Masculinity and criminality on YouTube: a computational analysis of a femicide case

This article analyzes a corpus of 17,112 YouTube comments across 52 videos related to the highly publicized femicide of Giulia Cecchettin in Italy, exploring the interplay between masculinity, criminality, and online discourse. Drawing on sociological theories of masculinity, the study combines social network analysis, sentiment and toxicity measures, and Word2Vec modeling. The findings reveal fragmented yet reciprocally engaged networks characterized by community clusters and ongoing conflict between ‘rationalist’ and ‘conspiracy-oriented’ positions. Sentiment and toxicity analyses indicate a predominantly negative tone, with contextually confined verbal aggression. The Word2Vec model uncovers a semantic structure organized around two axes: nature versus culture and agency versus social representation. Within this structure, masculinity, linked to aggression, control, and criminality, and femininity, associated with passivity and victimization, reproduce, in empirical terms, the legitimation of hierarchical gender relations in the gender order. The study also highlights the politicization of terms such as patriarchy and immigrant, revealing intersections between gender-based violence, national identity, and immigration discourse. Overall, the article demonstrates how online platforms function as discursive arenas where gendered power relations are reproduced and contested, shaping the public understanding of crime and gender-based violence as culturally mediated and symbolically constructed phenomena, consistent with insights from cultural criminology.