The Media Construction of Romaphobia in Italy

The social construction of fear towards groups labelled as dangerous is a topic of interest from both a communicative and sociological perspective. Starting from classic studies on constructing fear (Garland 2008, Hall et al. 1978), Cohen's classic model of moral panic is still a valid paradigm for studying new media representations of fear. David Altheide (2004) argues that the mass media, through the language of fear—based on the transmission of risks and dangers in everyday life—create the conditions for policy-making. Since 2007, the "Roma security" has been at the center of the italian political agenda: Italian media—by spreading news based on stereotypes on Roma living spaces (Roma camps)—have generated a politics of fear, creating a consensus around them as "folk devil." After the pandemic, the Roma do not seem to be central to Italian electoral campaigns, but the media continue to spread news that generates feelings of fear towards them. This paper investigates the media construction of Romaphobia in Italy, specifically in Sardinia. Its aim is to analyze the media representation of Roma groups in Sardinia, with a focus on the characteristics of their narration in online journalistic outlets. The paper aims at understanding how the media portrays the Roma, in which frames they place the narration, and what effects these have on the construction of collective fear towards them. In particular, the research is based on the analysis of media coverage of news concerning the Roma in Sardinia from December 2022 to April 2024, in national and Sardinian digital journalistic outlets, with particular attention to: descriptive qualities, the intentionality of the narration through the analysis of textual and visual frames, the sentiment attributed, the representation of the Roma as deviant, and the relationships with institutional actors involved in the events reported in the news.