Unity and coherence: the mobilizing effect of valence attributes in the 2022 Italian elections

The 2022 Italian election compelled nearly all political parties to form pre-electoral coalitions. This paper investigates whether communication strategies emphasizing valence issues related to intra-party politics, such as coalition/party unity and coherence, pay off in terms of users’ engagement and positive reactions on social media. To answer this question, we manually coded 4,827 Facebook election posts to create an original dataset. Results demonstrate that positive campaigns, such as emphasizing a party’s or coalition’s unity or coherence, lead to higher levels of users’ engagement and support. However, the impact of negative strategies matters only when focusing on parties rather than coalitions. Thus, parties remain the pivotal actors in this campaign.