Online fundraising. Are Italian parties meeting the challenge?

Abstract

This article examines whether Italian political parties are meeting the challenge of online fundraising in a context shaped by the abolition of direct public funding and declining political trust. Drawing on the literature on party change, political finance and digitalization, it explores the extent to which parties have adopted digital fundraising strategies, focusing in particular on the promotion of the ‘2×1000’ tax-allocation scheme through online advertising. The analysis is based on a dataset of 3,679 Meta advertisements published between 2018 and 2024 by the five main Italian parties, combining automated content analysis with qualitative evidence from interviews with party elites. The findings show that, despite a gradual increase, digital fundraising remains marginal and highly uneven across parties. While some parties – notably the League – invest significantly in fundraising campaigns, others, such as the Five Star Movement and Forza Italia, make no use of digital advertising for this purpose. The results highlight the importance of organizational factors, including party structure, available resources and digital capacity, in shaping patterns of adoption. Overall, Italian parties appear to make only limited use of digital fundraising, treating it primarily as a supplementary communication tool rather than as a means of strengthening financial sustainability and citizen engagement.