L’hate speech nelle piattaforme digitali e il riflesso nel rapporto con la figura materna

un’analisi netnografica del panorama Incel italiano

Authors

  • Fabrizia Pasciuto University of Messina, Italy
  • Debora Pizzimenti University of Messina, Italy

Keywords:

incel, parental relationship, misogyny

Abstract

Hate Speech on Digital Platforms and Its Reflection in the Relationship with the Maternal Figure: A Netnographic study on Italian Incel community

This paper aims to analyze the phenomenon of gender hatred, with a particular focus on forums where widespread misogyny forms an ideology based on exclusion, the rejection of diversity, and a - false - attachment to traditional values, typical of the alt-right. The study was conducted within the Manosphere, a space where subcultures of predominantly male groups coexist, sharing hatred and frustration towards women. The specific group under examination is that of the Incels, individuals who identify as involuntary celibates due to rejection by women. In the Italian context, they tend to congregate primarily in the digital space provided by “Il Forum dei Brutti”. Within this framework, a Netnographic analysis was employed to explore the connection between hatred towards the female gender and one’s relationship with the maternal figure. A sample of 771 comments was collected and categorized, revealing results grouped into four main categories. The findings underscore the intricate nature of the relationship between internalized misogyny and one’s connection with their mother.

References

Arnett, J.J. (2007). Adolescence and emerging adulthood (3th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Azzolari, D., Borodi, V. M., & Garusi, D. (2021). Il Forum degli Incel: la costruzione del consenso politico nella manosfera italiana. Rivista di Digital Politics, 2, 379–396. https://doi.org/10.53227/101949

Baele, S.J., Brace, L., & Coan, T.G. (2019). From “Incel” to “Saint”: Analyzing the vio-lent worldview behind the 2018 Toronto attack. Terrorism and Political Violence, 33(8), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2019.1638256

Banet-Weiser, S. (2018). Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Duke University Press.

Bates, L. (2014). Everyday Sexism. Simon and Schuster.

Bellassai, A. (2018). Di mamma ce n’è una sola. Misoginia maschile e rappresentazio-ne del materno nella storia italiana contemporanea. Gender/sexuality/italy, 5, 1–20.

Berger P., & Luckmann T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Doubleday & Company, New York.

Bird, S.R. (1996). Welcome to the Men’s Club: Homosociality and Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity. Gender and Society, 10(2), 120–132. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124396010002002

Bosma, H.A. (1994). Identity and development: An interdisciplinary approach. New-bury Park: Sage.

Bosma, H.A., & Kunnen, E. S. (2001). Determinants and mechanisms in ego identity development: a review and synthesis. Developmental Review, 21, 39–66.

Bourdieu, P. (1996). La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement. Les Éditions de Mi-nuit.

Brown, B.B., & Larson, J. (2009). Peer Relationships in Adolescence. In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg, Handbook of Adolescent Psychology. Wiley.

Cannito, M., Crowhurst, I., Ferrero Camoletto, R., Mercuri, E., & Quaglia, V. (2021). Fare maschilità online: definire e indagare la manosphere. AG-ABOUT GEN-DER, 10(19), 1– 41.

Cappello, G. (2009). Nascosti nella luce. Media, minori e Media Education (Comunic. ist. mutamento sociale. Ricerche). Milano: FrancoAngeli [Edizione del Kindle].

Ciccone, S. (2020). Maschi in crisi? Una strada oltre la retorica della frustrazione e del rancore. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.

Connell, R. (1995). Masculinities. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003116479

Connell, R.W., & Messerschmidt, W. (2005). HegemonicMasculinity: Rethinking the-Concept. Gender and Society, 19(6), 829–859. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243205278639

Coppola, L. (2011). NVivo: un programma per l’analisi qualitativa. Milano: Fran-coAngeli.

Corchia, L. (2023). L’hate speech. Definizione e meccanismi di propagazione nei so-cial network. Sicurezza e scienze sociali, XI(3), 28–41.

Erikson, E.H., (1982). The life cycle completed. A review. New York: Norton.

European Commission (2021). Incels: A First Scan of the Phenomenon (in the EU) and its Relevance and Challenges for P/CVE, October 2021, https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/whats-new/publications/Incels-first-scan-phenomenon-eu-and-its-relevance-and-challenges-pcve-october-2021

Farci, M., & Righetti, N. (2019). Italian men’s rights activism and online backlash against feminism. Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, 60(4), 765–781.

Fonzi, A. & Tani, F. (2000). “Amici per la pelle. Le caratteristiche dei legami amicali nell’adolescenza”. In G.V.Caprara e A.Fonzi (Eds.), L’età sospesa (pp. 90–120). Fi-renze: Giunti.

Garrett, R.K. (2009). Echo chambers online?: Politically motivated selective exposure among Internet news users. Journal of computer-mediated communication, 14(2), 265–285.

Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J.M. (2011). Ideological segregation online and offline. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(4), 1799–1839.

Ging, D. (2019). Alphas, betas, and Incels: Theorizing the masculinities of the mano-sphere. Men and Masculinities, 22(4), 638–657.

Hartup, W. W. (1985). Peer relations. In P. H. Mussen (Series Ed.) & E. M. Hethering-ton (Vol Ed.). Handbook of Child Psychology (Vol 4, pp. 103–196). New York, N.Y.: Wiley.

Hine, C. (2000). Virtual Ethnography. Sage.

Hoffman, B., Ware, J., & Shapiro, E. (2020). Assessing the Threat of Incel Violence. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 43(7), 565–587. https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2020.1751459

Jamieson, K.H. & Cappella, J.N. (2008). Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Con-servative Media Establishment. Oxford University Press.

Jane, E. A. (2017). Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History. SAGE Publica-tions.

Kimmel, M. (2013). Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. New York: Nation Books.

Kozinets, R.V. (2010). Netnography. Doing ethnographic research online. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Levine, J.M., & Moreland, R.L. (1994). Group socialization: Theory and re-search. European review of social psychology, 5(1), 305–336.

Manne, K. (2017). Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. New York: Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190604981.001.0001

Marwick, A.E., & Caplan, R. (2018). Drinking male tears: language, the manosphere, and networked harassment. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), 543–559. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1450568

Marwick, A., & Lewis, R. (2017). Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online. Da-ta & Society Research Institute.

Nagle, A. (2017). Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right. Zero Books.

Nagle, A., (2018). Contro la vostra realtà: come l'estremismo del web è diventato mainstream. Luiss University Press.

Pasta, S. (2018). Razzismi 2.0. Analisi socio-educativa dell’odio online. Brescia: Mor-celliana-Scholè.

Pelzer, B., Kaati, L., Cohen, K., & Fernquist, J. (2021). Toxic language in online Incel communities. SN Social Sciences, 1(8), 1–22.

Pizzimenti, D., & Pasciuto, F. (2022). Un’analisi netnografica sul fenomeno dell’hate speech nella manosfera italiana. Metis. Ricerche di sociologia, psicologia e antro-pologia della comunicazione, 29, 1-2.

Plant, R.J. (2013). “Debunking mother love: American mothers and the momism cri-tique in the mid twentieth century”. In D. Schumann (Ed.), Raising Citizens in the Century of the Child: The United States and German Central Europe in Compara-tive Perspective. New York/Oxford: Berghahn.

Plant, R.J. (2015). Anti-maternalism: A New Perspective on the Transformation of Gender Ideology in the Twentieth-Century United States. Social Politics: Interna-tional Studies in Gender, State & Society, 22(3), 283–288.

Poletto, F., Basile, V., Sanguinetti, M., Bosco, C., & Patti, V. (2021). Resources and benchmark corpora for hate speech detection: a systematic review. Lang Resources & Evaluation, 55, 477–523. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-020-09502-8

Schmitz, R. M., & Kazyak, E. (2016). Masculinities in cyberspace: An analysis of por-trayals of manhood in men’s rights activist websites. Social Sciences, 5(2), 18.

Speckhard, A., Ellenberg, M., Morton, J., & Ash, A. (2021). Involuntary celibates’ ex-periences of and grievance over sexual exclusion and the potential threat of vio-lence among those active in an online Incel forum. Journal of Strategic Security, 14(2), 89–121.

Spitz, R.A. (2009). Il primo anno di vita del bambino. Firenze: Giunti Editore.

Stephens, J. (2019). Mother hate. Arena Magazine (Fitzroy, Vic), 160, 36–39.

Sunstein, C.R. (2017). #Republic.com. La democrazia nell’epoca dei social media. Bo-logna: il Mulino.

Tajfel, H. (1969). Cognitive aspects of prejudice. Journal of Social Issues, 25, 79–97.

Turner, J.C., Hogg, M.A., Oakes, P.J., Reicher, S.D., & Wetherell, M.S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Basil Black-well.

Vallerga, M., & Zurbriggen, E.L. (2022). Hegemonic masculinities in the ‘Mano-sphere’: A thematic analysis of beliefs about men and women on The Red Pill and Incel. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 22(2), 602–625.

Vallino, D. & Macciò, M. (2004). Essere neonati. Osservazioni psicoanalitiche. Roma: Borla.

Van Valkenburgh, S.P. (2021). Digesting the red pill: Masculinity and neoliberalism in the manosphere. Men and masculinities, 24(1), 84–103.

Vingelli, G. (2019). Antifemminismo online. I Men’s Rights Activists in Italia. Im@ go. A Journal of the Social Imaginary, 14, 219–247.

Vito, C., Admire, A., & Hughes, E. (2017). Masculinity, aggrieved entitlement, and vio-lence: considering the Isla Vista mass shooting. NORMA, 13(2), 86–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2017.1390658

Witt, T. (2020). ‘If I cannot have it, I will do everything i can to destroy it.’ the canoni-zation of Elliot Rodger: ‘Incel’ masculinities, secular sainthood, and justifications of ideological violence. Social Identities, 26(5), 675–689. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2020.1787132

Ziccardi, G. (2016). L’odio online. Violenza verbale e ossessioni in rete. Milano: Raf-faello Cortina.

Downloads

Published

2024-06-30

How to Cite

Pasciuto, F., & Pizzimenti, D. (2024). L’hate speech nelle piattaforme digitali e il riflesso nel rapporto con la figura materna: un’analisi netnografica del panorama Incel italiano. Culture E Studi Del Sociale, 9(1), 24–38. Retrieved from https://www.cussoc.it/journal/article/view/313