Journalists’ perspectives on the presence of hate speech in Italian local news media: counter-hate speech strategies and risks

The article proposes a reflection on the contemporary Italian news media system, which is facing the threat of fostering a powerful ‘hate factory’, connected to the pervasive and planetary practices of divisive news construction and sharing trough the social media. Recent studies have pointed out both an increase of lexical choices based on hate or verbal violence in Italian news coverage (above all referring to women and migrants) and of threats and insults against news professionals. Therefore, in the contemporary media system news media actors are challenged to find innovative strategies to face insulting and hate in the digital agorà created by online platforms and transformed by AI. Through 10 in-depth interviews with local media news professionals, this study analyses the presence of hate speech against local journalists in Italy and its influence both on their informative practices and on their private life. In the study concrete actions against hate speech are also presented, aiming at underlining that Italian local journalists are daily involved to combat hate speech at an individual level with personal and legal risks.