Partis politiques d’(extrême)droite, réseaux sociaux et propagande haineuse à travers l’internet en Italie

In this study, we analysed the social media communication of Italian radical right-wing political forces that generate hate speech and/or incite hate in society (European Project Genha - Hate Speech, Gender, Social Networks and Political Parties). In public debates and academic discourses, these forces are often referred to as the «populist right» or sometimes as the «far right». These are parties and other groups that formally accept the norms and procedures of electoral democracy and are seen as operating within the rule of law. However, these forces often challenge and instrumentalise the core values of the democratic political arena. Radical right-wing forces, especially those with strong populist tendencies, have a close relationship with online media. It is argued that interactive media help populists to bypass the rules and norms of traditional media, allowing them to enter (or pretend to enter) into direct contact with citizens, to ask them to share their public opinions and to engage in conversations that seem to have little to do with political power. Using a multi-stage research approach and a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology, we sought to identify social media posts (Facebook and Twitter) of right-wing political actors and personalities or groups from the same political space whose language incited or contained hate speech. In addition, a qualitative part of the research was devoted to analyse the comments of ordinary users on the online messages of political figures to identify reactions containing hate speech. All online messages analysed were defined based on hate speech belonging to three macro-categories: gender-based, homophobic, and antigender hate speech.