Abstract

Relevant contemporary socio-political theories, as those by Budge and Norris, implicitly endorse an atomistic vision of electoral agendas: each candidate has a single and internally coherent agenda, and communicates it to the public using different channels, all conveying the same message. This research wants to contrast this vision. Through content analysis on manifestos and tweets of the main candidates to the 2016 administrative elections of Rome, it shows the variance of the policy contents in relation to the channels used to convey them. This variance is interpreted as the result of strategies aimed at conforming the policy message to the specific public expected for each channel. The salience distribution of the policy issues for the 2016 elections in Rome, Milan, Turin and Trieste is also presented.