Conference Program

In the contemporary landscape of democracy under threat, this paper explores how the radical right is evolving from a phase of institutional normalization toward a complete model of power consolidation, here defined as a potential “fifth wave”. By using gender as a “symbolic glue”, these forces are building broad anti-liberal coalitions that effectively reshape democratic discourse and institutional practices. The research focuses on the Italian case study of the “DDL Zan” bill against homo-transphobia, analyzing the public debate as a crucial site of ideological struggle and a paradigm for the cultural hegemony of the conservative bloc.

The study employs a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative word-frequency analysis with qualitative frame analysis on a corpus of 163 press articles published in 2021 across diverse ideological outlets (including Avvenire, Il Manifesto, Il Fatto Quotidiano, and Corriere della Sera). The findings reveal that the opposition to the bill successfully aggregated a remarkably heterogeneous bloc, ranging from radical right parties like Lega and Fratelli d’Italia to centrist formations and influential extra-parliamentary actors such as the Vatican. This coalition achieved discursive dominance through three interconnected strategies. First, it transformed gender into an empty signifier to mobilize resentment against globalism, promoting cultural homogeneity over individual rights. Second, it employed a selective form of homonationalism that tolerates binary identities while marginalizing non-binary and TQI+ subjectivities as threats to the natural order. Finally, it operated a populist reversal where minority protections were depicted as an "ideological dictatorship" threatening the majority’s freedom of speech.

The analysis demonstrates that the defeat of the DDL Zan was not merely a legislative failure but a successful exercise of hegemony that anticipated the current Italian political landscape. This research contributes to political sociology by illustrating how the gender battlefield is strategically used to redefine democratic boundaries and normalize anti-egalitarian ideologies.

In recent years, violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in Italy have gained increasing visibility thanks to data collected by associations and independent observatories. However, this growing visibility has not been matched by an equally significant journalistic representation: media coverage of the phenomenon remains sporadic, fragmented, and often marginal, contributing to the limited public recognition of the issue as a structural problem.

This paper presents the results of research conducted by the Messina research unit within the PRIN PNRR 2022 project STEPSISTER – STEreotypes and PrejudiceS In preSs represenTation of gEndeR-violence, which focuses on the analysis of journalistic representations of violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and associations. The aim is to identify the main narrative frames, stereotypes, and prejudices present in media discourse.

The study is based on a content analysis of a corpus of 356 articles published in 2021 in four national newspapers – Avvenire, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Corriere della Sera, and Il Manifesto. The selected year coincides with the parliamentary debate on the DDL Zan, a period marked by strong polarization in the public debate on LGBTQ+ rights.

The analysis highlights a prevailing tendency to treat violence as episodic events, with limited reference to their structural context, as well as the presence of stereotypes and prejudices in journalistic representation. The paper concludes with a reflection on the implications of these forms of representation for the public construction of violence as a social and political problem, showing how media narratives contribute to defining which forms of violence are recognized, which subjects become visible, and which remain at the margins of public discourse.

Primary school textbooks are among the most pervasive vehicles for transmitting gender stereotypes to young children and play a crucial role in the early construction of gendered expectations and identities (Biemmi, 2010; 2015; Blumberg, 2008; Corsini & Scierri, 2016; Gooden & Gooden, 2001). Recent archaeological scholarship has increasingly demonstrated that prehistoric subsistence systems were far more flexible than the traditional male-hunter/female-gatherer dichotomy suggests (Patou-Mathis, 2020). Prehistory, the core historical content of third grade in the Italian curriculum, represents a paradigmatic case: it is the first historical horizon children encounter systematically, and at the same time the terrain where a binary division of gender roles becomes naturalized through a narrative that presents itself as scientifically grounded while concealing its ideological character. The "Man the Hunter" paradigm, consolidated in 1960s anthropology (Lee & DeVore, 1968) and subsequently challenged by feminist anthropology and gender archaeology (Gero & Conkey, 1991) and today widely refuted by paleontological and archaeological research, continues to structure the prehistoric imaginary conveyed by Italian school textbooks, with potentially significant consequences for the gender socialization of school-age children. This contribution presents a multimodal analysis of a sample of history textbooks for third grade from Italian publishers. The analysis operates on two levels: the textual plane, examining discursive strategies of role attribution, the use of the generic masculine as a synecdoche for the species, and the presence or absence of female agency; and the iconographic plane, examining the visual grammar of illustrations and the distribution of roles, spaces, and postures assigned to male and female figures (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; Jewitt, 2013). The data document recurring patterns across publishers. On the iconographic level, male figures dominate quantitatively and are systematically associated with open space, action, tool use, and hunting; female figures appear predominantly in enclosed spaces, in passive or caregiving postures. A particularly revealing indicator concerns the positioning of children within scenes: across all publishers analyzed, young children are placed alongside female figures and within caregiving spaces, never in hunting or action scenes — a pattern that implicitly conveys a model of male development as progressive distancing from the female sphere toward open space and risk. A further significant finding emerges from the analysis of text-image relationships: in several cases the written text adopts inclusive or cautious formulations, while the illustrations contradict this openness, reproducing the stereotyped division. This systematic gap suggests that iconographic bias operates independently and more effectively than textual bias in shaping readers' imaginaries. The contribution discusses the implications of these patterns for a democratic school: a curriculum that presents gender inequality as inscribed in the dawn of humanity functions as a device for the historical legitimation of contemporary stereotypes. Such an analysis must therefore also serve as a pedagogical invitation for teachers to engage in critical self-reflection on their own implicit gender stereotypes, recognizing how these assumptions may shape classroom practices, expectations, and interactions in ways that either reproduce inequality.

In Italy, the non-consensual dissemination of intimate images became a criminal offence with Law No. 69 (2019), known as “Codice Rosso”.

In public and media discourse, this crime is commonly referred to as ‘revenge porn’. This label is problematic (Hearn, Hall 2018; Henry, Powell 2015; Maddocks 2018) because it reinforces the sexist culture it aims to combat, shifting responsibility from the perpetrator (Hall, Hearn 2019) to the victim: revenge implies a reaction, leading violence to be framed as a consequence of a woman's actions and obscuring the power asymmetries that underlie it (Abbatecola 2021).

The phenomenon is part of broader forms of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (Henry, Powell 2015), made possible by the spread of digital platforms, social networking sites, and messaging services that enable the potentially viral and difficult-to-control circulation of content. In this context, the media play an ambivalent role. On the one hand, they are key players in the public definition of social phenomena, including gender-based violence, helping to construct the interpretative categories through which public opinion understands them. On the other hand, the media — especially digital media — can become part of the dynamics of forms of violence that are enacted through online platforms. Specific platforms’ (e.g. Telegram; Semenzin, Bainotti 2020) sociotechnical affordances — such as anonymity, large groups, broadcast channels, invitation links, and limited traceability — facilitate the non-consensual circulation of intimate images. These features foster male homosocial spaces where sharing such content functions as a practice of socialization and the construction of masculinities.

Also in light of the extensive literature on media and gender-based violence – which has demonstrated the persistence of stereotypes in media narratives (Capecchi, Gius, 2021; Lalli, 2021; Hewa, 2021; Saccà, 2021, 2024) – this paper analyzes how Italian newspapers have reported cases of illegal dissemination of intimate material and to what extent they have reproduced the most widespread gender stereotypes. Through a qualitative content analysis, we analyzed 96 articles published in 2024-2025 as part of a broader study on the journalistic representation of gender-based violence in the Roman press.

The findings reveal a limited definitional clarity. Most articles refer to the phenomenon simply as ‘revenge porn’ while only a minority define it as the illegal dissemination of intimate images, referring to the legal framework. In most cases, the term is used as a generic label to describe forms of digital exposure, without clearly framing it as gender-based violence. As a result, the structural dimension of the phenomenon tends to remain invisible.

Moreover, media coverage is largely characterized by an episodic frame, focusing on individual news stories, and a sensationalist tone with overly detailed descriptions that risk reproducing mechanisms of secondary victimization, whereby the victim is portrayed as partially responsible for the violence experienced.

Overall, the analysis highlights how journalistic narratives tend to attribute incidents to romantic conflicts or dynamics of ‘revenge’ between ex-partners, focusing on the personal circumstances of those involved rather than on the social, cultural, and technological dimensions that make the non-consensual dissemination of intimate content possible.

This paper analyses how the press represents male violence against women when it occurs within the school environment. It focuses on news coverage of cases in which violence against women and girls is perpetrated by a schoolmate, a teacher, or a member of school staff, thus addressing the intersection between gender-based violence, education, and public discourse. In line with the main interest in the role of media and socialisation agencies in reproducing or challenging sexist stereotypes, the paper investigates whether the school context activates specific interpretative frames in the journalistic narration of violence.

Drawing on data collected by the STEP Observatories, the study first measures the visibility and weight of school-related cases within the broader national and local press coverage of violence against women in Italy in 2024–2025. It then develops an in-depth textual analysis of the articles in order to examine whether gender-based violence in educational settings is narrated through recurrent discursive patterns, whether it triggers distinctive narrative schemes, and whether the stereotypes and prejudices widely documented in the literature on media representations of gender-based violence (Capecchi & Gius 2023; Saccà 2024; Yusri et al. 2025) persist, are reformulated, or are partially transformed when violence takes place in the socially and symbolically specific space of school.

By focusing on the school as a key site of socialisation, the paper aims to contribute to the broader debate on how journalism participates in the public construction of gender violence and in the normalisation, exposure, or deconstruction of sexist stereotypes. More broadly, it reflects on the democratic implications of media representations of violence in educational contexts, showing how the press may either reinforce or challenge unequal gendered meanings within a crucial institution of civic formation.