Marcello Maneri | Università di Milano-Bicocca (original) (raw)

Papers by Marcello Maneri

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2023

In this response to the very thoughtful critiques of our book, An Ugly Word: Rethinking Race in I... more In this response to the very thoughtful critiques of our book, An Ugly Word: Rethinking Race in Italy and the United States, we advocate for a comparative sociological examination of race that, while acknowledging and documenting its enduring centrality, also explores alternative notions of ancestry-based distinction. The framework that we propose for examining the full range of such “concepts of descent-based difference,” rather than obscuring social scientists’ comprehension of the enduring significance of whiteness or disregarding the role of race as a socio-political construct, serves to broaden and systematize our analysis. It facilitates a nuanced exploration of the perception and categorization of diverse groups in varied societies worldwide. We are also grateful for the critics' suggestions for further exploring our “race-conscious versus race-skeptic” binary and the public relevance of our research.

BRIDGES Working Papers #8, project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, 2023

The BRIDGES Italian report analyses the main narratives developed in traditional and social media... more The BRIDGES Italian report analyses the main narratives developed in traditional and social media around three different case studies: the Sea Watch 3 landing to Lampedusa (2019), which was the first challenge of the new ‘populist’ government’s ‘closed ports’ policy; the debate on Ius soli (2017), charged with identity issues in clashing political and cultural narratives; and the attempted supremacist massacre in Macerata (2018), occurred during the election campaign and characterised by a debate conveying implicit ideas about deserving and non-deserving victims. Following WP3 main objectives, the report addresses four interrelated questions: who accesses the public arena and shapes prevailing narratives; where these narratives emerge and how do they travel across different media and platforms; what the main features of successful narratives are; and in which contexts and circumstances (thus when) certain narratives obtain a competitive edge. Each event is analysed considering the news published during the peak period by three major newspapers and two prime-time news broadcasts, as well as using meta and textual data from Twitter. Interviews with relevant stakeholders involved in each event are also used to improve interpretation. The analysis of three case studies very different in nature shows the extreme polarisation of the political debate on immigration in Italy, the almost total exclusion of migrants’ voices from the public sphere, and the different – successful or unsuccessful – strategies employed by the two major political sides.

BRIDGES Working Papers #11, project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, 2023

Mass-mediated narratives are a crucial source to make sense of migration. Many scholars have stud... more Mass-mediated narratives are a crucial source to make sense of migration. Many scholars have studied the frames, themes and language of the media, especially in news about migrant and refugee arrivals. However, research comparing old and new media in different countries and journalistic sub-genres (refugee arrivals, debates on non-citizens’ rights, terror attacks) and engaging with both frames and narratives was missing. This study is based on six national reports, systematising and comparing their findings. In particular, the focus is on the distribution of narratives and frames on migration in the various sub-genres and on the ingredients, actors, circumstances, strategies, and infrastructure of narrative success. The analysis is based on 2792 news stories and 1768 social media messages with the highest engagement published during the peak coverage of 17 migration-related events and uses content, discourse, and frame analysis. In addition, we collected 53 semi-structured interviews among journalists and other people involved in the events. Frames and narratives were fairly similar across countries and their resemblance is even greater in the case of terror attacks. Nevertheless, each sub-genre is characterised by a specific structure of opportunities that allows or hinders the advancement of different narratives, in a hierarchical context where not all stories and storytellers enjoy the same chances. Differences between countries are more a question of degree than substance and may be traced back, with caution, to longer-term conversations about the nation’s identity and belonging.

Partecipazione e Conflitto, 2022

The role of Twitter in the organisation of political action-either by supporting existing street-... more The role of Twitter in the organisation of political action-either by supporting existing street-level protests or native digital mobilizations-has attracted a great deal of attention. However, the wider media, political, and cultural context in which mobilizations take place is often overlooked. In this article, we analyse the trajectory of a digital movement of opinion that reacted to the shooting of black people by a right-wing militant in the Italian town of Macerata in 2018. Using a dataset of 571,996 tweets captured over 31 days, and employing a mix of machine learning, network analysis and qualitative investigation, we study how factors both external and internal to the platform sealed the fate of that movement. We maintain that the permeability of Twitter to outer divided arenas and its re-intermediation by political leaders are key to the transformation of protest movements into polarised crowds.

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2021

In a "colourblind" Europe, where race talk is taboo, explicit racial resentment towards newcomers... more In a "colourblind" Europe, where race talk is taboo, explicit racial resentment towards newcomers is confined to the margins. Nonetheless, a racialized understanding of immigration and asylum persists, as evidenced in the less policed realm of iconographic representation. An analysis of the association between keyword-retrieved discursive frames and 1,500 photographs in Google Image search results from the years starting with the "migrant crisis" of 2015 reveals different regimes of representation and suggests that concepts of illegality and threat are embodied in images as race. Despite the overlapping hierarchies of origins found in today's racializing discourses, the pillars of old European racial taxonomies emerge as the prevalent codes of racialized difference in pictorial representation of a besieged Europe.

Problemi dell’informazione, 2021

Research on media and diversity rarely compares portrayals of Us and Them with a quasi-experiment... more Research on media and diversity rarely compares portrayals of Us and Them with a quasi-experimental design. The present study does a content and discourse analysis of stories on women’s victimization that differ only in respect to the role performed by national or foreign characters. The main pillars of fact-based, «objective» journalism are thus quantitatively scrutinized in their dichotomic application to these two different sets of protagonists. We perform a similar, qualitative, analysis on emotional news based on storytelling. Finally, we explain the bias that emerges considering the shared cultural backdrop that pre-exists newsmaking routines, commercial considerations, and political leaning.

“La storia in-diretta. La costruzione delle voci di Wikipedia sugli attacchi terroristici” (con O. Ricci e F. Quassoli), in Problemi dell’informazione, 2: 285-313., 2019

Breaking history. The creation of Wikipedia entries on terrorist attacks Wikipedia, as a story t... more Breaking history. The creation of Wikipedia entries on terrorist attacks

Wikipedia, as a story teller of the key events that mark a certain time period, has a strong influence on that time’s memory. However, the construction of the encyclopedia’s entries on these events, i.e. on breaking news, has been given little scholarly attention. This article focuses on the discussion pages of entries on terrorist attacks in Europe. The typical dilemmas of their journalistic coverage recur in Wikipedia, from the definition of terrorism to the balance between promptness and accuracy, among others. Notwithstanding, a «tertiary source» like Wikipedia present them in a peculiar and sometime paradoxical fashion.

“Un attentato «quasi-terroristico». Macerata, Twitter e le opportunità dell'arena pubblica” (con G. Anselmi e F. Quassoli), in Comunicazionepuntodoc, 23: 17-36, 2020

La sparatoria che ha avuto luogo a Macerata il 3 febbraio 2018, un mese prima delle elezioni poli... more La sparatoria che ha avuto luogo a Macerata il 3 febbraio 2018, un mese prima delle elezioni politiche, ha dato origine a un'intensa flame war su Twitter che permette di fare luce sul funzionamento della sfera pubblica all'epoca dei social media. Con un approccio mixed methods che ci ha permesso di individua-re i frame intorno ai quali si sono coagulati 571.996 tweet, abbiamo analizzato le dinamiche interne alla piattaforma e quelle esterne, relative all'arena pubblica fornita dai media tradizionali. In questo modo mostriamo come siano stati soprattutto questi ultimi a decreta-re il fallimento di un movimento di opinione digitale che aveva provato a promuovere una interpretazione in chiave terroristica dell'evento, ricon-fermando il loro ruolo di guardiani della sfera pubblica.
ABSTRACT (EN) The shooting that took place in Macerata on February 3, 2018, one month before the general election, gave rise to a flame war on Twitter that sheds light on the functioning of the public sphere at the time of social media. With a mixed methods approach that allowed us to identify the frames around which 571,996 tweets aligned, we analyze the internal dynamics of the platform and the external ones, related to the public arena provided by the traditional media. In this way we show how the latter hindered the emergence of an interpretation of the event in terms of terrorism, silencing an emergent digital movement of opinion and making clear their role as guardians of the public sphere.

“#Jesuis... whatever. Le reazioni agli eventi terroristici al tempo dei social media: una prospettiva di analisi” (con F. Quassoli e O. Ricci), in Studi culturali, 1: 163-185., 2019

«Media events» were originally described by Dayan and Katz as the live broadcasting of preplanne... more «Media events» were originally described by Dayan and Katz as the live broadcasting of
preplanned historic events. Recently, media scholars have adopted a broader concept,
including also conflicts, disasters and terrorist attacks in the study of media events. The latter, we think, have a peculiar character whose features deserve to be studied on their own. In addition, the proliferation of social media during the past decade has created a new mediascape, possibly transforming the way both media events, in general, and terrorist events, in particular, are constructed. Our article examines the ritual nature of the mediatized response to terrorist events and the central role played by the «community of the victims», and then engages in a reflection on how the new communication environment shapes the meaning of these dramatic cases. Contrasting the reactions to the attack at the Atocha station in Madrid and those to the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, we showhow the social media have been surprisingly effective in guiding the collective reaction, channeling it into an almost unitary response, which reminds us of the integrative rituals performed in the traditional celebratory media events.

«Vengono qui per delinquere»: logiche e cicli di criminalizzazione dell’immigrazione, in la Rivista delle Politiche Sociali / Italian Journal of Social Policy, 2019

L'articolo si propone di indagare la criminalizzazione dell'immigrazione in Italia e in particola... more L'articolo si propone di indagare la criminalizzazione dell'immigrazione in Italia e in particolare il «lavoro culturale» che naturalizza lo status di un gruppo come «criminale», esaminando il modo in cui le rappresentazioni influenzano le politiche e, viceversa, le politiche mettono in scena delle rappresentazioni. Ripercorrendo i momenti cardine che hanno portato nell'arena pubblica le varie «crisi dell'immigrazione», e basandosi su alcuni studi di caso, si ricostruisce la logica dei processi di criminalizzazione e la loro storia. Viene mostrato come il framework di Schengen, improntato alla sicurezza dei confini, sia alla radice della criminalizzazione del «clandestino». Il «paradigma della sicurezza» che ne deriva diventa così un principio di comprensione e intervento sulle dinamiche urbane che sfocia in cicli politici di «rivendicazione e criminalizzazione». A sua volta, il regime letale di controllo delle frontiere giustificato dalle «politiche dell'assedio» richiede una deresponsabilizzazione morale che si nutre della costruzione continua del pericolo portando a una ulteriore criminalizzazione dei migranti e dei loro «fiancheggiatori».

C. Rinaldi e P. Saitta (a cura di) Criminologie critiche contemporanee, Milano, Giuffré, 2018

Sommario: Introduzione. -1. La devianza e la criminalità in una prospettiva costruttivista. -1.1.... more Sommario: Introduzione. -1. La devianza e la criminalità in una prospettiva costruttivista. -1.1. I dati ufficiali sulla criminalità. -2. I media e la costruzione sociale del crimine. -3. La costruzione sociale dell'immigrato deviante in Italia.

The 2015 European refugee crisis highlighted some inherent shortcoming in European migration and ... more The 2015 European refugee crisis highlighted some inherent shortcoming in European migration and asylum policies. Hundreds of thousands of people moving across the borders of Schengen and seeking international protection were quickly classified by the highest institutional offices of member states as " irregular migrants " , they were associated with threats such as organized crime and terrorism and they have been exposed to the risk of being criminalized. These official reactions are both the consequence and the reflection of the Eu-ropean asylum system. A regime that has been created in almost thirty years-from the Schengen agreement to the most recent immigration conventions-on the basis of an obsession for border security which, on the one hand, led to the approval of increasingly restrictive immigration and asylum policies, and, on the other hand, have transformed asylum seekers from victims of political persecution , wars, natural or human disasters to disguised economic immigrants or " false refugees ". Two interesting interpretations of this trajectory have been provided by Valluy-who explains it as the result of a competition between three political ideological views-and Huysmans-who analyzes it in terms of a classical securitization process. In the last part of our paper, we briefly address three main points: 1) the generative power of borders; 2) the need to critically reconsider the vocabulary we as scholars use to analyze human mobility; 3) the link between the European immigration policy framework and the reworking of a European cultural and ethno-racial identity.

In recent years, European politics and public discourse about immigration and asylum have been pe... more In recent years, European politics and public discourse about immigration and asylum have been permeated by a humanitarian stance. Yet the same political representatives who speak up humanely often produce merciless statements that imply inhumane treatment for people on the move. To explain this contradictory regime of humanitarian and security discourse we start from the early securitization of European borders, which has established a link between immigration, crime, and terrorism. The securitization of the issue of immigration , with its related rhetoric of fear and security, has made the metaphor of the siege seem natural, credible, and validated by facts. After illustrating the pendular regime of humanitarian/security discourse, we show how while the first is deemed inevitable after high profile shipwrecks, but is soon forgotten, the second is justified by a paradigm of siege and institutionalized in norms, bureaucracies , technologies, and doctrines that privilege security over human life.

Concepts like media hype and moral panic are often studied through a juxtaposition of public conc... more Concepts like media hype and moral panic are often studied through a juxtaposition of public concern and actual ‘reality’. Drawing on my previous studies on moral panics about urban security in Italy, I illustrate how opinion polls and data on crime – the usual indicators for disproportionality – are more the result of changing practices, priorities, and definitions than ‘real life’ indicators. Foucault’s idea of discursive formation helps
us to see these supposedly objective indicators as embedded in the same phenomena they are supposed to measure from the outside. Nonetheless, as long as they are conceived as statistics interacting with the forces that mould them, they can be important for the analysis of media hypes and moral panics.

In this contribution I reflect on the role that the media plays in the criminalization of immigra... more In this contribution I reflect on the role that the media plays in the criminalization of immigrants by examining how the issue of immigration is constructed in Italian public discourse. First, I summarize the characteristics of this discourse and illustrate how immigrants are seen to be, by nature, a dangerous class. Second, I briefly discuss the logics that make this discourse possible and the effects that it produces, considering the interaction between its principal exponents. Finally, I focus on the practices of immigration controls, underlining how Fortress Europe generates meaning and produces objectivisations that both define immigration and tell us how to speak of it.

The news media have an increasing tendency to cast what they broadcast or publish in the “panic” ... more The news media have an increasing tendency to cast what they broadcast or publish in the “panic” or “emergency” frame, a frame that is perceived to boost their efficacy. The same can be said for politics. Especially when the emergency can be personified as an enemy, politicians take advantage of the rhetoric of fear and of the fight against the enemy. In the USA this rhetoric has been particularly visible in the frequent presidential slogans of the “war on” (drugs, terrorism etc.). In continental Europe, for a number of reasons, the “fight against” or “struggle” slogan is generally preferred. Historically, with the end of the Soviet block and the weakening of the social conflicts of the 70s, based mainly on class lines, a new configuration of political and media discourse has emerged. A new social consensus, taken for granted, requires enemies who are outside its range. It is not only a matter of discourses, of course. Besides these discourses are policies of exclusion and of retreat from social responsibility that move the action of the State from the social or the political side to the penal or the military side.
The discourse of the “war against” is a specific way of constructing social problems. It has some constant features, rhetorical devices, practical benefits and social consequences. They are analyzed using examples from the different enemies that have been depicted by political and media discourse in the US and Europe, with a particular attention to Italy, since the end of the 80’s. The recent discourse on “security” is the perfect synthesis of these different discourses of war and is dealt with in more detail. In the final part I try to explain why war discourse in peacetime has been so alive and well in the last two decades.

In the last twenty years the topic of “security” has reached one of the top positions in the Ital... more In the last twenty years the topic of “security” has reached one of the top positions in the Italian public agenda. The problem has been constructed by the interaction of media and political campaigns with a popularized version of sociological and criminological thought. This has led to a taken-for-granted definition of the “urban security problem”, which through presuppositions and limits to the argument marginalizes and excludes other possible meanings.
First, this essay critically examines how the most popularized scientific knowledge, including opinion surveys, has conceptualized and constructed the “security” and the “fear” themes. Second, the career of this social problem is tracked analyzing the trends of some keywords in the online archives of the main Italian newspapers and their printed editions. Third, the nature of its discursive formation – one that establishes objects, relations, subject positions, and conditions for the emergence of statements, and that produces particular power effects – is investigated using administrative documents, regulations and institutional communications.
Keywords: urban security, fear, discourse

The moral panic concept has been widely and increasingly used in scholarship in the last several ... more The moral panic concept has been widely and increasingly used in scholarship in the last several years. Some of its critical problems, however, remain unresolved. Features like concern and disproportionality, distinctions between moral panics, moral crusades and media hypes, the heuristic validity of the moral panic concept in risk society and finally the role of the media are still disputed or overlooked. In addition, the stages described in Stanley Cohen’s study are one of the least developed aspects of this body of research. I argue that a reassessment of Cohen’s stages may help operationalize the concept and see these problems in a different light. Based on two case studies I conducted in the late 1990s in Italy, I suggest that typical stages are clearly recognizable. They are the outcome of the way in which the media operate in these circumstances; a way that produces similar trends in other emergencies constructed by the media, sometimes called media hypes.
The similarity of the process of media activation with regard to different topics has led to an excessive broadening of the concept of moral panic, which now tends to be applied to almost every domain. In this way the “panic” dimension of the concept has been given probably too much importance. On the contrary, the “moral” dimension is sometimes forgotten. In my two case studies there is a striking difference in how morality is used. In the absence of folk devils, I argue, the moral panic concept loses its specificity.

En este trabajo, tomando como ejemplo la forma en que se construye el tema de la inmigración en I... more En este trabajo, tomando como ejemplo la forma en que se construye el tema de la inmigración en Italia dentro del discurso público, trataremos de razonar sobre el papel de los medios de comunicación en los procesos de criminalización de los inmigrantes. En primer lugar ofreceremos una síntesis de las características de este discurso, mostrando cómo identifica una clase peligrosa «por naturaleza». En segundo lugar discutiremos brevemente las lógicas que lo hacen posible y los efectos que produce, considerando la interacción provista de sentido entre los principales representantes del discurso público. Por último nos detendremos en las prácticas de control de la inmigración, evidenciando cómo la «Europa fortaleza» genera sentido y produce objetivaciones que «hablan» inmigración y nos indican cómo «hablarla».

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2023

BRIDGES Working Papers #8, project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, 2023

BRIDGES Working Papers #11, project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, 2023

Partecipazione e Conflitto, 2022

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2021

Problemi dell’informazione, 2021

“La storia in-diretta. La costruzione delle voci di Wikipedia sugli attacchi terroristici” (con O. Ricci e F. Quassoli), in Problemi dell’informazione, 2: 285-313., 2019

Breaking history. The creation of Wikipedia entries on terrorist attacks Wikipedia, as a story t... more Breaking history. The creation of Wikipedia entries on terrorist attacks

“Un attentato «quasi-terroristico». Macerata, Twitter e le opportunità dell'arena pubblica” (con G. Anselmi e F. Quassoli), in Comunicazionepuntodoc, 23: 17-36, 2020

“#Jesuis... whatever. Le reazioni agli eventi terroristici al tempo dei social media: una prospettiva di analisi” (con F. Quassoli e O. Ricci), in Studi culturali, 1: 163-185., 2019

«Vengono qui per delinquere»: logiche e cicli di criminalizzazione dell’immigrazione, in la Rivista delle Politiche Sociali / Italian Journal of Social Policy, 2019

C. Rinaldi e P. Saitta (a cura di) Criminologie critiche contemporanee, Milano, Giuffré, 2018

Scholars and politicians often assume a significant gap between the ways that Americans and Europ... more Scholars and politicians often assume a significant gap between the ways that Americans and Europeans think about race. According to this template, in the U.S. race is associated with physical characteristics, while in Western Europe race has disappeared, and discrimination is based on insurmountable cultural differences. However, little research has addressed how average Americans and Europeans actually think and talk about race. In An Ugly Word, sociologists Ann Morning and Marcello Maneri examine American and Italian understandings of group difference in order to determine if and how they may differ.

Morning and Maneri interviewed over 150 people across the two countries about differences among what they refer to as “descent-based groups.” Using this concept allowed them to sidestep the language of “race” and “ethnicity,” which can be unnecessarily narrow, poorly defined, or even offensive to some. Drawing on these interviews, the authors find that while ways of speaking about group difference vary considerably across the Atlantic, underlying beliefs about it do not. The similarity in American and Italian understandings of difference was particularly evident when discussing sports. Both groups relied heavily on traditional stereotypes of Black physicality to explain Black athletes’ overrepresentation in sports like U.S. football and their underrepresentation in sports like swimming – contradicting the claims that a biological notion of race is a distinctly American phenomenon.

While American and Italian concepts of difference may overlap extensively, they are not identical. Interviews in Italy were more likely to reveal beliefs about groups’ innate, unchangeable temperaments, such as friendly Senegalese and dishonest Roma. And where physical difference was seen by Italians as superficial and unimportant, cultural difference was perceived as deeply meaningful and consequential. In contrast, U.S. interviewees saw cultural difference as supremely malleable—and often ascribed the same fluidity to racial identity, which they believed stemmed from culture as well as biology. In light of their findings, Morning and Maneri propose a new approach to understanding cross-cultural beliefs about descent-based difference that includes identifying the traits people believe differentiate groups, how they believe those traits are acquired, and whether they believe these traits can change.

An Ugly Word is an illuminating, cross-national examination of the ways in which people around the world make sense of race and difference.

Un attentato “quasi terroristico”. Macerata 2018, il razzismo e la sfera pubblica al tempo dei social media, 2020

L’opera offre, a studenti e studiosi, una serie di riflessioni che intendono ridare forza epistem... more L’opera offre, a studenti e studiosi, una serie di riflessioni che intendono ridare forza epistemologica a un approccio critico alla criminologia, oggi più che mai utile a leggere le linee di frattura del sociale. Gli autori mettono in evidenza i legami esistenti tra il potere politico – nella fattispecie gli ambiti di competenza della sovranità nella produzione della pena – e i fattori economici in grado di produrre gerarchie differenziali; tra la produzione mediatica di informazioni che
saturano e dettano l’agenda dell’opinione pubblica e i dispositivi, tecnologici e giuridici, che inscrivono i soggetti all’interno dei rapporti di potere. Lo statuto della criminologia viene analizzato attraverso un prisma che incrocia, tra le variabili prese in esame, la nazionalità, il genere, le sessualità, la razza e la classe.
Si propone un uso pubblico e comune della criminologia che ridia voce in primo luogo ai veri protagonisti della questione penale: i soggetti prodotti e riprodotti dalle normative e dalla penalità, ma, soprattutto, che introduca temi e approcci finora poco sistematizzati in Italia, quali le criminologie green, border, queer, oltre a quelle postcoloniali, culturali e sui crimini di Stato. Il volume aggiorna dunque il dibattito critico sul discorso criminologico, offrendo un’antologia appassionata, utile strumento di aggiornamento per lo studioso e di formazione critica per gli studenti di scienze sociali e giuridiche. Un riferimento
imprescindibile per chi voglia accostarsi allo studio sociologico del crimine