Young Italians between Cyberbullying and Hate Speech. A Focus on Digital Communication Practices.

1. When hate meets the web In the climate of generalized hatred that we experience daily, by watching the news or talk shows, reading online newspapers, or scrolling our Facebook timelines, it is essential to question educational programs’ actual ability to oppose these shifts. Most importantly, we must start rethinking them, especially given the negative consequences of people’s exposure to hostility, rudeness or incivility, both in online and offline spaces. Indeed, as shown by several studies, they amplify the audiences' negative emotions, weaken trust in institutions, increase cynicism and encourage self-defence behaviors, often leading to social isolation. When it comes to young people, who are more fragile and less equipped than other population groups, such risks are even more real. Many countries in Europe have undertaken to implement online device projects aimed at tracking down and detecting violent content, and banning them from social media, in order to stem the growth of hate speech on digital platforms. However, a purely censored approach does not obviously get to the root of the problem. We must question why many users see hate speech or extreme speech as normal, or even desirable; why they have such a large following and generate such online sharing and dissemination mechanisms. In this regard, we must go beyond a purely punitive logic, and pay attention to the granularity of those everyday online practices underlying contemporary digital cultures.This pilot study aims to examine the experiences of young people while surfing the web, and how they interpret these different kinds of hostile behavior on social media or online chats. In this respect, according to Toniolo Institute (2018), 63% of young people between the ages of 18 and 34 have got carried away by online heated discussions and have deliberately used offensive content in social media discussions, in 66% of cases. These data show that violent discourse, harassment practices and bullying are becoming increasingly popular, even among young people. Online resources can further fuel this hostility through exclusionary, discriminatory and derisive conducts, which can foster group identification by being often associated with forms of collective entertainment. Indeed, references to looser social conventions, which are typical of these environments, as well as the possibility to stay anonymous, can accentuate a sense of ‘deindividuation’. According to this, people perceive their individual identity as less important than the group identity, consequently disinhibiting their behavior. Also, the compulsive use of smartphones and the affordances of social network platforms contribute to this disinhibition effect, by exacerbating the collapse of spatial-temporal and social contexts, and increasingly blurring the boundaries between public and private. Therefore, on the one hand the socio-technological aspects of new media appear to significantly affect these phenomena; on the other, violent behavior online (including direct activities and sharing violent content) clearly appear as practices that are constitutive of identity and political subjectivity. Within this scenario, also political representatives play a major role. Instead of committing to pacify public opinion, they seem much more interested in riding the wave of dissent, especially through their social accounts, by resorting to hate speech, mocking and bullying practices against opponents and others. Restraint and moderation, which once characterized traditional political rhetoric, have now given way to feelings of hostility and demonization of opponents, aiming to galvanize followers and to instigate anger and social discontent. Indeed, this sharp communication style is intended not just to increase political visibility, due to uncivil messages’ ability to engage users (Muddiman, Stroud, 2017). It also bridges the gap with ordinary people, who can identify more easily with such practices and styles, rather than with complex and abstract theoretical-political arguments. Although the best example of this strategy is undoubtedly Trump's use of Twitter, there are some concrete examples in Italy as well, as shown by the social media campaigning for the 2018 general election. Starting from these premises, this work focuses on an important segment of society, consisting of young people who grew up with Internet, in order to analyze their relationship with violent and aggressive online communication, both by their peers and political representatives. The attention is focused on two phenomena that were distinctly studied in academia: cyberbullying by young people and the different forms of incivility by politicians. The goal is to examine the perceptions and meanings attributed by young people to the different types of hostile communication, by assessing the level of acceptability of each of them and its variations, depending on different contexts and actors (interpersonal; online interactions with institutional actors). In the following paragraphs, we will briefly explain the study, and discuss findings and implications.