Bloomberg, says that there would also be the hand of Russians in the immigration alarm on social media in Italy.
According to Bloomberg, in fact, the Russian state press agency, Sputnik in its Italian version was the most influential foreign media organization to have attacked immigration in Italy and among the 2% of sources most cited on this topic in online debates.
The data was provided by Madrid-based Alto Data Analytics, using software similar to Google's search algorithm to evaluate websites based on the quality and number of their links.
Alto Data verified more than 1 million posts in Italian on social media profiles in Italy between February and June 2017. Those who cited Sputnik most often are against immigration in 90% of cases, and are often right-wing public political figures who claim that the country is "suffering from an invasion" of foreigners.
"The Russian media are trying to influence decision makers, not public opinion," says Marco Cacciotto, political consultant and professor at the University of Turin, interviewed by Bloomberg. "In this way the impact could be particularly strong."
From a political point of view, Vladimir Putin has friends throughout the Italian political landscape, from Silvio Berlusconi, to the Eurosceptics of the M5S and the League, both parties opposed to the sanctions imposed against Russia for the occupation of Crimea in 2014.
Immigration is a key topic of the current electoral campaign, and which has allowed parties such as Matteo Salvini's Lega to rise to double-digit values in the polls. In an Ipsos survey from July last year, 41% of Italians called immigration their main concern, the highest of all 26 states included in the survey.