Italiano @comune.Aspetti testuali, lessicali e terminologici dell'Italiano istituzionale dei tweet

Widespread use of social media has transformed the way Italian people communicate with each other and has also increased citizens’ expectations on the information that public institutions should make available to them on social networks. In this context, Twitter provides the opportunity to monitor how the public sector is adapting to the new scenario and determine if its institutional language is changing accordingly. This study examined the accounts of five Italian “metropolitan cities” and found that they still favour one-way communication over the two-way interactions that usually take place on Twitter. More specifically, it analysed the textual, lexical and terminology aspects of their tweets and determined that no shift has yet happened from standard Italian to the more informal language variety that has characterised social media conversations in Italy for the past several years.