Abstract

In the hot summer of 2018, in the midst of the migrant crisis, a series of tweets from Italian government officials announced the closure of national ports to refugee rescue ships. This digital statement was repeated as a mantra in television news, on the radio, and in newspapers. Italian people had the impression that the executive had ordered the closure of Italian ports. Port authorities and the coast guard, despite frictions and mutual misunderstandings, seemed to eventually follow this orientation conveyed through a series of tweets. Short sequences of words interspersed with some hashtags and published on a private platform from the personal accounts of various government officials de facto acquired a legal value equal, if not greater, to that of any ministerial decree. This paper does not intend to discuss the merits of the complex issue of managing migrants in Europe. Instead, it aims to analyse from a legal point of view the relationship between social media and politics, specifically illustrating how the use of social media as a communication tool by politicians can have a profound impact on the exercise of our fundamental rights. In particular, the central question on which I would like to focus in this brief paper is: what is the legal value of a message, for example a tweet, published on social media by a person holding a political-institutional role?