Conference Program

In the context of contemporary ongoing polycrisis marked by genocide, democratic backsliding, armed conflicts, and climate emergency, young people on social media platforms face what visual artist Noura Tafeche termed as ‘iniqualgia’: the process of getting sick from injustice, particularly through the constant exposure to images of violence and suffering. In this political atmosphere, promoting youth political participation stands as one of the most arduous challenges for consolidating genuine civic activism in a healthy democracy. Traditional institutional channels suffer from a profound crisis of representation, failing to recognize young people within the political system and generating youth resentment.

This lack of recognition has driven youth toward novel forms of bottom-up citizenship, yet these participatory practices remain underexplored, particularly among pre-teen demographics typically excluded from civic engagement research and practice.

This contribution examines the concept of ‘playful activism’ (Cervi & Divon, 2023) in the digital ambient, a tool through which youth create meaningful political participation within algorithmically governed digital spaces. Playful activism mobilizes platform affordances (gamification, virality, accessibility) to construct low-cost, inclusive solidarity actions that subvert intended platform purposes. As a case study, this paper analyzes the ongoing practice of teens and preteens pro-Palestine Roblox virtual protests: coordinated demonstrations beginning in October 2023 that have recurred regularly, attracting thousands of users organizing parades with Palestinian flags and political messages within the gaming platform. A case study particularly relevant considering the demographic of the Roblox Platform where over 40% of the users are aged 12 or younger. By appropriating gaming platforms for political expression, participants practice digital citizenship and construct innovative solidarity spaces, asserting agency through creative platform use. Reaching demographics systematically excluded from traditional activism, particularly pre-teens, and generating substantial media coverage, these actions demonstrate tangible impact on public discourse beyond the platform itself.
The methodology proposed is based on qualitative content analysis of secondary data, including media coverage of Roblox protests, social media posts and screenshots documenting virtual demonstrations, and available platform data. This approach allows for examination of both the visual and discursive dimensions of playful activism, capturing how protest practices are represented, amplified, and circulated beyond the gaming platform itself.

This contribution aims to analyse youth political participation, digital citizenship practices, and inclusion tools essential for strengthening democratic engagement among new generations. Beyond protest, these practices function simultaneously as advocacy and informal media literacy. By participating in coordinated virtual demonstrations, pre-teens develop critical platform awareness, learning to appropriate digital spaces for civic purposes. Each protest thus generates a new wave of informed participants: young people who, having experienced playful activism firsthand, become advocates capable of mobilizing future collective actions. In this context, youth playful activism serves not merely as a form of political participation but as a form of grassroots peer-to-peer communal, educational and political approach.

In the contemporary digital public sphere, influ-activists (Murru et al., 2024) are emerging as new political intermediaries who play an important role in political education and media literacy, fostering political participation particularly among young people (Riedl et al., 2023). Operating at the intersection of digital activism and influence culture, these actors function outside traditional democratic institutions, engaging in strongly partisan political discourses on social media platforms (Rothut, 2025). They aim to raise citizens’ awareness, encourage active participation, and “irritate” the public sphere (Boccia Artieri, 2021). They achieve this through the accumulation of influencing capital and the strategic cultivation of their fanbase (Khamis et al., 2016), leveraging their attachment to socio-political causes.
Focusing on Italian feminist influ-activism on Instagram, this contribution investigates how publics negotiate the tension between admiration for influ-activists and commitment to feminist values, and how this negotiation shapes their participation.

To decode these dynamics, the study applies the framework of political fandom (Sandvoss, 2013; Dean, 2017). This perspective conceptualises political engagement not only as rational adherence, but also as a process driven by identity, affective investment, entertainment, and collective dynamics. This engagement can be directed either towards institutional figures and leaders (Campus & Mazzoni, 2025; “personalised fandom”) or towards political or value-based affiliations (Barnes, 2022; “ideological fandom”), providing a useful lens to interpret how publics relate both to influ-activists and to feminist causes.
The study adopts a qualitative approach based on 20 semi-structured online interviews with individuals who follow the most visible influencers within the Italian digital feminist landscape (according to criteria of theme, relevance and territory, Polesana & Risi, 2024). Participants were selected through a purposive sampling strategy (Patton, 2015) based on multimodal recruitment, combining: (1) offline interception of subjects during the 25 November demonstrations in Rome and Milan, to include individuals with high levels of participation, (2) direct online recruitment, and (3) the snowball technique to increase the variability of the sample by including individuals with more fluid or mediated forms of participation.

Findings reveal a wide spectrum of participation profiles. Some participants exhibit a strong personalised fandom, relying on influ-activists as central sources of information and political learning. In these cases, ideological adherence to feminism and political participation tend to be more individualised and intermittent, struggling to develop into a structured collective sentiment beyond the relationship with the influ-activist. Conversely, individuals with a more solid feminist identity and a stronger attachment to the political cause demonstrate a more detached relationship with influ-activists and a broader consumption of political entertaining content. In these cases, the parasocial relationship with influ-activists is present but mediated by a critical awareness of algorithmic logics and digital labour, which fosters processes of humanisation and deconstruction of celebrity.
Overall, the results suggest that personalised fandom can lower barriers to entry and facilitate mobilisation. However, at the same time the balance between attachment to individuals and commitment to causes shapes the quality of engagement and participation, determining whether it develops into a collective we-sense and sustained mobilisation or remains individualised and episodic engagement.

Communicating Europe in the Post-Digital Era: Youth Participation, Europeanization and Civic Agency

Promoting active citizen participation—particularly among young people—represents a critical challenge for contemporary democracies confronted with declining institutional trust, deep mediatization of the public sphere and the individualizing dynamics of platform-based communication (Sorice, 2020). The European Union constitutes a privileged arena for examining these transformations: a paradigmatic yet contested case of Europeanization of the public sphere, marked by persistent communicative and democratic deficits across local, national and supranational levels (Belluati, forthcoming; Lovari & Belluati, 2023; Trenz, 2005). These deficits are closely linked to the EU's enduring perception as a technocratic and distant polity, whose governance and communication practices often struggle to foster affective resonance and meaningful civic involvement (Belluati, 2021).
Within this framework, youth engagement emerges as a key corrective to structural limitations. Young people have been consistently framed as a strategic priority of EU policies and communication initiatives—not only as beneficiaries, but as agents capable of re-politicizing European integration and counteracting technocratic closure. Civil society organizations and non-formal educational practices also play a pivotal role in fostering active citizenship at the European level, while the EU's multilevel governance architecture provides a distinctive context for examining participatory democracy mechanisms operating across scales (D'Ambrosi & Parito, 2022).
Against this backdrop, this study investigates how digital technologies reshape citizen–institution interaction and civic participation within the Europeanized EU public sphere, with a specific focus on youth engagement in an emerging post-digital communicative environment characterized by algorithmic mediation and the growing institutional use of generative artificial intelligence (Pane et al., 2025).
The research adopts a multi-phase qualitative design combining three rounds of semi-structured interviews conducted between 2024 and 2026. A first wave (n = 25), conducted ahead of the 2024 European Parliament elections, examines how EU institutional communication is perceived and negotiated in a high-stakes electoral context marked by platformization, polarization and misinformation. A second wave (n = 26) explores how EU institutions and civil society actors experiment with digital tools—from e-participation platforms to generative AI and chatbot interfaces—alongside youth-led appropriations of these technologies in non-formal educational settings. A third wave (n = 26), conducted in the post-electoral period, further probes the routinization of AI-assisted communication within EU institutional workflows and its implications for inclusion, responsiveness and democratic legitimacy (Pane, 2025).
Taken together, the findings offer a longitudinal and multi-perspectival analysis of youth participation in the EU's post-digital public sphere , highlighting persistent tensions between top-down institutional communication logics and bottom-up civic engagement, while identifying spaces of convergence where digital platforms and AI-enabled tools can support media literacy and participatory capacity-building. By situating youth engagement at the intersection of EU public communication, civil society action and multilevel governance, the article contributes to debates on Europeanization, democratic resilience and the future of participatory democracy in Europe (Pane, forthcoming).
The research draws on work carried out by the Jean Monnet Chair Com4T.EU – Communicating for Transitions in Europe at the University of Turin (2023–2026) and the Interactif project (Interregional action for France and Italy 2025-2026).

The collective memory of the Nanjing Massacre is increasingly being "re-mediated" within the digital infosphere, where digital power structures and algorithmic logic reshape historical consciousness. This study explores the tension between institutional historical education and decentralized digital discourses among youth in the Sinosphere (Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan).

The research first presents a comparative literature review of history textbooks, revealing a fundamental divergence in narrative framing: while Mainland Chinese curricula emphasize a "Victimization and Patriotism" perspective, narratives in Hong Kong and Taiwan lean towards "Universal Human Rights" and "Global War Trauma." This initial divergence creates a "cognitive baseline gap" among youth before they engage in digital interactions.

Building on this, the study incorporates a content analysis of contemporary discussions on Reddit. It examines how these pre-existing pedagogical frameworks collide in a decentralized digital environment characterized by polarization. Preliminary findings suggest that the lack of a shared narrative baseline makes young users vulnerable to digital disinformation and nationalist Echo Chambers, where historical trauma is frequently weaponized to fuel ideological division.

To address these challenges, this paper proposes a strategic "Narrative Literacy" framework as a practical intervention. Beyond traditional fact-checking, this framework equips digital citizens with the tools to deconstruct how digital platforms amplify conflicting historical frames. Furthermore, the study demonstrates how participatory "co-creation" tools can be utilized to facilitate cross-border dialogue, shifting the focus from defensive nationalism to a critical, multi-perspectival understanding of difficult heritage. By integrating these pedagogical strategies, the research offers a roadmap for fostering resilient and empathetic digital citizenship in an age of AI-driven polarization.

The “Ex Mercati Generali” is a complex of structures established in 1922 in Rome, specifically in the Ostiense district. The area has remained abandoned since 2002; and then followed a long phase - lasting more than twenty years - of proposals, revisions, cancellations, and renegotiations of projects and concessions. In the meantime, nature has taken its course: a spontaneous ecosystem has emerged that today represents a significant example of urban renaturalization in the city center. The turning point for the future of the area came in 2025, when the concessionaire signed a new agreement with Hines, a large real estate investment fund based in Texas. The project involves the demolition of the pavilions and the construction of ten new buildings. Seven of these will be used as a luxury student accommodation.

In response to the project, grassroots protests quickly emerged, hybridizing online and offline tools (Treré, 2019). In particular it is worth noting the high level of youth participation, which has resulted in an online communicative style that combines memetic language (Mina, 2019), symbolic artwork elements (Stammen & Meissner, 2024), and participatory storytelling practices oriented toward civic engagement. In the agreement signed between Hines and the Municipality of Rome, the local community was consulted only after the contract had already been finalized, in a form of invitation-based participatory practice (Antonucci et al., 2024) without effective participation, resembling what has been defined as “participationism” (ivi).

The analysis therefore focuses on participatory practices and the activation of mobilization and public participation from an environmental risk perspective (Webler & Tuler, 2021), linked to the cementification and privatization of a large public area intended to become a luxury student residence, further exacerbating processes of gentrification (Chatterton, 2010). The participatory process is interpreted as a form of democratic learning for liminal communities (Barbas 2020; Antonucci et al., 2024), which tactically (de Certeau, 1988) uses media affordances (Nagy & Neff, 2015) and platform algorithms (Bonini & Trerè, 2024) to raise awareness within the infosphere, with a focus on the way in which a composite grassroots protest space can become a political laboratory that experiments with horizontal and democratic educational practices for the entire citizenry.

Methodologically, the study adopts a multimodal qualitative approach (Bussoletti & Belotti, 2022), which combines multiple data collection sources such as interviews and memos taken by the researchers during the committee meetings and protest demonstrations, along with posts of the @generaliliberi social media pages and whatsapp community. In this way the analysis explores both the frontstage and backstage dimensions of the protest organization (Treré, 2019). Through participatory observation (Kawulich, 2005) along with digital ethnography (Pink et al. 2016) of the instagram page of the committee and semi-structured interviews with campaign organizers and administrators, the analysis focus on the activists’ media literacy and practices (Bussoletti, et al. 2025), proposing that urban conflicts mediated through digital platforms can become spaces of collaborative civic practice.

Democratic debate is becoming more polarized and fragmented, with the spread of hate speech and forms of incivility (Engesser et al., 2017). These dynamics can be understood as strategies that increase engagement and exploit the attention economy of digital platforms (Shugars and Ha, 2025). This situation raises concerns for democracy, especially because of emotional proximity and informational distortion. Emotional proximity is becoming more important in shaping how people perceive epistemic authority in social networks (Boccia Artieri, 2025), meaning that users often trust information because they feel emotionally connected to it rather than because it is accurate. Informational distortion, in a context often described as post-truth (McIntyre, 2018), becomes a strategic tool used to influence public opinion (Vasist et al., 2024).

In such a current global infosphere (Floridi, 2014), Artificial Intelligence plays an increasingly important role in the algorithmic mediation between citizens and democratic participation. Through Machine Learning, an advanced statistical modelling technique, AI can automatically learn from data, make predictions, “create new things” (Tlili et al., 2023), and influence how knowledge is produced and shared in today’s post-public sphere (Schlesinger, 2020). As a result, education systems face a structural challenge: they must prepare students for a world where AI is integrated into the ways people learn, access information, and think.

In response, this contribution explores how Media Literacy should update to prepare learners to participate in a democratic discourse in which AI plays a central role. The author argues that to respond to this epistemic shift (Bartsch et al., 2025), it’s crucial to integrate two main areas in education: AI literacy and human abilities that AI cannot replicate (Quattrociocchi et al., 2025).

The first area concerns a technical understanding of how AI systems and algorithms work. Learners should be aware of limitations such as bias (Tao et al., 2024) and hallucinations (Loru et al., 2025). At the same time, students should understand the ethical and social implications of AI (Ricaurte, 2022), including inclusivity, transparency in algorithmic functioning, clarity about how data are used, and the reliability of information generated by AI systems (Holmes et al., 2022; Khosravi et al., 2022). These aspects should also be contextualized to the impact of AI in media environments, especially in relation to multimedia content that may be partly or completely false.

The second area includes abilities that remain key characteristics of human intelligence and allow people to interact critically with AI systems, and media. Critical thinking (CT) helps learners navigate, search for, and filter data, information, and multimedia content available on digital platforms (European Commission, 2022). Creativity is essential for active use. Together with CT, Creativity fosters the ability to deal with uncertainty (Baumann, 2000) and strongly influences the digital environments through which we inform ourselves. Emotional intelligence is another key competence. It includes the ability to recognize, understand, regulate, communicate, and use emotions effectively in social interactions (Mollik and Mollik, 2023) so to develop respectful forms of interaction that consider the perspective of others.