Overview

This book examines how political discourse on immigration is constructed across Italian social media, focusing on the ways “otherness” is reshaped within digital platforms. Drawing on Social-Media Critical Discourse Studies, it introduces the concept of alternative otherness to explain how migrants are symbolically repositioned in a polarized and mediatized communicative environment. The book is structured in three main parts. The first reconstructs and connects key socio-technical processes that shape the conditions under which political discourse on immigration emerges. The second part outlines the theoretical and methodological framework, grounded in the critical tradition of Critical Discourse Studies and its extension to social media environments. The third part presents four empirical case studies examining emblematic episodes related to immigration in the Italian context between 2017 and 2025, showing how political actors construct and circulate recurring discursive patterns that progressively shift attention away from migrants themselves toward new forms of antagonism.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dario Lucchesi
Publisher:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Imprint:   Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN:  

9783032212641

ISBN 10:   3032212642
Pages:   264
Publication Date:   29 May 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction.- PART I: HYBRID MEDIA SYSTEMS, POPULISM, AND IMMIGRATION.- Chapter 2: Online Political Communication: between popularization, polarization, and memefication.- Chapter 3: Populism and Immigration in Hybrid Media Systems.- Chapter 4: The Politicization of Migratory Processes and the Spectacle of the Border.- Chapter 5: From Rational to Emotional Public Sphere: the impact/role of media logics and the Informational Disorder in the political discourse on immigration.- Chapter 6: The Communicative Logics of Populism and Sovereignism: between “Us”, “Them” and “taking back control”.- Chapter 7: Specificities of the Italian Context.- Chapter 8: Old and New Representations of Immigration in Italy.- PART II: DECONSTRUCTING IMMIGRATION DISCOURSE.- Chapter 9: The Critical Discourse Analysis Approach (and its Limits).- Chapter 10: Social Media Critical Discourse Analysis.- Chapter 11: Social Media and the logics of Immigration Discourse: personalization, dehumanization, intimate and memetic politics.- PART III: CASE STUDIES. THE TRANSFORMATION OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE ON IMMIGRATION IN THE ITALIAN CONTEXT.- Chapter 12: The Criminalization of NGOs (2017-2020) - Twitter.- Chapter 13: Political Discourse on Immigration During the Pandemic (2020-2022) - Facebook.- Chapter 14: Thirty-Five Euros a Day: welfare and reception of asylum seekers in Italy (2017-2022) - Facebook.- Chapter 15: The Cutro Shipwreck: government communication strategies after the tragedy of February 26, 2023 - Facebook.- Chapter 16: 2024 European Election Campaign in Italy - Facebook.- Chapter 17: Conclusions.

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Author Information

Dario Lucchesi is an adjunct professor at the University of Padua, Italy. His research interests lie in the sociology of new media, with a focus on media representations of migration and political communication. His work examines the discursive construction of discrimination, particularly the normalization of anti-immigration discourse in political and media contexts.

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