessments based on source attributes, message practices, platform signals, and format quality. The thesis makes three main contributions: a replicable codebook for identifying and categorizing digitally influential actors and evaluating their political relevance within broader digital ecosystems; a multidimensional framework for politically classifying influencers; and original qualitative evidence foregrounding young citizens’ perspectives of these dynamics. Overall, it points to a new configuration of youth political engagement in the platform age, marked by fragmentation, hybridization, and the growing role of digital-native actors, aligning with recent literature on political communication and youth engagement.