1) Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Angelino Alfano announced that in its next meeting the Council of Ministers will focus on measures against violence against women. Minister Alfano declared that the government “will find the money to take the necessary measures, because the protection of women is an invaluable priority”. Corriere della Sera reports on violence against women in 2013, demonstrating that this phenomenon is a real concern in Italy: since January 1st, almost every day a woman was killed by her husband, her son, her boyfriend, or her father. We hope that this negative trend will stop.

2) Prime Minister Letta announced that this weekend all the ministers of his cabinet will spend two days a retreat at Sarteano’s abbey (recently transformed into a hotel) in Tuscany, to “set the political agenda, to know each other and to become a real group”. Prime Minister Letta also underlined that each minister will bear his or her own costs.

3) Yesterday all the party members proposed by the Democratic Party and the People of Freedom Party for the presidency of the parliamentary committees were elected by the parliament, except for Nitto Palma (PDL), proposed by Silvio Berlusconi for the presidency of the Justice Committee in the Senate. Immediately after the voting, many PDL members denounced the fact that the PD has not honored the agreements they made during the negotiations. Another session of voting will take place today. We’ll see how the situation evolves.

Yesterday seven-time Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti died at 94. Worldwide newspapers have dedicated articles to this man (check out the New York Times and The Washington Post), who has been one of the leading figures of Italian politics for more than sixty years, beginning at the foundation of the Italian republic in1946, immediately after the Second World War.

While expressing condolences, many politicians have also pointed to the fact that Andreotti was also a very controversial political figure, often at the center of the power games that characterized Italian politics until the beginning of the 1990s.

But today, following the appointments of the presidents of the various parliamentary committees, the feeling is that the old power games haven’t died: the general impression is that both the Democratic Party and the People of Freedom Party are trying to fill the parliamentary seats with the party members who have been excluded from the cabinet and from other prestigious positions. We’ll see if these appointments will be made on the basis of personal competence or if they will just be made to maintain political balance.

Enrico Letta’s cabinet is paving the way to essential reforms, setting the issues that must be at the top of the political agenda. While Letta declared that one of the top priorities of his cabinet is the reform of the electoral law, Berlusconi steadily repeats that the abolition of property tax is crucial.

Though apparently the cohabitation between the Democratic Party and the People of Freedom Party seems is very difficult, Letta reaffirmed that the collaboration continues.

Laura Boldrini, President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, yesterday declared that “Violence against women is an emergency”. President Boldrini said that in Italy women’s conditions are becoming more and more difficult, and that Italy has one of Europe’s lowest percentages of women’s employment. Laura Boldrini then praised Minister of Equal Opportunities’ initiative to create a task force against feminicide.

Scott Cairns, NYU ’15

Where I come from, the average under-20-year old on the street finds politics to be a daunting and dreary subject. The highest level of interest comes around election time, when politics becomes synonymous with a boxing match between two candidates and debates produce quotes that dominate the watercooler talk for the next week. However, without knowing it, these same under-20-year-olds follow the political conversation in America all year round when they turn on ‘Comedy Central.’

Political satire is an art form that has been perfected in America. The same person who professes to be bored by politics will bend over backwards in laughter over the stylings of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, wildly popular satirists with their own shows that air nightly. These men, with thousands of followers and fans, are not without their own political opinions. In fact, they are more than happy to spill their opinions each night on the air, with a comedic spin of course.

These are the ‘power users,’ figures with the ability to influence large groups of people with their Twitter accounts and blogs, that professors Cristian Vaccari and Augosto Valeriani allude to in their upcoming paper: ‘Follow the leader! Dynamics and Patterns of Activity among the Followers of the Main Italian Political Leaders during the 2013 General Election Campaign.’ As expected, the professors find that ‘most of them are celebrities in realms other than politics or people who are already highly visible in the politics-media ecosystem.’ My question for the authors when they come together at the upcoming LPD conference on Social Media and Political Participation is this: how does this quasi-interest in politics that is channeled through political satire translated into actual interest? Do people ever find themselves wanting to learn more, or are they just tuning in to crack a joke in the direction of a Silvio Berlusconi-esque politician?
—
To learn more about our upcoming conference on Social Media and Political Participation, click here.

To join the conference conversation on social media, click here.

To learn more about the latest research at NYU in the field of social media and political participation, click here visit the online lab of NYU Professor and conference organizer Joshua Tucker.

Now that we have a new cabinet there is a widespread feeling that we have won a battle, but there’s still a war to be fought.

Enrico Letta’s bipartisan cabinet won the vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies last night, and most likely it will also get the vote of confidence in the Senate, where voting will take place today.

Asking for the vote of confidence in parliament, Prime Minister Letta outlined the political agenda of his cabinet: there are many economic and institutional reforms that can no longer be postponed.

In addition to that, The Democratic Party following the unfavorable situation during the presidential election, and the Five Star Movement following the publication of the contents of the mailbox of Giulia Sarti, a M5S deputy, are struggling to stabilize their internal situations. The PD has started identifying the next party leader after Pierluigi Bersani’s resignation, while M5S is trying to overshadow the internal struggles and to focus is attention to citizens’ real needs.