The numbers of racism in Italy in 2020: what we found out

CMI survey data on the numbers of racism in Italy. From Black Lives Matter to the murder of Willy Monteiro Duarte (and beyond)

Racism in Italy is an issue that emerges periodically, whether as a result of crime (such as the murder of Willy Monteiro Duarte for which the Bianchi brothers are under investigation) or other particular events.

Recently, another issue has also shaken public opinion in terms of racism: the murder of George Floyd, the African-American man killed by a police officer on May 25, 2020.

What topic most triggers the debate on racism in Italy? We can tell you thanks to the survey signed Central Marketing Intelligence, our market research agency specializing in online Big Data analysis.

Racism in Italy: data intercepted by our social listening software

To investigate the topic of “racism in Italy,” we first used oursocial listening software in order to intercept online conversations related to:

• racism
• racists
• #noalracism

and the like.

In Italy, in the last year, we find 741,826 mentions related to these issues. We see that they are not constant over time, but we can identify 3 peaks in particular, which we will tell you about in the next paragraphs.

We observe that most of these conversations occur on Twitter and social networks, particularly Facebook.

We see that on Twitter and Social there are nearly 600,000 mentions on the topic of racism. Social’s incidence is 158,107 mentions, while Twitter’s is an impressive 416,517 mentions.

You will probably be surprised to know that news, then news outlets, occupy only about 10 percent of mentions about racism (79,744 mentions). 

Let us now go on to analyze what is happening in the 3 different peaks, trying to understand what topics are fomenting racism debates.

Will Willy’s murder be at the forefront, or are there other topics that trigger conversations about this important issue?

1) Racism in Italy: the November 2019 peak.

Generally speaking, racism was discussed in November 2020 particularly around the political theme.

Going to visualize the pivotal points of this discussion, however, we see that in 2 days, between November 4 and 5, there was mainly one topic discussed, the booing directed at Balotelli. 

Nov. 4 and Nov. 5 are exactly the dates that, in Italy, resulted in November’s peak on the topic of racism.

Specifically, these days online users have been talking about the Mario Balotelli case because the public booed the footballer while he was playing during the Verona-Brescia game.

It was on this very occasion that many people proposed the hashtag #iostoconbalotelli. Have you ever used it?

2) The February 2020 peak on the topic of racism in Italy.

In February there was another spike on the topic of racism, including tens of thousands of conversations about it.

In particular, the days that saw the most mentions on racism were Feb. 21-24, when COVID-19 was mentioned in connection with numerous incidents of racism against Chinese people.

So, as for the month of February, it was the Coronavirus and related incidents that triggered the mentions on the topic, particularly on Twitter and Social.

These channels counted about 25,000 conversations regarding racism about the Chinese community during the period when the Coronavirus had just begun to spread in Italy.

3) June 2020: the highest ever peak of conversations about racism in Italy.

The hottest topic on racism in Italy, which resulted in the highest spike in conversations about it, was the events dedicated to George Floyd .

Specifically, the days between June 6 and June 8 saw the most mentions on the topic of racism because of the Black lives matter rally in Milan .

Therefore, people talked about racism because there was a specific event, similar to the other 2 spikes.  

What about the Willy Monteiro theme? Did no one mention racism?

In the days between Sept. 1 and Sept. 18 (Willy’s murder occurred on Sept. 6) we have only 32,584 mentions about racism, only a portion of which can be traced to Willy and the White Brothers.

Willy’s death triggered less discussion on the topic than the other episodes, but that does not mean that no one talked about his murder. In fact. People talked so much about the Willy murder regardless of the association with racism. 

There were exactly 143,228 mentions on Twitter, YouTube and social regarding this topic.

Let us now compare this figure to how many times in the past year George Floyd has been mentioned in Italy. We see that regarding the Floyd murder there are 151,190 mentions (compared to 143,228 related to Willy’s murder).

In general, and thus without focusing on racism, it seems that the issues are similarly “hot” and people are very interested in talking about them.

Final Conclusions.

In Italy, mentions of racism are actually triggered by particular incidents.

Therefore, it is not a topic that is always talked about; it is only debated around incidents, for example, murders or other particular scenarios (such as soccer and Coronavirus).

It also appears that the Willy murder was not strictly equated with racism, unlike other events such as the murder of George Floyd and the booing directed at Balotelli.

Did you like our survey on racism in Italy? If so, go ahead and share it on social and let us know what you think!

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