‘Happy Monday friends! Coffee?’ Matteo Salvini, good morning selfies, and the influencer politician

Social media have reshaped how people achieve, retain, and perform celebrity. This, in turn, has re-shaped how celebrity and politics intersect. We contend that the established concept of the ‘celebrity politician’ no longer captures all of the most common celebrity practices of highly visible polit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inContemporary Italian politics (Print) Vol. 14; no. 3; pp. 331 - 351
Main Authors Starita, Giovanni Daniele, Trillò, Tommaso
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Taylor & Francis Ltd 03.07.2022
Subjects
Celebrities
Coffee
Connectedness
Constituents
Friendship
Internet
Intimacy
Mass media
Politicians
Populism
Social media
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Summary:Social media have reshaped how people achieve, retain, and perform celebrity. This, in turn, has re-shaped how celebrity and politics intersect. We contend that the established concept of the ‘celebrity politician’ no longer captures all of the most common celebrity practices of highly visible political figures. This is because politicians increasingly model their public personae on internet celebrities. We substantiate this argument with an analysis of a specific micro-celebrity practice adopted by Italian populist leader, Matteo Salvini: the ‘good morning selfie.’ We argue that Salvini borrows the practice of good morning selfies from social media influencers to build perceived interconnectedness and affective intimacy with his audience of (prospective) constituents. We conclude that the ideal type of the celebrity politician can and should be updated for the digital age with a new figure we tentatively call the ‘influencer politician’.
ISSN:2324-8823
2324-8831
DOI:10.1080/23248823.2021.2005339