Italian Populism and Fake News on the Internet: A New Political Weapon in the Public Discourse

Abstract

Constitutionalism considers that the press has to grant accountability in governance to underline problems and to inform public opinion. The press is “the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct”. In the range of European systems, the Italian one could be considered as a prototype case, using Hirschl’s categorisation, regarding both the freedom of information paradigm and the massive use of fake news by populist movements. This chapter aims to understand what the instruments of the Italian constitutionalism are in order to react against populist fake news and what solutions could be elaborated. The first section of the chapter will explore the constitutional framework of freedom of information in the Italian legal system, with particular regard to new Internet media. The second section will study the problem of the use of fake news by populist movements. In the third section, a number of possible solutions will be proposed.