Abstract

In the last few years, the progressive digitalization of everyday life and, above all, the growth of online interactions within social media have opened up a new field of research, dedicated to the likely correlation between audience engagement and political engagement. Interesting emergent phenomena are now taking place, such as the Social TV, by which media consumption is inspired by a kind of active participation, similar to the one typical of the political sphere. The article analyses the link between audience engagement and political engagement from both a theoretical and empirical standpoint. The focus is on online audience conversations and it takes into account the qualitative analysis of a significant sample of tweets produced by the Italian audience, with respect to two political TV programs (namely «Servizio Pubblico» and «Piazzapulita»).