Things I wrote

Here you can find the list of the papers I worked on, organized by topic rather than chronological order. If you need further info, just reach out and I’ll be happy to share more!

Notice that this might not be an updated list. The most updated list of my publications on is always available in my CV.

If your institution provides access to the papers, please download them from the websites linked to the authors’ names. This helps with my stats.

If you do not have access, please reach out via email (scaduto@essb.eur.nl), and I will be happy to provide you with a copy of the manuscript. If possible, I also provide links to download unformatted or preprint versions of my papers independently in this section.

Politicultural Linking

This is the topic of my PhD dissertation, which I wrote during my PhD at the University of Milan Bicocca (2022-2025). “Politicultural Linking” is a concept I introduced to indicate what is commonly referred to as “Political Stereotypes”, “Political inferences from apolitical cues”, “Political projections”, and so on. Out of this research effort, in addition to a monograph, the following publications arose:

Scaduto, G. (2025). Politicultural Linking: Inferences between Political and Apolitical Traits. Public Opinion Quarterly, 89(3).

  • This is my theoretical framework and literature review. It contains all the theoretical contributions I brought to the field, from the introduction of “Politicultural Linking”, to the identification of research gaps and promising avanues in the field.

Scaduto, G., Negri, F. (2024). Food for (political) thought: political inferences from apolitical cues and their social consequences in Italy. South European Society and Politics, 1–30.

  • This paper is the first empirical investigation of Politicultural Linking. It shows that people can form political judgments about others in Italy through lifestyle cues such as food preferences. It does so through a survey vignette experiment fielded in 2023.

  • Awarded “Best paper by a Junior Researcher” by the Italian Political Communication Association (ASSOCOMPOL) in 2024.

  • You can play with some of the data with a ShinyApp here.

  • The data is publicly available here.

  • Part of the replication code is available here.

Scaduto, G., Negri, F., Decadri, S. Ideology at First Sight: A Comparative Study of Ideological Stereotypes in 4 European Countries. Submitted to Political Psychology.

  • In this work, I show that politicultural linking, in the form of political stereotypes, is a well-spread behavior, and fairly consistent, in different cultural and political contexts across Europe.

  • This manuscript is currently under review. I will upload a preprint online upon acceptance.

Scaduto, G., Negri, F., Decadri, S. It’s the Homophily, Stupid: How Apolitical Similarities Affect Political Conversations. A Cross-Country Dynamic Parallel Experiment. Accepted in Political Behavior.

  • In this paper, I show test the possible behavioral consequences of politicultural linking, showing that, while people are able and prone to infer others’ political preferences from apolitical cues, these inferences do not threaten cross-ideological discussion
  • Preprint available here.

Tsoulou-Malakoudi, A., Goovaerts, I., Scaduto, G., Van Erkel, P., Walgrave, S. Political others are perceived as non-politically different. Under review in the European Journal of Political Research.

  • Exploring the other side of politicultural linking: what do people assume about your apolitical characteristics when they learn about your political preferences? The study is focused on Belgium, with data so cool that it made me move there!

Goovaerts, I., Tsoulou-Malakoudi, A., Scaduto, G., Feitosa, F., Lefevere, J. Divided Beyond Politics: How Perceptions of Non-Political Differences Are Linked to Affective Polarization Among Citizens. Under review in European Political Science Review.

  • Trying to dig deeper in the relationship between politicultural linking and affective polarization!

Political Communication

Decadri, S., Mancosu, M., Negri, F., Scaduto, G. Aligning Emotions: A Comparative Analysis of Text and Imagery by European Party Leaders on Instagram. The International Journal of Press/Politics.

  • In this paper, we use computational methods to explore EU politicians’ communication, with a particular focus on the peculiarity of the visual and textual features contained in populist politicians’ messages.
  • Computational methods!

Mancosu, M., Scaduto, G. (2024).“Crowds and Smiles: Visual Opportunity Structures and the Communication of European Political Leaders during the Covid-19 Pandemic”. Mass Communication & Society. Mass Communication and Society, 1-26.

  • Exploring in depth the visual features of the Instagram communications of political leaders in 28 EU countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Main takeaways: when COVID hits harder, politicians smile less online! There’s no reason to smile on the face of disaster, right?

Scaduto, G., Mancosu, M. (2022). Lacrime di coccodrillo? Variazioni nel contenuto visuale su Instagram dei politici populisti e mainstream durante la pandemia. Comunicazione politica, 23(2), 255-276.

  • The very first paper I ever worked on, in Italian. Tries to investigate one simple question: do political leaders in Italy smile less on Instagram when there are more deaths by Covid? And are there differences between populist and non-populist?

Scaduto, G, Negri, F. (2024). The Pundit Paradox: Exploring the Mismatch between Supply and Demand in Italian Political Talk Show Guests. Comunicazione Politica.

  • Did you know that political pundits on Italian Talk shows are older, male journalists, while the public trust younger, female experts more? If you read this paper, you would know!

  • You can find a ShinyApp to play with the data from this project here.

  • You can find the data and replication files for this project here.

Bertero, A, Scaduto, G. (2023). A midsummer night’s dream: political communication during the Italian 2022 electoral campaign. Italian Journal of Electoral Studies QOE-IJES.

  • What did political leaders talk about online during the 2022 electoral campaign? Find out here!

Journalism studies

Coming soon! Still working on some drafts. I will disclose them at a later stage!

Other projects

Respi, C., Gui, M., Scaduto, G., Serini, M., Pizzul, D., Gerosa, T., & Lutz, C. (2024). Lower Cynicism, Not Higher Literacy, Promotes Protective Behavior: Exploring the “privacy exception” in the Digital Inequality Framework. Social Science Computer Review.

  • A paper about the factors affecting privacy protection behavior online, linked to the “VDATA” project I collaborated with in 2023. In this aper, I dealt with the analysis together with Tiziano Gerosa, using structural equation models (with lavaan!). Super fun!

Scaduto, G. (2022). Gli algoritmi di computer vision: una guida all’uso per le scienze politiche e sociali. Polis, 36(2), 315-332.

  • Dealing with IA and machine learning before ChatGTP, Midjourneys and all those guys were cool.

Decadri, S., Negri, F., Scaduto, G. Visual Conjoint Experiments in Social-Scientific Research: A Semi-Systematic Review and a Protocol Blueprint for Cross-Country Applications. Submitted.

  • A methodological review about one of the coolest new methods out there: visual conjoint experiments!

Other (non-academic) things I wrote

  • My MA thesis! (In italian) “Un paese di musichette mentre fuori c’è la morte? Indagine sulla comunicazione dei politici italiani su Instagram durante la pandemia di Covid-19”. Thesis supervisor: prof. Moreno Mancosu.

  • My BA thesis! (In italian) “Teoria della scelta sociale”. Thesis supervisor: prof. Giacomo Como.

  • You can find several light-reading articles about politics and other stuff on the personal blog [in Italian] I used to write on a couple of years ago. Among those you’ll find…

  • In April 2024 I gave a recreational presentation about “Fermat’s Last Theorem” at the M2P Staff Meeting (University of Antwerp). You can find the slides, summarizing the story, here.