It’s Social Media, Stupid! Opportunities and Constraints in the Representation of Corruption in and Through Social Media

Abstract

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the role of the media in relation to corruption. This interest, however, has particularly concerned legacy media, leaving the role played by social media in relation to corruption largely unexplored. This study attempts to understand how social media contributes to the public representation of corruption through an analysis of the actors who discuss it and the topics they introduce into the debate. Despite social media’s ability to diversify both the actors able to intervene in the public debate and the sub-topics being discussed, some aspects of it, such as the affordances of the platforms that fuel polarization, favor political instrumentalization of corruptive phenomena. By investigating how social media deals with corruption based on a content analysis of the posts and an analysis of the actors who intervene in the discussions, this study fills a gap in the literature.