Twitter as a new engagement opportunity. Analysis of the questions-answers between the Italian Premier and citizens

On 23 April 2014, the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi hosted a one-hour Question & Answer event on Twitter. Named after the hashtag used to aggregate questions and answers, the #matteorisponde (Matteo responds event generated over 3,000 tweets, created by 2,000 users. The Question & Answer event offered the opportunity to investigate meanings and consequences of the process of distance shortening between citizens and representatives, which characterises social media such as Twitter. The content analysis of the 3,632 Tweets allowed for a classification according to the frame (negative, positive, or neutral); the format (pure question, rhetorical question, position stand, joke, reporting); the macro-theme and the issue. Results showed great divergence between the priorities pointed out by citizens and the issues addressed by the Prime Minister. Simultaneously, the analysis confirmed users’ self empowerment attitudes towards the community. Despite the intrinsic limitations of Question & Answer events such as #matteorisponde, related to the wide discretion left to the respondent to select or ignore queries received, citizens fully embraced the opportunity for dialogue. Their Twitter participation in the public-politician debate represented an important signal of how new web tools can contribute to enriching and enlarging the public space, allowing the intervention of other actors rather than just the traditional elites.