Social Media and Sicily's anti Mafia Movement
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This document summarizes the rise of social media use among anti-mafia organizations and movements in Sicily. It discusses several civil society groups, including Addiopizzo which challenges extortion demands, and Libera which supports businesses on seized mafia properties. It also describes how social media has helped grassroots efforts to counter mafia influence, such as residents organizing on Facebook to repair public spaces vandalized in attempts to intimidate the community.
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Social Media and Sicily's anti Mafia Movement
- 1. Social Media and Sicily’s Anti- Mafia Movement George de Stefano MAFIAs April 25-26 John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
- 2. Civil society anti-Mafia organizations • Addiopizzo • Addiopizzo Catania • Libera • Antimafia Duemila
- 3. Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino
- 4. Addiopizzo’s challenge to Palermo (An entire people that pays the pizzo is a people without dignity)
- 5. Addiopizzo Catania: founded in 2006
- 6. “Together We Can Lower the Volume on the Mafia” Addiopizzo volunteer recruitment campaign, featuring Roy Paci
- 7. Libera (“associations, names, and numbers against the Mafias)
- 8. Cooperativa Sociale Placido Rizzotto The Placido Rizzotto Cooperative inn, on property seized from the Mafia and supported by Libera
- 9. Antimafia Duemila Mafia groups “act and proliferate in close connection with institutional power, political and economic.” — Giorgio Bongiovanni, Antimafia Duemila “It is impossible not to talk about the state when you talk about Mafia.” — Giovanni Falcone
- 10. Facebook page for “all those who respect ToTo [sic] Riina”
- 11. Piazza San Domenico, Palermo After vandals destroyed the piazza’s popular pedestrian islands, city residents organized via Facebook to repair the damage and defy the Mafia
- 12. A New Culture, A Better Future? Young Sicilians celebrate the arrest of a prominent Mafioso
Editor's Notes
- A body of literature has emerged documenting the use of social media by the various “Arab Spring” uprisings, Iran's Green Movement, and by nongovernmental organizations like Human Rights Watch and Witness, which monitor and document human rights violations. Less has been written, however, about social media utilization by civil society organizations dedicated to opposing organized crime. I will discuss how four Italian civil society organizations – Addiopizzo, Addiopizzo Catania and Antimafia Duemila, all based in Sicily, and the national organization, Libera — use social media in “la lotta alla Mafia” (the anti-Mafia struggle): to educate the public, promote communication among anti-Mafia forces and coordinate real-world, offline activities.
- Social movements opposing the Mafia were limited, until the mid-twentieth century. They gained momentum, however, in the turbulent, post-1990 era, following the bloody Mafia wars in Palermo and the shocking assassinations by Cosa Nostra of the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
- Addiopizzo, founded in Palermo in 2004, has attracted international attention for its campaign against Mafia extortion of local businesses to pay “protection” money, known as the “pizzo.” The young palermitani who established the organization devised a compelling, and provocative slogan to promote the campaign: “An entire people that pays the pizzo is a people without dignity.”
- In 2006, activists in Sicily’s second-largest city formed Addiopizzo Catania. They adopted a slogan that put a more positive spin on the Palermo group’s catchphrase: “an entire people that does not pay protection money is a free people.” Like the original organization, Addiopizzo Catania promotes “critical consumption” through a network comprising merchants and entrepreneurs, but also consumers.
- Sicilian pop star Roy Paci in an anti-Mafia campaign poster
- Libera was founded in 1995 as a network of associations, trade unions, cooperatives, grassroots groups, and individuals that works alongside law enforcement and engages in cultural and social action to combat the Mafia. Its headquarters are in Rome, but it coordinates activities throughout Italy. Libera is perhaps best known for its organizing of a network of volunteers who work with properties confiscated from the Mafia, turning them into agricultural cooperatives and agritourism establishments, like the Placido Rizzotto Cooperative in San Giuseppe Jato, near Corleone . Libera maintains a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account. “Social media allow us to have direct contact with our activists, including the volunteers who each year spend a week of the summer working on the properties confiscated from the Mafia,” said Cosimo Marasciulo, who directs the organization’s press office. “We also use social media for memorials, to commemorate the victims of the Mafia.”
- Antimafia Duemila was founded in Palermo in March 2000 by the journalist Giorgio Bongiovanni to disseminate “information about the major gangs that infest our country: Cosa Nostra first of all, and then 'Ndrangheta, camorra and Sacra Corona Unità. We explain how they act and proliferate in close connection with institutional power, political and economic.” Antimafia Duemila originally was a newspaper, and it still maintains a print version, with editions available at the organization’s website as downloadable PDFs. Bongiovanni said that the website is “a very important medium for spreading our journalistic work. With its 100,000 monthly visitors – more than 160,000 pages read monthly -- it is undoubtedly the most widely read information website mafia in Italy and among the most read in the world.”
- If Mafiosi have eschewed most social media, some Italians have turned to it to celebrate organized crime. Fan clubs of the notorious Sicilian Mafia bosses Bernardo Provenzano and Toto Riina appeared on Facebook in Italy a few years ago, prompting some magistrates to warn that those who join the groups could be investigated on suspicion of involvement in organized crime. At least one group shut down after the warning. However, a quick search on Facebook reveals the existence of fan pages for both Provenzano and Riina. Some anti-mafia activists have called on Facebook to disallow pro-Mafia fan pages, while others instead have focused on creating anti-mafia Facebook groups.
- In 2012, vandals raided Piazza San Domenico in Palermo and destroyed the popular pedestrian islands created by the progressive administration of Mayor Leoluca Orlando. “It was evident that the Mafia had openly attacked civil society on an issue that was broadly cultural – cars and force, criminal rule and ugliness versus citizens, the public commons, greenery and civic décor,” according to Palermo-based social media activist Jesse Marsh said. Then some outraged palermitani organized on Facebook an event to repair the damage and reclaim Piazza San Domenico from the Mafia. Hundreds heeded the Facebook call, showing up to make what Marsh called “a symbolic display of civic participation, of a culture against the Mafia.”