The digital revolution has changed the way we all communicate, including that of the mafias. In the large digital ecosystem, Social Network Sites (SNSs) are the privileged vectors for interaction and dissemination of content. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, in that order, have taken over the web, our computers and our smartphones, creating an osmotic dimension that integrates and often responds to what is happening in reality. The mafias tell about themselves mirroring the denunciation posts of the social anti-mafia: while in the past experts used to interpret the phenomenon by putting together a story, nowadays you can watch the mafias reality show by simply opening apps and selecting the flow of content suggested by the algorithms, or by following the viral trends of hashtags or trap and neo-melodic songs. In this sense, a study of the online performative dynamics of mafiosi has proved to be more necessary than ever.

Through a double talent approach, i.e. able to combine humanistic and IT knowledge, the study investigated the presence, in terms of quality and quantity, of mafias on SNSs. Aware of the role played by digital content as a primary source, three different types of research methods were systematically adopted to extract and analyse a large amount of data from the platforms. From an initial manual method for Meta-owned social networks, applied to more than 50 Facebook profiles, pages and groups and more than 30 Instagram profiles, we moved on to a semi-automatic analysis for the identification of themes and topics that were finally treated by a fruitful and innovative automatic method: Python codes were used, which made it possible to process 20 thousand comments on YouTube videos,  90 GB of TikTok videos, for a total of 11,500 videos and 2.5 million tweets.

What emerges is a digital image of the mafias that feeds itself in a circular way: social networks are the mirror and the engine of constant updating (updatism) of the mafia criminal culture that re-embodies the old collective imagination by building consensus through a bulimic creation of content. Like seasoned influencers, the scions of the mafias promote, through a redundant display of wealth, the success of their criminal brand. Generation Z of clans and gangs is changing the face of criminal organizations, showing how necessary it is to know how to manage the digital scene in order to obtain consensus and be recognizable as “mafiosi” within a society in which information and consumerism make everyone equal.