The online intersection among Islamophobia, populism, and hate speech: An Italian perspective

Online radical Islam is a topic widely studied by scholars and notoriously discussed among non- experts as well (Awan, 2007; Von Behr et al. 2013; Gray & Head 2009). Because of its intrinsic characteristics (i.e. accessibility, anonymity, or users' identity dissimulation), the internet has always been a useful tool for propagandists of Islamic fundamentalism (Fighel, 2007; Stenersen, 2008; Koehler, 2014). However, in the last decade, studies have questioned the real importance and magnitude of Islamic radicalization online (Gill et al., 2017). In fact, while scholars were focused on observing digital Islamic radicalization, a galaxy of new forms of extremism was growing online (Silva et al., 2017; Roversi, 2008) that no longer made Islam an exceptional case study. Today, Muslim people are one of the groups most aggressively targeted by extremist, intolerant, violent, and radical discourses (Elahi & Khan, 2017; Amnesty International, 2019). Anti-Muslim hate speech has spread online throughout Europe and the United States, reinforced by the propaganda and political discourse of populist right-wing parties (Hafez, 2014; Bakali 2016). This paper introduces some large-scale action-research projects developed in Europe and Italy in the last three years (2016-2019) and aims to reconstruct the most updated Islamophobia state of the art in terms of numbers, characteristics, and phenomenology from the offline to the online context.