Narratives and Counter-Narratives about Radicalization: Experiences of Moderation of an Online Communication Campaign

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.