Leadership and Negative Campaign in the Audience Democracy: A Discourse Analysis of Giorgia Meloni and Enrico Letta’s Negative Strategies During the 2022 Italian Election

1 INTRODUCTION This thesis emerged from a curiosity to investigate the substantial presence of negative messaging employed by politicians in contemporary Western democracies. The motivation behind this curiosity stems from the observable increase in negative tones that have come to define electoral campaigns in recent years. Across the global political landscape, parties and candidates frequently resort to negative campaigning with a diverse array of tactics. For example, in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump’s campaign utilized footage of Hillary Clinton’s collapse at a campaign event to insinuate a lack of stamina suitable for the presidency. Similarly, during the 2010 British election, the Conservative Party (Tories) launched a series of posters attacking Prime Minister Gordon Brown, attributing to him issues such as taking billions from pensions, doubling the national debt, and releasing 80,000 criminals early. Likewise, during the 2017 French presidential election, rumors circulated regarding the eventual winner, Emmanuel Macron, alleging his involvement in a secret plot, ties to the Rothschilds, or his sexuality. Negative campaigning also played a significant role in the campaigns of Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who effectively criticized the established political class, fostering public Euroscepticism and nativism. These instances reflect a broader trend observed in Europe and beyond, where populist and extremist parties garner substantial support through negative political communication strategies. During the intensely contested electoral campaign of 2016, writer Rebecca Cusey characterized the American presidential election not as a crisis of party or poor candidates but as a crisis of America’s soul, heralding dark times for the country (Cusey, 2016). Notably, during that election, the use of friend/foe verbal tactics and deliberately brutal language reached a peak, possibly explaining why 85% of Americans believed that the political debate in America had become significantly less respectful, with 55% of respondents attributing the decline in standards to Trump (Doherty et al., 2016). This thesis aims to understand that negative campaigns can assume various tones and targets, which may differ depending on the context. Negative campaigning may reach different levels of political opposition, including the delegitimization of opponents, a process increasingly observed in several Western democracies. The Italian context, in particular, warrants investigation due to its extensive history of opponent delegitimization. Italian scholars have extensively discussed this topic, reflecting its academic relevance and widespread use in the Italian press. Additionally, politicians have begun to adopt this terminology, further perpetuating the agenda- setting dynamic that impacts the general use of the term. The selection of the 2022 election as a case study presents a compelling opportunity to scrutinize the negative strategies employed by politicians. Giorgia Meloni, the leader of Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), a far-right conservative party, emerged as the primary challenger in the competition, facing substantial criticism from the left and other parties outside the Right coalition. It is noteworthy that Meloni stood as the sole significant challenger, given that other parties in the election, including the Democratic Party, the Five Stars Movement,