Investigating Italian disinformation spreading on Twitter in the context of 2019 European elections

Abstract: We investigate the presence (and the influence) of disinformation spreading on online social networks in Italy, in the5-month period preceding the 2019 European Parliament elections. To this aim we collected a large-scale dataset oftweets associated to thousands of news articles published on Italian disinformation websites. In the observation period,a few outlets accounted for most of the deceptive information circulating on Twitter, which focused on controversialand polarizing topics of debate such as immigration, national safety and (Italian) nationalism. We found evidence ofconnections between different disinformation outlets across Europe, U.S. and Russia, which often linked to each otherand featured similar, even translated, articles in the period before the elections. Overall, the spread of disinformation onTwitter was confined in a limited community, strongly (and explicitly) related to the Italian conservative and far-rightpolitical environment, who had a limited impact on online discussions on the up-coming elections.