Instagram is the political battlefield of this late summer.

It is on one of the most used social platforms, in fact, that the clash is taking place between the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano and Maria Rosaria Boccia, the woman who on August 26 announced – on Instagram – her appointment as Advisor to the Minister for Major Events.

The story is quite well known but, in its development, it has a certain linearity. It works more or less like this: the ministry denies that something happened; immediately after Boccia publishes proof of that event on Instagram. The last one yesterday evening, when, after yet another denial, the president of the Fashion Week Milano Moda association published on her profile an email that was supposedly sent to her by the ministry’s office precisely for her nomination “as advisor to the minister for major events”.

Boccia’s profile is in fact a rather clear testimony of the fact that, between the two, there was some kind of relationship. The woman has highlighted – at the top, in the profile – a series of Stories, with the title “Fake news”, in which she collects all the evidence that supports her version, from phone calls to Whatsapp messages.

The government is clumsy, Boccia is shrewd

There are a number of important political issues that this story opens up. However, there is a reflection that concerns the relationship that each of us has with digital and platforms. The thing that, more than anything else, struck me is the comparison – completely unbalanced – between two different ways of communicating. The first affected, complex, a bit clumsy of the minister and the government, entrusted mainly to newspapers and television broadcasts. A series of somewhat empty, institutional, already heard denials. On the other hand, the shrewd, naive, naive one if you like, of Boccia: a photo, a short video, two hashtags, lately also the tag to Giorgia Meloni, as if that were the main vehicle through which to reach the Prime Minister.

The one that many have defined as an influencer actually moves like an influencer. And she documents her life, takes photos and then publishes them. Even when, probably, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do, given the circumstances. There is another set of Stories highlighted which, as Selvaggia Lucarelli reports today in the Fatto Quotidiano, contains many photos and videos in the company of Minister Sangiuliano, in different situations, from his birthday at the Ammot Cafè to the Festival of Jewish Culture. In the Stories, Lucarelli writes, there is also a long video tour of Montecitorio, made using the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, the glasses that allow you to record photos and take videos.

The story of Maria Rosaria Boccia and Minister Sangiuliano, from the beginning

Boccia goes to collect

If you think about it, it is a very powerful symbol. It is the panoptic contentthat system of collective surveillance in which we film and publish anything to build an identity on social networks, which breaks the wall of institutions. Which enters a space that does not like, by nature, absolute transparency.

And it desacralizes it, removes the aura. Post after post, Boccia has treated Montecitorio, the Government, power, just as another opportunity to create content, to gain social capital. And today, perhaps not so unexpectedly, he is moving on to collect that accumulated capital.