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For decades, national states have confronted various challenges to the democratic form of government. In such a highly complex frame, the question is, can public participation to policymaking still be a way to reach a more effective governance? In this chapter, I will attempt to demonstrate how inclusive bottom-up decision-making could improve the results of single projects and of wider European public policies. In the first part, I describe the European frame in which inclusive policymaking was born; then, in the second part, I analyse the Oltre project and its results as an example of participatory practices.

Preface to the volume: The media representation of the "Islamic State"

Has the pandemic reversed trends already taking place in contemporary politics or has it reinforced ongoing political phenomena? The serious health risk posed by the spread of Covid-19 has in fact legitimised dynamics that more or less silently had long been spreading, including the personalisation of politics, the (alleged) disintermediation of communication, different populist styles, the danger of authoritarian drifts. The challenges to democracy identified by the political literature, as the pandemic spreads, are enriched by new elements. Trust in national institutions, which has been years marked by a negative trend, in countertendency has increased during the peak of the epidemic. new fears lead to support for national institutions and those who govern them. Only to decline again when the lockdown ended. The chapter, starting with the Italian situation, reflects on the possible effects of the health crisis on the political system, analysing the communication aspects of these transformations. It presents, finally an exploratory of the trends of interest for the main political leaders from the 2018 elections to September 2020 by analysing Google searches.

This paper presents the results of a cyber-ethnographic study. The research analyzes the dynamics that make, calm and increase the radicalization narratives. This study is part of the Oltre project (ISF - DG Migration and Home Affairs, EU) which directly involved 42 Italian and second generation youths in the dissemination and moderation of an online communication campaign in order to prevent radicalized behaviors. This paper illustrates how the young “moderators” interacted each other, highlighting how counter-narratives can represent useful tools for deconstructing "complex" issues such as radicalization. Furthermore, the paper shows (using social network analysis) how on the social media the communicative dynamics are influenced by the characteristics of virtual networks that convey media messages. Finally, this study elucidates the content analysis results, in order to compare narratives and counter-narratives, identifying different meanings, specific vocabularies and relevant thematic clusters.

This paper deals with the OLTRE project (ISF - DG Migration and Home Affairs, EU) funded for preventing the radicalization of the second-generation of migrants in Italy. This essay aims to study the production of an online communication campaign co-designed by second-generation youths. The four Universities engaged in the project, in order to collect the issues for the campaign made an in-depth sociological research and an interdisciplinary social network analysis. We will present the results of the non-standard field research. Starting from the different dimensions of the risk of radicalization proposed by the kaleidoscopic overview of risk factors (Sieckelinck and Gielen 2018: 5; Ranstorp 2016), we created a topic guide for the in-depth qualitative interviews, then we collected 42 interviews of second generation youths (18-30 years) in 7 Italian towns. Furthermore, we studied the theater performances taped during the laboratories made by second generation youths collecting narratives, representations, stories and emotions about their representation of the radicalization risk and protection factors. This corpus was used for the social communication campaign to prevent radicalization, engaging the research participants as key players, co-designing the counter-narrative contents (Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2015). The paper study also the viral dissemination of the social communication campaign on the social network and the role of the moderators. References Ranstorp, M. The root causes of violent extremism. RAN issue paper, 4 January 2016. Sieckelinck S. and Gielen Amy-Jane, Protective and promotive factors building resilience against violent, RAN issue paper, April 2018. Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Counter Narratives and Alternative Narratives. The role of counter- and alternative narratives in prevention of radicalisation, RAN, 2015.

Khaldūn has been compared to Machiavelli, Bodin, Vico, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Condorcet, Hegel, August Comte, Herbert Spencer and many other Western thinkers. His economic analysis has been compared to that of Marx. Although many associate his work with that of sociology and the social sciences, because of its focus on the observation of reality, others question this analogy because of the absence of a scientific method. His pioneering reflections and some of the concepts he developed, such as that of solidarity, still appear to be of extreme heuristic value for the social sciences from an unprecedented point of view.

The chapter starts with an analysis of unconventional forms of political participation and illustrates the case of the Black Live Matter movement, with a specific focus on the movement in Italy and Sicily and the contribution of second-generation youth.

The second generations (2G) do not have a static and homogeneous ethnic identity, but multiple and transnational identities. The lack of recognition as citizens and their perceived discrimination and feelings of exclusion often can have backwash on the process of reconstruction of identity and creation of hybrid identity as a synthesis between identity and difference. From the analysis of the interviews with 2G young people, collected in 7 cities in Italy, emerges the constant attempt to assert themselves through the transformation of “double absence” into “double presence” and of their invisibility in visibility. Our paper deals with the different ways of this transition comparing the interviewees’ narrations about their identity building process with the narration illustrated in the contents created by a group of web-moderators for the social media campaign of the european project OLTRE. The process of exclusion involves the use of economic, social or political power, and it generally has the purpose of legitimating exploitation, discrimination or exclusion of the group. Racism implies making predictions about people’s character, abilities or behaviour on the basis of socially constructed markers of difference. The power of dominant groups is sustained by developing institutions and structures (such as law, policies, administrative practices and discourses). This aspect is known as institutional or structural racism. How does the creation of their lives meaning change? Which are the elements engaged in their attribution of sense? How are the discrimination and racism experiences told? Which are the effects of these narratives on the trajectories of inclusion and exclusion of 2G people? The triangulation of our research shows many issues: the access to citizenship could be a basis for the process of inclusion; the storytelling of the discrimination persistence at school, at work and on the street.

Today, migrants are a resource for the trade union, which is declining in membership and popularity, as it is for this category. The central function is still linked to services and information support. But the presence of new users to be protected and represented required a profound organisational and cultural transformation within the union, which has not yet been fully achieved throughout the country. The chapter analyses the data and reasons for migrants joining trade unions.

Due to the pandemic, in the University of Palermo (Italy) the remote mode was used for both teaching and final exams. Specifically, our reflection aimed at understanding the impact of the online exams on the “private dimension” of the students. According to the regulations of the University of Palermo, during the exams, the students must be visible in their own space, while the teachers were allowed to insert different screens to protect their private space. The result was, for the students, the public sharing of their spaces, the collective insertion into their private dimension and the manifestation of individual differences and inequalities in access to resources. Smart working involved a reorganization of the training spaces by readjusting and reorganizing spaces of private life. The private space has become a safe space and the only scene of the main activities. The research is exploratory. Quoting Goffman, we analysed the relationship between front and backstage during an online exam such as during the pandemic lockdown.

The aims of the article are to deconstruct the frames of migration crisis embedded on the official web sites, social networks and blogs belonging to the leaders of the main Italian political parties, positioned on different points of the left or right political spectrum, in the period 2015-2016. According to the relevance of the Italian context, we are also going to study the position of a party that can be considered a post-ideological movement that represents itself as outside of a traditional political spectrum: the Five-star Movement. We analysed text, images and videos published on the Internet 2.0 sites in order to show the legacy of colonialism that was characterized by the ambivalence of the double movement of exclusion and assimilation. Balibar speaks in this regard of the effects of “the third world at home” caused by immigration from former colonies or semi-colonies in capitalist centres. We used digital methods for the ethnographic exploration of social media.

This paper deals with the analysis of the first results of Oltre project (ISF - DG Migration and Home Affairs, EU) funding for preventing the radicalization of the second-generation of migrants. The non-standard field research was intertwined with online social network profiles investigation. We present the off-line research results. Starting from the different dimensions of the risk of radicalization proposed by the kaleidoscopic overview of risk factors (Sieckelinck and Gielen 2018: 5; Ranstorp 2016), we created a topic guide for the indepth qualitative interviews collecting 42 interviews of 2G youths (18-30 years) in 7 Italian towns, interviewing also several privileged testimonies. Then we made focus groups with the target 2G and we organized theatre performances with 2G people (Theatre of the Oppressed) collecting narratives, representations, stories and emotions about second-generation youth lives and about their representation of the radicalization risk and protection factors. These heterogeneous materials are the corpus for imagining a social communication campaign to prevent radicalization, engaging the research participants as key players of communication campaigns, co-designing the counter-narrative contents (Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2015) and their viral dissemination on the social network in order to promote cultural change (Volterrani 2018). References Ranstorp, M. The root causes of violent extremism. RAN issue paper, 4 January 2016. Sieckelinck S. and Gielen Amy-Jane, Protective and promotive factors building resilience against violent, RAN issue paper, April 2018. Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Counter Narratives and Alternative Narratives. The role of counter- and alternative narratives in prevention of radicalisation, RAN, 2015. Volterrani A., Participation and Communication in the Time of Social Media: A Chimera or an Opportunity, Sociology Study, May 2018.