Electoral Campaigning 2.0 – The Case of 2010 Italian Regional Elections

The paper investigates the use of social media by the 53 candidates as governors at the last Italian regional elections in April 2010 and further explores the two hypotheses on the role of online technologies for political parties - that is the ‘politics as usual’ and the ‘equalization’ hypothesis – starting from two different points of view: first, regional elections; and, second, candidate's appropriation, negotiation or resistance to the convergence and participatory culture distinctive of the contemporary media ecology. The aim of this article is to address the following research questions: 1) which are the different degrees of appropriation of convergence and participatory culture amongst Italian candidates during 2010 regional elections according to political parties' dimension in terms of members, voters and resources? And 2) are different degrees of appropriation of convergence and participatory culture positively associated with political parties dimensions?