Three Interconnected Areas, a Rigorous Research Programme

The project focuses on health misinformation and anti-scientific beliefs, racist and xenophobic hate speech, and misogynistic and anti-LGBTQ+ narratives, paying particular attention to the ways these phenomena intersect, reinforce one another, and circulate within shared digital environments.

This research strand examines how systematic anti-scientific beliefs take shape and circulate within digital ecosystems, with particular attention to medical misinformation. It explores the social dynamics that make anti-scientific narratives appealing, and the emotional, cultural, and political factors that sustain them within online communities.

The aim is to identify the social mechanisms that encourage individuals to adopt these beliefs, as well as the digital vectors that accelerate their diffusion. By analysing how doubts, fears, and alternative explanations gain traction, this area contributes to a deeper understanding of how anti-scientific worldviews become embedded in everyday digital practices and how they influence public perceptions of health, risk, and institutional authority.

This research area investigates the production, circulation, and normalization of racist and xenophobic discourse in digital environments. It focuses on the mechanisms through which ethnic minorities and migrant communities are dehumanised, symbolically excluded, and framed as threats within online debates. Particular attention is paid to the discursive strategies, emotional registers, and boundary-making practices that sustain exclusionary worldviews and reinforce hierarchies of belonging by intersecting with broader anxieties about identity, security, and social change.

By mapping these dynamics, the research aims to understand how racist communication becomes embedded in everyday digital interactions, how it shapes public perceptions of minority groups, and how platform architectures facilitate the spread of hate speech and discriminatory frames. This area contributes to a wider reflection on digital harms, social justice, and the need for more equitable and informed public conversations on diversity and migration.

This research area examines the online ecosystems where misogynistic and anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs are produced, shared, and normalised. It focuses on the narratives and subcultures that sustain gender-based hostility and on the digital spaces where homophobic and transphobic narratives are amplified, often intersecting with broader reactionary worldviews.

The analyses consider both everyday sexist or homophobic attitudes, and more extreme forms of gender-based and sexuality-based hostility – exploring how these belief systems circulate and radicalise, generating verbal, symbolic, and psychological violence.