Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Scar-Facebook (Scar-Facebook: Organized Crime and Populist Digital Media Politics in Contemporary Naples, Southern Italy)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-09-30
Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project
The interactive forms of mass communication that define digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram strongly intersect with the institutional life of modern democracies, as they act as "echo chambers" for numerous controversial populist political groups. As my Ph.D. dissertation demonstrates, this is particularly evident in historically marginalized social spaces, such as the urban peripheries of Naples in Southern Italy. In these areas, radical far-right movements (like Lega Nord and the Neo-Bourbonic Movement) and violent criminal organizations (such as the Camorra) frequently use social media to gain support from the local poor and create networks of political patronage. Despite their troubling effects on civic participation and public safety, these informal political dynamics are unsurprising in the Italian context. Indeed, recent Italian politics illustrates how digital media—and their ability to facilitate direct connections between people from different social backgrounds—play a key role in the global spread of contemporary populism. This communication method allows diverse social groups (e.g. unemployed individuals, precarious workers, and middle- and upper-class citizens) to engage with state power as a unified political entity (e.g. "the people") by emphasizing their shared opposition to perceived external groups (e.g. minorities, the so-called "establishment"). Following the Berlusconi-led reforms of national media in the mid-1990s, scholars have identified Italians’ engagement with populist media narratives as a distinctive form of late-capitalist politics. This trend became even more pronounced in the late 2000s, when the increased participation of the Italian poor in online social media contributed to the electoral success of Internet-based populist parties, such as Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement and Matteo Salvini's Northern League. As a result, Italian digital populism helped set the stage for a global trend.
The ongoing mediatization of populist politics not only infiltrates the institutional life of the countries involved but also perpetuates the mediacratic traits of institutional populism within various informal politico-economic entities. This includes "Mafia-like" criminal organizations that have historically held power in the southern peripheries of Italy. As my Ph.D. dissertation demonstrates, for instance, the Neapolitan Camorra has heavily invested in local music production, TV channels, and digital media platforms since the early 1990s. This criminal organization frequently co-opts and reshapes the discourses, aesthetics, and digital strategies typical of far-right populist parties and movements for its own purposes. By doing so, the Camorra build and strengthen extensive networks of politico-economic patronage with its lower-class online followers, which subsequently intersect with local institutional politics through indirect forms of governance.
Recent social science literature has increasingly expressed concern about the growing influence of informal digital mediation dynamics within both Italian and transnational contexts. Despite growing scholarly attention to the rise of "underworld politics" and the global circulation of violent populist rhetoric, most studies focus on archival research and quantitative data rather than qualitative methods. As a result, they have yet to fully explore the socio-cultural narratives that drive Italy's lower classes to seek informal, digital patronage from populist political actors—whether legitimate or not—and the profound effects these dynamics have on late-capitalist popular culture and the democratic functioning of state power. These methodological limitations have hindered the development of comprehensive theoretical frameworks, which could guide NGOs and public officials in crafting targeted policies to address the intersection of digital populism and organized crime.
How do licit and illicit processes of digital networking work together to reinforce populist politics in the most socially vulnerable areas of contemporary democracies? How do these online dynamics influence the socio-cultural lives of Naples' poor, particularly in terms of political mobilization? What public policies, media regulations, and grassroots interventions could effectively address the structural violence and indirect governance produced by these populist forms of digital mediation in Naples and beyond? My project aimed to answer these questions by offering ethnographic insights into the informal online networks and patronage systems that link current Neapolitan Camorra-inspired cultural operators, populist political operators, and their respective lower-class followers. It did so by employing innovative qualitative research methods, blending ethnographic techniques —participant observation, open-ended interviews, and life-story collection—with "netnographic" analysis techniques characterizing the fields of digital media studies and digital humanities.
The ongoing mediatization of populist politics not only infiltrates the institutional life of the countries involved but also perpetuates the mediacratic traits of institutional populism within various informal politico-economic entities. This includes "Mafia-like" criminal organizations that have historically held power in the southern peripheries of Italy. As my Ph.D. dissertation demonstrates, for instance, the Neapolitan Camorra has heavily invested in local music production, TV channels, and digital media platforms since the early 1990s. This criminal organization frequently co-opts and reshapes the discourses, aesthetics, and digital strategies typical of far-right populist parties and movements for its own purposes. By doing so, the Camorra build and strengthen extensive networks of politico-economic patronage with its lower-class online followers, which subsequently intersect with local institutional politics through indirect forms of governance.
Recent social science literature has increasingly expressed concern about the growing influence of informal digital mediation dynamics within both Italian and transnational contexts. Despite growing scholarly attention to the rise of "underworld politics" and the global circulation of violent populist rhetoric, most studies focus on archival research and quantitative data rather than qualitative methods. As a result, they have yet to fully explore the socio-cultural narratives that drive Italy's lower classes to seek informal, digital patronage from populist political actors—whether legitimate or not—and the profound effects these dynamics have on late-capitalist popular culture and the democratic functioning of state power. These methodological limitations have hindered the development of comprehensive theoretical frameworks, which could guide NGOs and public officials in crafting targeted policies to address the intersection of digital populism and organized crime.
How do licit and illicit processes of digital networking work together to reinforce populist politics in the most socially vulnerable areas of contemporary democracies? How do these online dynamics influence the socio-cultural lives of Naples' poor, particularly in terms of political mobilization? What public policies, media regulations, and grassroots interventions could effectively address the structural violence and indirect governance produced by these populist forms of digital mediation in Naples and beyond? My project aimed to answer these questions by offering ethnographic insights into the informal online networks and patronage systems that link current Neapolitan Camorra-inspired cultural operators, populist political operators, and their respective lower-class followers. It did so by employing innovative qualitative research methods, blending ethnographic techniques —participant observation, open-ended interviews, and life-story collection—with "netnographic" analysis techniques characterizing the fields of digital media studies and digital humanities.
Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far
To address my project's research questions, I conducted digital research and netnographic research over six months (November 2022-April 2023). My netnography followed three distinct phases:
1. Database Creation: I compiled a list of popular websites and social media profiles managed by cultural operators inspired by the Neapolitan Camorra, as well as Neapolitan and Italian populist political actors. These were the same individuals and groups among whom I later recruited the research participants of the in-person ethnographic research I conducted in Naples.
2. Net-nography: I engaged in daily monitoring and active participation within these digital spaces. This included posting, participating in encrypted chat conversations, and interacting online with users and followers of these platforms to observe and experience their behaviours and interactions.
3. Comparative Digital Interaction Analysis: I analyzed the digital interactions between the users and followers of these cyber-spaces and their online patrons (e.g.: webmasters, online moderators, digital opinion leaders), using digital network analysis to map relationships and critical discourse analysis to examine the cultural discourses conveyed through these online interactions.
After having concluded my netnography, I conducted in-situ ethnography in Naples, Italy, for approximately six months (May 2023-October 2023). My ethnography involved 20 participants, which I selected, informed about the research scopes and methods, and recruited from two key groups:
1. Camorra-Inspired Digital Media Operators and Followers: digitally active local celebrities, bloggers, creators of fake news, internet trolls, and influencers who are supported by the Camorra, as well as key members of their digital audiences (e.g. followers, chat moderators, bloggers, members of digital fan clubs).
2. Populist Institutional Subjects and Followers: local political leaders, activists, and elected officials who explicitly identify as "populist" through their social media profiles, along with key members of their digital publics.
I conducted most of my ethnography in two lower-class neighbourhoods of Naples: Quartieri Spagnoli and Poggioreale. These areas are known to host Camorra-sponsored digital media operators and their networks, and they also exhibited strong support for digitally active populist parties in recent local, national, and European elections. During my fieldwork, I engaged in participant observation, mapping the networking processes that enable lower-class Neapolitans to form political relationships with both Camorra-inspired digital media operators and members of local populist movements. I also collected life histories and conducted semi-structured interviews with the research participants to explore how their digital activities are interpreted, legitimized, and woven into the cultural discourses in which they partake.
By treating digital and in-person dynamics as an "experiential continuum," I aimed to understand how these interactions shaped the social identities, political subjectivities, and strategies of Neapolitan individuals (and digital media users) living in precarious socio-economic conditions. As such, this approach allowed me to explore how informal digital patronage systems influence political mobilization in these vulnerable communities.
After I concluded my online and in-situ ethnographic research activities, I spent the following 11 months analyzing the qualitative data I gathered and employing them to elaborate the following research outputs:
1. Four research articles: The first article has been published in the "Palgrave Encyclopedias of Cultural Heritage and Conflict." The second and third articles have been submitted for publication respectively to "History & Anthropology" and "Ethnos". They are currently under peer review. The fourth article has been authored and has been intended for an edited volume, for which I will serve as editor, featuring contributions by the eight scholars participating in a Multidisciplinary Seminar I organized with the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis in September 2024. The book proposal concerning this edited volume has been already submitted to Il Sileno Edizioni, part of the University of Palermo Press, and it is currently under review.
2. A monographic book proposal: The book proposal has already been submitted to Berghahan Books for potential publication and is currently under review.
3. Two extra-academic video Op-eds, respectively featuring the Italian digital magazine "Deep Hinterland" and the Dutch podcast series "The Dutch Oven".
1. Database Creation: I compiled a list of popular websites and social media profiles managed by cultural operators inspired by the Neapolitan Camorra, as well as Neapolitan and Italian populist political actors. These were the same individuals and groups among whom I later recruited the research participants of the in-person ethnographic research I conducted in Naples.
2. Net-nography: I engaged in daily monitoring and active participation within these digital spaces. This included posting, participating in encrypted chat conversations, and interacting online with users and followers of these platforms to observe and experience their behaviours and interactions.
3. Comparative Digital Interaction Analysis: I analyzed the digital interactions between the users and followers of these cyber-spaces and their online patrons (e.g.: webmasters, online moderators, digital opinion leaders), using digital network analysis to map relationships and critical discourse analysis to examine the cultural discourses conveyed through these online interactions.
After having concluded my netnography, I conducted in-situ ethnography in Naples, Italy, for approximately six months (May 2023-October 2023). My ethnography involved 20 participants, which I selected, informed about the research scopes and methods, and recruited from two key groups:
1. Camorra-Inspired Digital Media Operators and Followers: digitally active local celebrities, bloggers, creators of fake news, internet trolls, and influencers who are supported by the Camorra, as well as key members of their digital audiences (e.g. followers, chat moderators, bloggers, members of digital fan clubs).
2. Populist Institutional Subjects and Followers: local political leaders, activists, and elected officials who explicitly identify as "populist" through their social media profiles, along with key members of their digital publics.
I conducted most of my ethnography in two lower-class neighbourhoods of Naples: Quartieri Spagnoli and Poggioreale. These areas are known to host Camorra-sponsored digital media operators and their networks, and they also exhibited strong support for digitally active populist parties in recent local, national, and European elections. During my fieldwork, I engaged in participant observation, mapping the networking processes that enable lower-class Neapolitans to form political relationships with both Camorra-inspired digital media operators and members of local populist movements. I also collected life histories and conducted semi-structured interviews with the research participants to explore how their digital activities are interpreted, legitimized, and woven into the cultural discourses in which they partake.
By treating digital and in-person dynamics as an "experiential continuum," I aimed to understand how these interactions shaped the social identities, political subjectivities, and strategies of Neapolitan individuals (and digital media users) living in precarious socio-economic conditions. As such, this approach allowed me to explore how informal digital patronage systems influence political mobilization in these vulnerable communities.
After I concluded my online and in-situ ethnographic research activities, I spent the following 11 months analyzing the qualitative data I gathered and employing them to elaborate the following research outputs:
1. Four research articles: The first article has been published in the "Palgrave Encyclopedias of Cultural Heritage and Conflict." The second and third articles have been submitted for publication respectively to "History & Anthropology" and "Ethnos". They are currently under peer review. The fourth article has been authored and has been intended for an edited volume, for which I will serve as editor, featuring contributions by the eight scholars participating in a Multidisciplinary Seminar I organized with the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis in September 2024. The book proposal concerning this edited volume has been already submitted to Il Sileno Edizioni, part of the University of Palermo Press, and it is currently under review.
2. A monographic book proposal: The book proposal has already been submitted to Berghahan Books for potential publication and is currently under review.
3. Two extra-academic video Op-eds, respectively featuring the Italian digital magazine "Deep Hinterland" and the Dutch podcast series "The Dutch Oven".
Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)
Based on the research activities I have conducted during this action, I have elaborated and demonstrated two main research insights concerning the relationship between Neapolitan organized crime, the local digital mediascape, and the recent entrenchment of populist political subjectivities within local lower-class neighbourhoods.
In the first place, my research has demonstrated the systemic involvement of Neapolitan organized crime within local digital landscapes. As my research shows both ethnographically and net-nographically, the Neapolitan Camorra indeed invests massive economic resources to produce digital content and promote its circulation among local lower-class online social media users to further direct or indirect relationships of digital patronage with them and overall normalize its hegemonic presence within the local social space. More specifically, Camorra-inspired cyber-activities rely on three main types of sponsorship: 1) Direct investment in the work of non-affiliated digital content creators and online social media influencers, aiming at promoting Camorra-friendly processes of relational branding among local Internet users of lower-class background; 2) Direct investments in the work of non-affiliated local media celebrities and music performers (e.g.: neomelodic and hip hop artists); 3) Direct investments and informal monopolization in the organization of "meet & greet" event and public performances in which the local digital content creators and media celebrities in question can meet their "followers" and entertain with them in-person relational processes (which often entail exchanges of personal favours). Building on these investments in the local digital mediascape, Neapolitan organized crime indirectly manages online forms of political patronage and relational branding with both the online content creators it sponsors and their followers. As the digital content creators in question are usually recruited among local lower-class Internet users, moreover, the dynamics in question allow for self-exploitative forms of social mobility that involve the local poor and deeply influence their social class identities. These processes of social class identity formation are further reinforced by the types of aesthetics, rhetorics, and overall content characterizing Camorra-inspired digital cultural productions, which systemically aim at promoting and legitimizing populist processes of in-grouping and out-grouping among their consumers, whose social identities, political behaviours, and habits of media consumption are overall described in light of their support to local organized crime and intrinsic rejections of supposedly non-Neapolitan values and social norms (including state regulations).
Secondly, my research has demonstrated the systemic involvement of local self-claimed far-right activists, professional politicians, and elected public officers in the sponsoring and management of digital activities of cultural production and online social media networking that resemble in forms and functions those simultaneously sponsored by local organized crime. Aiming at legitimizing ultra-nationalist forms of political subjectivities among the local poor, these activities allow the populist political operators in question to implement forms of digital patronage, relational branding, and connective leadership among extended groups of lower-class Internet users. In so doing, they also allow such Internet users to acquire local fame via the processes of digital relationality they establish with their populist patrons and to co-create with them cyber-platforms for the reciprocal exchange of informal favours (e.g.: job opportunities in exchange for electoral preferences). While the forms of digital cultural production and online social media networking managed by these political actors do not always fully overlap with those managed by the Camorra, they nevertheless rely on similar (in-person and online) relational practices between hegemonic and subaltern subjects while similarly triggering informal processes of social mobility. By the same token, they similarly legitimize and promote violent forms of social identity and political subjectivities, which are often described online in light of their support of ultra-conservative instances and intrinsic rejection of non-Neapolitan values and social norms (including those promoted by EU regulations and the Italian Constitution).
Based on these two main insights, my research overall demonstrated how contemporary Neapolitan organized crime and populist parties and movements indirectly partake in structurally similar processes of cultural production, digital patronage, and online relationality, legitimizing similar processes of cyber-governmentality among the local poor, along with comparable dynamics of structural violence and local lower-class identity construction versus democratic state power. These main research insights have been broadly disseminated among various academic and non-academic audiences during this action, to promote ways to assess the consistency of similar socio-political phenomena within non-Neapolitan contexts in a transnational comparative perspective and establish productive future collaborations with fellow scholars, public authorities, and local community members aiming at challenging their outcomes in terms of structural violence reproductions. The activities of research dissemination included:
1. Four research presentations at conferences, workshops, and academic events organized at the University of Amsterdam (UvA): These academic events co-involved the UvA's Departments of European Studies, Cultural Studies, and Anthropology, as well as The Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis.
2. Four research presentations at international conferences, workshops, and academic events: These external academic events involved respectively the European Association of Cultural Anthropology, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Palermo, and the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Naples Federico II.
3. A multidisciplinary Seminar featuring eight international academic contributors, which I organized at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis.
4. One extra-academic research presentation co-involving Amsterdam's Regional Information and Expertise Centre (RIEC) and the Amsterdam Police.
In the first place, my research has demonstrated the systemic involvement of Neapolitan organized crime within local digital landscapes. As my research shows both ethnographically and net-nographically, the Neapolitan Camorra indeed invests massive economic resources to produce digital content and promote its circulation among local lower-class online social media users to further direct or indirect relationships of digital patronage with them and overall normalize its hegemonic presence within the local social space. More specifically, Camorra-inspired cyber-activities rely on three main types of sponsorship: 1) Direct investment in the work of non-affiliated digital content creators and online social media influencers, aiming at promoting Camorra-friendly processes of relational branding among local Internet users of lower-class background; 2) Direct investments in the work of non-affiliated local media celebrities and music performers (e.g.: neomelodic and hip hop artists); 3) Direct investments and informal monopolization in the organization of "meet & greet" event and public performances in which the local digital content creators and media celebrities in question can meet their "followers" and entertain with them in-person relational processes (which often entail exchanges of personal favours). Building on these investments in the local digital mediascape, Neapolitan organized crime indirectly manages online forms of political patronage and relational branding with both the online content creators it sponsors and their followers. As the digital content creators in question are usually recruited among local lower-class Internet users, moreover, the dynamics in question allow for self-exploitative forms of social mobility that involve the local poor and deeply influence their social class identities. These processes of social class identity formation are further reinforced by the types of aesthetics, rhetorics, and overall content characterizing Camorra-inspired digital cultural productions, which systemically aim at promoting and legitimizing populist processes of in-grouping and out-grouping among their consumers, whose social identities, political behaviours, and habits of media consumption are overall described in light of their support to local organized crime and intrinsic rejections of supposedly non-Neapolitan values and social norms (including state regulations).
Secondly, my research has demonstrated the systemic involvement of local self-claimed far-right activists, professional politicians, and elected public officers in the sponsoring and management of digital activities of cultural production and online social media networking that resemble in forms and functions those simultaneously sponsored by local organized crime. Aiming at legitimizing ultra-nationalist forms of political subjectivities among the local poor, these activities allow the populist political operators in question to implement forms of digital patronage, relational branding, and connective leadership among extended groups of lower-class Internet users. In so doing, they also allow such Internet users to acquire local fame via the processes of digital relationality they establish with their populist patrons and to co-create with them cyber-platforms for the reciprocal exchange of informal favours (e.g.: job opportunities in exchange for electoral preferences). While the forms of digital cultural production and online social media networking managed by these political actors do not always fully overlap with those managed by the Camorra, they nevertheless rely on similar (in-person and online) relational practices between hegemonic and subaltern subjects while similarly triggering informal processes of social mobility. By the same token, they similarly legitimize and promote violent forms of social identity and political subjectivities, which are often described online in light of their support of ultra-conservative instances and intrinsic rejection of non-Neapolitan values and social norms (including those promoted by EU regulations and the Italian Constitution).
Based on these two main insights, my research overall demonstrated how contemporary Neapolitan organized crime and populist parties and movements indirectly partake in structurally similar processes of cultural production, digital patronage, and online relationality, legitimizing similar processes of cyber-governmentality among the local poor, along with comparable dynamics of structural violence and local lower-class identity construction versus democratic state power. These main research insights have been broadly disseminated among various academic and non-academic audiences during this action, to promote ways to assess the consistency of similar socio-political phenomena within non-Neapolitan contexts in a transnational comparative perspective and establish productive future collaborations with fellow scholars, public authorities, and local community members aiming at challenging their outcomes in terms of structural violence reproductions. The activities of research dissemination included:
1. Four research presentations at conferences, workshops, and academic events organized at the University of Amsterdam (UvA): These academic events co-involved the UvA's Departments of European Studies, Cultural Studies, and Anthropology, as well as The Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis.
2. Four research presentations at international conferences, workshops, and academic events: These external academic events involved respectively the European Association of Cultural Anthropology, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Palermo, and the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Naples Federico II.
3. A multidisciplinary Seminar featuring eight international academic contributors, which I organized at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis.
4. One extra-academic research presentation co-involving Amsterdam's Regional Information and Expertise Centre (RIEC) and the Amsterdam Police.