Conference Program

This paper examines Italian newspapers’ representation of gang rape cases, investigating whether and to what extent the press interprets gender-based violence (GBV) through the lens of a democratic concern. While press coverage of GBV has profoundly evolved in recent years, it still largely relies on frames that center on individual responsibility - despite male concealment. Therefore, newspaper articles rarely conceptualise GBV as a social, cultural, and political concern, whose consequences for democracy are far from negligible.

GBV represents a profound yet often underestimated wound to democracy. Described as historically one of the most persistent violations of human rights, GBV undermines the very principles of political equality upon which democratic systems are founded. The systematic exposure to gender-related violence that minoritised subjectivities experience both shapes their participation to the public sphere, and the public sphere itself - which becomes even more evident through an intersectional perspective. In this sense, GBV is not just a “women’s issue”, but rather a democratic one.

The media plays a crucial role as an arena of socialisation where cultural norms about gender, violence and power can be produced and reproduced. The press has a responsibility to educate citizens about the correct ways to interpret GBV, free form biases and secondary victimization: journalistic narratives can thus operate as a diffuse form of democratic learning. When the press fails to recognize GBV’S structural nature, it contributes to both hermeneutical injustice, preventing victims and the public from conceptualising it as a political issue, and testimonial injustice, by silencing the structural dimension of the survivors' experiences.

Within the spectrum of forms of GBV, gang rape represents a significative case, given that the victim is both outnumbered and subject to sexual and sometimes digital violence (NCSII). Moreover, studying gang rape highlights the performative dimension of violence - evident in the homosocial dynamics through which masculinity is collectively enacted - while intersecting with pressing contemporary political claims, like sexual consent and women’s freedom in public space.

The study adopts a qualitative research design, combining human content analysis and semi-structured interviews. The content analysis examines a corpus of over 200 Italian newspaper articles covering gang rape cases, focusing on frames of GBV as a social, political and democratic concern. The interviews with Italian journalists explore their interpretative frameworks, investigating whether and to what extent they conceptualise GBV as a structural concern.

Preliminary findings suggest that press coverage predominantly frames gang rape as an isolated incident, rarely articulating its broader implications for democracy. While some journalists recognise the influence of feminist movements, GBV is seldom explicitly framed as a question of political equality. This research contributes to debates within feminist political theory, media studies, and democratic education by underlining the gap between structural understanding of GBV and its limited democratic framing in the press. The study argues that strengthening democracy requires reconceptualising GBV as a core democratic issue, fostering communicative environments capable of nurturing gender-sensitive citizenship.

In contemporary digital culture, traditional femininity has re-emerged not simply as ideology but as a highly mediated practice. While scholarship on “tradwives” has largely examined Anglophone contexts marked by explicit political radicalisation (Proctor, 2022; Sykes & Hopner, 2024), less attention has been paid to culturally situated forms of platformed motherhood in Southern Europe (Abidin, 2018).

Focusing on Italy, this study shifts the analytical lens from overtly ideological tradwife communities to the figure of the “digital mother”: a content creator who narrativises everyday practices of care, domestic labour, and maternal devotion through social media.

Drawing on feminist media studies and a critical reinterpretation of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963), the paper examines how what Friedan described as “the problem that has no name” is rearticulated within regimes of digital visibility. Rather than interpreting these practices as a simple revival of pre-feminist domestic ideology, we conceptualise platformed motherhood as embedded in neoliberal media economies structured by visibility, affective performance, and monetisation (Banet-Weiser & Reinis, 2025).

In line with research on mediatized motherhood and sharenting (Mascheroni et al., 2023), maternal self-representation online emerges as both care practice and identity performance shaped by gendered norms (Butler, 1990) and platform infrastructures (Van Dijck, 2013).

Methodologically, the study combines digital ethnography (Varis, 2021) and in-depth interviews, with qualitative data analysed using NVivo (Mortelmans, 2019). We first map the semantic and ideological boundaries of “tradwife” across online communities, including Reddit, before shifting to the Italian context. Although explicit self-identification as tradwife remains rare in Italy, family-oriented influencers increasingly frame motherhood and domestic labour as sites of personal fulfilment, moral legitimacy, and entrepreneurial opportunity. Through in-depth interviews with Italian content creators active on Instagram and TikTok, we examine how they negotiate selfhood, agency, visibility, and economic participation.

Preliminary findings suggest that contemporary platformed femininity is not sustained by domestic exclusion but reorganised through regimes of visibility in which care becomes publicly narrated and economically valorised. In this context, platformed motherhood functions as an informal site of socialisation in which gender norms are narrativised, aestheticised, and stabilised. Through algorithmic amplification and affective engagement, everyday care is reframed as both entrepreneurial opportunity and personal choice.

Introduction: India is a largest democracy in the world. The constitution ensures equity and inclusion for citizens irrespective of caste, creed, religion, ethnicity and gender. Mission ‘Education to All’- (2001) declared the child-education as a fundamental right and equal opportunities of elementary education to all girls. ‘New Education Policy (NEP-2020)’ emphasized sharp curtail in dropout rates at school level. Similarly, ‘Prime Minister Higher Education Mission’-(2023) focused on equity, access and inclusion of women in higher education. But primitive social system presents other side of the coin. Hattee community is settled in trans-Giri area of Sirmaur District in Himachal Pradesh. These people find their ancestry from the kuru dynasty of epic age and follow the related customs. Fraternal polyandry is in vogue and presently practised. This concept is based on Draupadi system of Mahabharata. Hattee society follows the child marriage. In rare cases, the engagement of unborn babies (in womb) can be settled. A girl is considered as the precious person in the family, who is subject to bride-price. These social evils resist the all-round development of girl children. Consequently, large number of poor girls are forced to drop out of the primary or secondary education. As per survey (2015-16), about four hundred girl-children in shilai sub-division dropped out of primary and middle education. These girls are often lured with rosy picture of bright future by the brokers involved and trafficked to neighboring states of Himachal Pradesh (Ground Reports, 2016). The brokers settle these marriages by taking into confidence the parents and close relatives of poor girls. Sadly, rural girls have to face socio-cultural difficulties in urban areas after marriage. Allegedly, a few girls are dragged into prostitution. Such incidences are unfortunate and put the safety and dignity of hattee women at stake. Slogan of the Government is ‘save girls and teach girls’. Social reformers and thinkers should motivate the hattee people for women-education and cultural renaissance.

Methodology: It is a relevant research question as to what extent primitive social set up resists the gender equality in democratic education system. Diversity of Indian culture provides wider scope for socio-cultural issues. Social evils are the real hindrance in girl’s education and democratic rights? Sources of information include the Administrative and Census Reports, Print media Ground Reports, Ministry of Tribal Affairs Reports, Policy documents of Human Resource Development (Government of India) and selected primary sources. Historical Method has been applied in the study.

Conclusion: In India, democracy ensures equality and inclusion in education for all citizens. Government schemes enforce democratic values in education for weaker sections of society and women. Gender-equality and women empowerment are always ensured.Indian Constitution guarantees gender- equality. Indian democratic system is legal, transparent and explicit but social system and customs are primitive and complex. Hattee community is a unique cultural identity in Himachal Pradesh and India. Its affiliation with the epic age is a distinct feature, which must be preserved. No doubt, evils crept into socio-cultural life of hattee people. To eradicate these evils is the need of hour.

The increasing use of the term “femicide” in Italian media suggests a growing public recognition of male violence against women. However, naming does not automatically entail structural understanding. This study investigates whether contemporary Italian press has started to move beyond episodic framings of intimate partner violence or continues to reproduce gendered distortions that silence its structural roots.

Although domestic and intimate partner violence is one of the most widespread forms of violence (WHO, 2023; ISTAT, 2025), this phenomenon remains particularly difficult to recognize, even for the victims themselves, since it tends to be socially normalized rather than stigmatized (Gius and Lalli 2014; Hewa 2021; Lalli 2021; Saccà 2021, 2024; Saccà, Carbonari 2025), as we can see from the analysis of the press.

Based on this premise, this study analyzes news articles on intimate partner violence published in 2025 by 26 Italian newspapers (2440), with a specific focus on the femicide of Ilaria Sula (159) to assess whether and to what extent the stereotypical frames that have historically shaped journalistic narratives on the issue are still detectable. The results show that the case of Ilaria Sula received significantly higher media attention compared to other victims, suggesting a hierarchy of visibility. In this case, compared to previous studies (Saccà 2021, 2024; Saccà, Carbonari 2025), explicit victim-blaming is largely absent and the offender is more clearly identified as a “violent man” (e.g., “killer,” “abuser”), whereas exonerating strategies of Himpathy (Manne, 2018, 2020) are less frequent than average. Nevertheless, despite the relatively good practices observed for narrating Ilaria Sula’s case, the dominant narrative structure remains investigative and sensational, foregrounding brutality while backgrounding the broader cultural and structural dynamics of gender inequality.

By exposing the gap between the public naming of femicide and the persistent silencing of structural power relations, the study highlights the democratic implications of media discourse. When gender-based violence is individualized rather than contextualized, the democratic imaginary risks acknowledging the crime while depoliticizing its causes, thereby limiting the development of critical and gender-aware citizenship.

Abstract: This paper is a theoretical reflection calling for broadening the perspective on gender stereotypes in the mass media and cinema by integrating political (Foucault 1975/1977) epistemic, aesthetic and formal aspects (Stam et. al, 1999; Dinoi, 2008) that have been neglected in existing educational practices of critical media literacy (CML).
As highlighted by the Council of Europe (2016), in an era dominated by visual media, stereotypical images of women and men disseminated by the media can undermine progress made in gender equality. The literature review by Santonicciolo et al. (2023) on gender representation in the media shows that stereotypical, objectifying and sexualizing representations of women are still very common and promote sexism, harassment and violence by men. In the post-truth era (MacIntyre, 2018), disinformation has been the main driver behind the rise of media and digital literacy at European level. The deconstruction of gender biases in the media is an integral part of the process that, through the enhancement of critical skills, moves towards combating the biased and untruthful use of information.
Knowing how to recognize and combat disinformation implies the need to extend our understanding and ability to deconstruct media information beyond aspects strictly related to the truth of the content to include formal and esthetic considerations concurring to meaning-generating mechanisms. The critical nature of media literacy and the need to strengthen it are recognized in European Commission, 2020a; 2020b; 2020c). DigComp 3.0 (Cosgrove and Cachia, 2025) also places great emphasis on critical thinking and the evaluation of digital information.
However, despite the importance given to media education, specific reflections on how digital media messages are constructed, which points of view are legitimized and in what way, remain neglected dimensions. Extending the scope of media education to epistemological and perspective aspects means creating a deeper understanding of how media products play an important role in shaping and reinforcing hierarchies of power and knowledge.
Starting from a definition of critical media literacy (Hobbs e Frost, 2003; Hobbs e Jensen, 2009; NAMLE 2009; Kellner e Share 2007; Carr 2009; Giroux 2001; Jenkins et al. 2013; Puchner et al., 2015), this study aims to explore the contribution that gaze theory (Berger, 1972; Metz, 1974; Mulvey, 1975; MacCabe, 1976; Bhandari, 2021) and stand point epistemology (Harding, 1986; Smith,1989; Haraway, 1991; Code,1993; Harding, 1993; Tanesini, 2015) can make to the fight against gender biases and the development of student agency. Gaze theory and standpoint epistemology offer a pedagogical space that opens the possibility of moving from interpretation to intervention. Since digital technologies and the internet have made users active creators of content, agency becomes a concrete and real opportunity to rewrite the imaginary. However, this implies the need for forms of literacy that address the deep political ways in which knowledge, practice, discourse, images and values are constructed and enter our lives.

Over the past decades, male violence against women has gained increasing visibility in the public sphere and in media discourse. In this context, the media, and the press in particular, play a crucial role in the social construction of the phenomenon, shaping public opinion through specific narrative, lexical, and interpretative choices. However, research on media representation of gender-based violence has shown that the journalistic narratives of such violence are often permeated by stereotypes and distortions that tend to individualize episodes of violence, re-victimize women, and partially absolve violence perpetrators.

The here proposed contribution analyzes how male violence against women and its protagonists — victims and perpetrators — are represented in crime reporting in newspapers published in Rome. The analysis is based on a corpus of 2,037 articles published in 2024 and 2025 by eight newspapers based in Rome. The study combines corpus-assisted analysis using an ad hoc artificial intelligence tool with lexicometric methods and qualitative content analysis in order to identify recurring linguistic patterns and discursive strategies in journalistic narratives about gender-based violence.

The findings show that the Roman press reproduces several dynamics already highlighted in international studies: the strong centrality of female figures in news narratives, accompanied by the relative concealment of male perpetrators; the use of discursive strategies such as linguistic avoidance and euphemization that tend to obscure male responsibility; the portrayal of victims primarily through categories of vulnerability and passivity; and, simultaneously, the representation of perpetrators through narratives that oscillate between moral condemnation and mitigation of perpetrators' responsibility grounded in biographical, psychological, or social explanations. The analysis also highlights the emphasis placed on the cultural and geographical origin of perpetrators and the role of social hierarchies in shaping empathy and stigma toward the actors involved in cases of violence.

Overall, the study shows how these discursive practices contribute to producing a narrative that, while morally condemning violence, still struggles to fully acknowledge its structural and gendered nature. This contribution aims to reflect on the role of the press in reproducing or challenging gender stereotypes and to emphasize the need to promote greater social responsibility in journalistic reporting on violence against women.

Contemporary democratic societies are increasingly shaped by digital media ecosystems in which

political actors produce and disseminate strategic narratives capable of instrumentalizing and

redefining concepts such as democracy, rights, and participation (Gerbaudo, 2018). In dialogue with

the theme of the conference Learning for Democracy / Democracy for Learning, this contribution

examines how the public discourse of the radical right contributes to the construction of an antidemocratic imaginary through hierarchical representations of gender and the delegitimization of

subjectivities deemed “other” (Mostov, 2021).

Within a hybrid public sphere—where mainstream media and digital platforms intersect—radical

right leaders do not merely communicate programmatic content; they mobilize symbolic and

emotional repertoires that redefine the boundaries of citizenship and participation. The

methodological approach integrates political sociology, communication theory, and gender studies.

Specifically, the paper mobilizes the concept of political culture to interpret the radical right not only

as a political actor, but as a relatively coherent set of beliefs, attitudes, and norms that shape

participation and define the boundaries of the political community (Formisano,2001; Anselmi, 2023).

From an illiberal perspective, this political culture sustains a selective conception of citizenship, in

which democratic participation is symbolically and morally reserved for a culturally homogeneous

“people,” while subjectivities perceived as incompatible are marginalized (Mudde & Kaltwasser,

2018). The paper investigates how these actors instrumentalize digital spaces—Facebook and X—to

produce and amplify sexist narratives, heteronormative frames, and exclusionary representations of

gender, LGBTQ+ identities, and immigration (Puar, 2017).

Rather than interpreting these communicative practices as contingent rhetorical strategies, the study

conceptualizes them as structurally embedded mechanisms through which illiberal values and

exclusionary visions of the social order are normalized. The empirical basis consists of a corpus of

social media content and public interviews by prominent leaders of the Italian radical right. Through

qualitative content analysis conducted using NVivo, the research reconstructs recurring discursive

patterns, framing strategies, and symbolic oppositions that structure these narratives.

Particular attention is devoted to the ways in which gender equality, feminism, and LGBTQ+ rights

are framed as threats to national identity, social cohesion, and the “traditional” family. In this context,

gender-based violence and minority protection policies are sometimes reinterpreted through

securitarian or culturalist lenses, producing an emotionally charged counter-narrative that opposes a

morally legitimate “us” to a “them” constructed as deviant and destabilizing (Mudde, 2020;

Serughetti, 2021).

The analysis shows how digital platforms function as privileged arenas for the production and

circulation of a regressive democratic imaginary, in which the symbolic exclusion of certain

subjectivities is presented as natural or necessary. These dynamics have concrete implications for

democratic participation: by stigmatizing feminist advocacy and LGBTQ+ visibility, radical right

discourse contributes to narrowing the conditions of possibility for inclusive citizenship (Mounk,

2018).

Understanding these discursive mechanisms is therefore a necessary step toward promoting critical

media literacy (Livingstone, 2004) and gender-sensitive educational practices capable of

strengthening the everyday dimension of democracy in contemporary European societies through an

explicitly intersectional perspective.