From “pizzini” to social media channel: The mediatic storytelling of mafia language

Abstract

We intend to provide an analysis of how the media representation of the mafia language has turned into storytelling and how this has influenced public opinion and the perception of organ­ized crime in Italian society. The communicative style of the mafia has always been characterized as the result of communication “by subtraction”. From the nineteenth-century oral tradition, through the “pizzini”, to the use of information technologies to manage financial flows and illicit trafficking, they always made us of an essential communication, a conspiratorial language. In the most critical phase of the conflict between the Italian state institutions and criminal organizations, the strategy of the mafia included actions supposed to maintain its media representation, with the aim of instilling fear and uncertainty in citizens and to demonstrate its strength and its control over the territory. This distorted representation of reality facilitates the exercise of the “sweet power” of organized crime, which operates in a more unseen way, increasing its influence. This evolution is immersed in the social context, where culture and knowledge are threatened by the increasing in­ability of individuals to interpret reality.