Abstract

This article proposes a method to analyze pluralism among Italian political talk shows. Going beyond source and content pluralism, we propose a two-dimensional audience based measure of perceived pluralism by using the practice of «social TV». For this purpose, 135.228 tweets related to 30 episodes of prime time political talk shows broadcast in Italy in 2014 and 247.325 tweets related to 59 episodes during 2016 have been analyzed through supervised sentiment analysis. The same method have been applied to explore whether anchormen/women political leaning may influence audiences perception of their work. This analysis has been applied before and after the 2015 Rai reform. The findings suggest that overall the Italian TV system offers a decent level of pluralism, mainly due to the role of La7. The Rai reform played a role attracting a more left leaning audience during the 2016. The ideological background of the journalists shapes the audience's perception.