Following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 and inspired by the actions of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, in June 2020 a wave of protest events spread across Europe as well. Based on in-depth interviews with key informants involved in the BLM campaign and a systematic mapping of protest events, the article analyses the diffusion of the Black Lives Matter movement campaign in Italy. We investigate the conditions for the diffusion, by considering the resonance of the protests in a time of backlash and pandemic; the channels of diffusion, namely mechanisms of thin diffusion linked to the instantaneous exchange of protest content; and the effects of diffusion, in terms of recontextualization of ideas and narratives from the United States to the Italian context, the emergence of new antiracist organizations and intersectional frames that point at Italian colonialism and structural racism.
This article investigates the impact of intolerance on online political participation among young Europeans. Based on the theoretical insights of (in)tolerance, political participation, youth, and media studies, we explore whether and to what extent intolerant attitudes drive young people’s online political participation. In doing this, we draw on original survey data with booster samples for young people, covering nine European countries. Our results show that intolerance leads to more online political activities among young people. However, these individuals are not socially isolated and marginalised; in fact, the effect of intolerant attitudes on online political engagement is reinforced by participation in offline unconventional forms of participation and social capital. Our findings bear important consequences for the understanding of intolerant attitudes, youth politics, and (online) political participation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.