Setting the scene
The current population of Italy is 59,257,566 (ISTAT, 2021). There are approximately 1.6 million Italians who self-identify as lesbians, homosexuals or bisexuals (OECD, 2019), two million of whom declare they have engaged in a romantic or sexual relationship with a person of the same sex (ISTAT, 2012), and approximately 400,000 transgender people living in Italy, according to unofficial estimates based on the international scientific literature, explains Marina Pierdominici, researcher at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (cited in Giangrande, 2020). The first official survey on the transgender population in Italy (called SPoT) was commissioned in 2020 by the University of Florence, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, The Bridge Foundation, with the support of the National Observatory on Gender Identity. According to data released by the National Statistics Office (ISTAT, 2012) and Doxa-Amnesty International (2018), overall, the Italian population is aware of the lack of equal opportunities and discriminatory attitudes toward different social groups living on the national territory. Some 43.7 percent of the population consider women to be a target of discrimination, followed by immigrants (59.4 percent), homosexuals (61.3 percent) and transsexuals (80.3 percent) – these are the groups who are most at risk. Compared to heterosexuals, one citizen out of two strongly believes that homosexuals have less opportunities to find a job (49.6 percent) or to get promoted to higher positions (55 percent). One citizen out of five considers it unacceptable to have a homosexual colleague or supervisor; and that positions such as doctors, politicians and teachers should not be open to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) people. Moreover, even though the majority of the population does not consider homosexuality to be a disease, citizens still assume these are correlated, and that homosexuality is a synonym for immorality, and a threat to traditional family relations and values. Some 41.4 percent of the population would not want a homosexual to be their neighbor, and among those who perceive homosexuality as a disease, 80 percent do not recognize LGBTQI people’s right to get married (ISTAT, 2012).
The Italian legal system lacks statistics and case law on discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation and there is limited recognition of same sex partnerships among the population. The country is among the last in the European Union (EU) to adopt legislation recognizing same-sex unions, after decades of legal debate both in local courts and in the European Court of Human Rights. While on 20 May 2016, the Italian Chamber of Deputies approved the same-sex civil union bill, the Law 76/2016 was only passed after opponents introduced thousands of amendments and a provision for stepchild adoption was removed from the original bill. Problems persist even after the approval of this law as same-sex marriages performed abroad are not recognized in Italy. In a decision made in May 2018 by the country’s Court of Cassation (Italy’s highest court), an Italian and a Brazilian man who married in Brazil in 2012 were denied recognition of their marriage under Italian law. The supreme court judges agreed that the Italian law would recognize married same-sex couples only as civil partners, regardless whether they married before or after the introduction of the law on same-sex civil unions. According to the Italian-Brazilian couple, the ruling, which was the first of its kind since same-sex civil unions became legal, constituted discriminatory downgrading of their relationship status. Italy’s refusal to legally recognize the marriages of same-sex couples married abroad violates the couple’s rights to respect for private and family life, as ruled in December 2017 by the European Court of Human Rights for six other similar cases. Italian officials based the refusals to register these couples on an order issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs on 26 March 2001 which affirmed same-sex marriage is “contrary to the norms of public order.” While one Italian in two considers the law on civil unions’ approval a step forward toward “a civilized society” (Doxa-Amnesty International, 2018), LGBTQI couples are still struggling for marriage equality. The strong influence of the Roman Catholic Church, conservative and religious actors who are collaborating nationally and transnationally on anti-gender campaigns and spreading discourse against LGBT rights, reproductive rights, surrogacy, sexual education, transgender rights, gender mainstreaming and antidiscrimination policies, are also still an obstacle to achieving equality.
In addition, the prevalence of discriminatory and homophobic language used by politicians and religious figures, and disseminated through both mainstream (national newspapers and television) and online social media (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) cannot be ignored. It must be acknowledged that 41 million Italians are active on social media (Kemp, 2021), with Italy ranking sixth in Europe for its average daily social media use (Tankovska, 2021). The most popular platforms used by the population include YouTube (85.3 percent), WhatsApp (85.2 percent), Facebook (80.4 percent), Instagram (67 percent) and Twitter (32.8 percent) (Kemp, 2021). Several studies (Barretta and Milazzo, 2016; Ligas, 2011; Materassi, Tiezzi and Bencini, 2016; Scaramella, 2016) have also shown that uncontrolled and persistent use of sexist, racial, and xenophobic arguments, misinformation and incitement to violence against sexual minorities permeate media and political discourses, and spread like an oil spill through the Internet, particularly on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube channels. The Vox Observatory on Human Rights (2016) found homophobia to be the greatest indicator of intolerance online among the Italian population, particularly in the regions of Lombardia, Friuli, and Campania. The results were confirmed by the Eurobarometer Survey of the European Commission (2015), which showed that 73 percent of Italians believe that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is widespread in the country, as well as discrimination on the grounds of gender identity (71 percent). As much as the Internet and social media afford democratic participation by creating spaces where subordinate groups can participate in public deliberation and inform political and social change, one must not neglect the ways in which digital media are also being increasingly used as tools to oppress and persecute people.
Structural and cultural violence against sexual minorities in Italy greatly manifests itself through online hate speech, also called cyber-hate. Even though there is no legally binding definition of the term “hate speech” in international law, and the topic has generated numerous debates among academics, media professionals, freedom of expression advocates, politicians, and lawyers, the most widely accepted definition of hate speech in Europe has been formulated by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) in its General Policy Recommendation No. 15, adopted on 8 December 2015, as one that entails:
The use of one or more particular forms of expression – namely, the advocacy, promotion or incitement of the denigration, hatred or vilification of a person or group of persons, as well any harassment, insult, negative stereotyping, stigmatization or threat of such person or persons and any justification of all these forms of expression –that is based on a non-exhaustive list of personal characteristics or status that includes “race”, color, language, religion or belief, nationality or national or ethnic origin, as well as descent, age, disability, sex, gender, gender identity and sexual orientation.
If it is true that online hate speech can indeed affect anyone, it is also true that LGBTQI people often experience abuse and harassment as a result of their gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or sex characteristics (Reintke, 2016). According to 62 percent of human rights activists, social workers and members of the police from several countries in the EU who were interviewed by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (EU FRA), sexual orientation and gender identity constitute the most prominent and severe reasons for verbal and physical aggression, after racism and xenophobia (EU FRA, 2013). Yet, as Materassi, Tiezzi and Bencini (2016) have argued, in Italy, there is still a lack of knowledge by police departments, and civil society in general, about what constitutes hate speech and hate crimes, discrimination, under-reporting, under-recording and racial profiling. Since it is still unclear how to denounce these offences and where to seek help, homophobic and transphobic hate crimes are particularly under-reported and LGBTQI victims are wiped from the public discourse. This trend is evident in the data on hate crime reporting presented by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR, 2015), where in 2015 alone, 42,379 cases of hate crimes were recorded by the police, the majority of which were against women, and only 45 cases were reported for crimes based on bias against LGBTQI people. Only one violent attack, the murder of a Brazilian transgender person, was reported by a civil society organization. According to more recent data from 2020, 1,111 cases of hate crimes were recorded, of which 71 were for crimes based on bias against LGBTQI people.
Methodological considerations
The way this research was conducted using different methodologies and approaches was driven by the author’s strong commitment to interdisciplinary epistemology, one which binds researchers together not by agreement about answers but by shared commitments to questions. The motivation for choosing multi-site situational analysis, qualitative media analysis, multimodal critical discourse analysis and in-depth interviews with key experts from Italian LGBTQI organizations was driven by the strong belief that science and knowledge are rooted in narrative practices, metaphors and linguistic structures. Hence, the author has tried to think as much as possible across disciplinary boundaries (critical media and cultural studies, and human rights, peace and conflict studies) when theorizing, listening and analyzing across vectors of gender, sexuality, class, race and age. Social Movement Theory and Digital Media Activism are also important foundations for the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that have been developed in this research.
An extensive literature review was conducted to map out current national and international work on LGBTQI social movement mobilizations, digital media activism and advocacy, and whether good practices may be shared cross-culturally and scaled up. A multi-site situational analysis and the creation of interactive maps were used to collectively lay out Italian LGBTQI actors, identify their organizational communication and digital media activism practices, trace their geographic scope, networks and alliances, and the discourses and positions taken in their advocacy work. In conducting a qualitative media analysis and a multimodal critical discourse analysis of the websites and social media channels of selected organizations, it was evident that Facebook and Twitter were the most popular in organizations’ communication work, hence the choice to focus and investigate further the use and contents shared through these two social media networks.
In the process of building actors’ digital profiles, it was also important to identify the key thematic areas each organization is working on. To further verify the data collected through the multi-site situational analysis, a word cloud generator was used to create visual representations of the frequency of words included in organizations’ statutes and mission statements. The analysis was strengthened through in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with ten key experts working in organizations short-listed, based on their prominence and resonance on the Italian territory when promoting and protecting LGBTQI rights across key thematic areas. Multi-modal critical discourse analysis (Djonov and Zhao, 2014) and close readings of user-generated content were extremely important to understand the formal and informal strategies and tactics used in digital media activism. Critically analyzing different semiotic resources shed light on the ways in which activists resist or conform to dominant forms of culture and identity, or create oppositional meanings.
