La gente, gli arcobaleni e Salvini. Internet meme, viralità e politica italiana

The paper discusses the relations between political communication and online memetic communication, with particular reference to the Italian context. After a brief state of the art of the literature in point, and the synthetic presentation of a semiotic approach to viral phenomena and Internet memes, three main case studies are reviewed: the Italian Facebook page ”Siamo la gente, il potere ci temono” (translatable with the broken English “We are the people, the power are afraid of us”; created in 2012), a mimetic satire linking Beppe Grillo‟s Five Star Movement, conspiracy theories, and grammatical incorrectness; the spread of “rainbow profiles” over the Italian Facebook to celebrate the marriage equality sanctioned in the United States (June 27th 2015); Matteo Salvini‟s “selfie” taken at the funeral of the victims of the Morandi bridge collapsed in Genoa (August 18th 2018).