Figure 1

Discursive communities of verified users. They have been found running the Louvain community detection algorithm on the Largest Connected Component (LCC) of the validated network of verified users. Top panel: In red, top right corner, there are the center-left wing parties; in sky blue (on top), there are the official government accounts; in orange, the M5S-oriented community and in steel blue (on the bottom) the news media and center-right and right wing communities. Other minor communities can be found in the periphery of the LCC. Actually, by rerunning the same community detection algorithm inside these larger communities, it is possible to find purely political subcommunities, i.e., communities composed quite exclusively by politicians and official accounts of political parties. This can be seen in the lowest panel: in magenta, Italia Viva, the political party of the former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi; in red, the Partito Democratico, i.e., the Italian Democratic Party; in orange, M5S and in blue the center-right and right wing parties Forza Italia, Lega and Fratelli d’Italia. A more detailed description of the subcommunities of the network can be found in Sect. 2 of the Additional file 1. In both panels, the node dimensions are proportional to their degree. The layout used for network visualization is the Fruchterman-Reingold one [43]