Together we stand? The evolution of online interactions by Southern European LGBTQIA* organizations

ABSTRACT

European LGBTQIA* organizations have often been perceived as isolated from other organizations. While investigations have suggested that social media platforms foster inter-organizational ties, their role in promoting or dampening within- and cross-field interactions is understudied. This article aims to fill this gap by examining the factors shaping within- and cross-field digital interactions established by LGBTQIA* organizations located in Milan and Madrid. It analyzes the networks resulting from LGBTQIA* organizations mentioning, sharing, and promoting events on Facebook between 2011 and 2020. Results show that Madrid- and Milan-based LGBTQIA* organizations increasingly engage in cross-field interactions on social media, becoming crucial bridging actors with organizations from other fields. They also suggest that political threats moderate the relationship between organizational identities and cross-field ties.

KEYWORDS:

• LGBTQIA*
• digital interactions
• Facebook
• social network analysis
• cross-field networking
• civil society organizations

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Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2259371

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2024.2309820)

Notes

1. Scholars have addressed lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, and other (LGBTQIA*) issues and identities in diverse ways. To the purpose of this article, we use the acronym “LGBTQIA*” to refer to people and communities marginalized because of sexual orientations and/or gender identities that deviate from cis-heteronormative frameworks.

2. Building on Di Maggio and Powell (1983) and Melucci (1989), collective action fields are understood as localized relational arenas shaped by actors’ reciprocal recognition in which organizations act on a recognized area of social life, and in which the mechanisms for the emergence of collective actions are defined (Crossley & Diani, 2019; Diani & Pilati, 2011).

3. To the purpose of this research, all organizations identifying as L/G/B/T/Q/I/A/* are considered part of the LGBTQIA* collective action field since they share experiences of discrimination due to the cis-heteronormative matrix (Butler, 2013) that permeates societal structures and institutions. This does not hinder, however, the fact that individuals within the LGBTQIA* spectrum are positioned at different levels of privilege and marginalization, since the cis-heteronormative matrix particularly affects transgender, intersex, and non-binary individuals (Weeks, 2015).

4. Scholars have also provided evidence of the potential risks posed by digital communication platforms which, due to their by default public structure and high connectivity, may expose LGBTQIA* subjects and make them targets of hate speech and physical violence, especially in countries where LGBTQIA* communities are criminalized (Birdal, 2020; Wijaya, 2022).

5. By focusing on these two cities, the shifting contextual opportunities examined in this study are to be considered within the framework of the European Union (Ayoub, 2016; Lombardo & Del Giorgio, 2013). What we consider as rather “open” or “closed” contexts are hence not comparable with contexts in which LGBTQIA* individuals are profoundly discriminated against or criminalized, as in non-democratic contexts (Bosia et al., 2020). While this geographical focus does not allow us to generalize our findings to LGBTQIA* organizations located in other regions of the world, it helps us explore the evolution of LGBTQIA* digital activisms in Southern Europe.

6. Since 2009, ILGA Europe calculates the Rainbow Europe Index, gathering information on national legislations on LGBTQIA* policies. The index currently ranks 49 European countries on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 stands for dramatic violations of human rights and 100 for full equality: https://www.rainbow-europe.org/ [Last accessed 11.10.2022].

7. Following the political opportunity structures approach (Kriesi, Koopmans, Duyvendak, & Giugni, 1992), this article uses the term “open” to refer to contexts in which collective actors have access to the public sphere. However, this term is problematic when considering LGBTQIA* individuals, since societies and institutions are not devoid of gender stereotypes, discrimination, and marginalization of non-heterosexual and/or non-cisgender individuals (Butler, 2013).

8. Differently from other studies (Baldassarri & Diani, 2007; Diani, 2015), this research also includes profit organizations, provided that their main activities encompass service provision, cultural awareness, and/or political initiatives. The decision not to exclude these organizations is based on previous empirical evidence, since many US LGBTQIA* commercial organizations (such as newspapers and bookstores) have been found to engage in identity and solidarity building, as well as collective actions, as much as nonprofit organizations (Armstrong, 2002).

9. CrowdTangle (2020) is a public insights tool owned and operated by Facebook that allows researchers to retrieve all the Facebook posts published by a list of public pages during a specific timeframe. More information on the tool can be found at: https://www.crowdtangle.com/ [Last accessed 09/12/2022].

10. Since the number of initial seeds in Milan and Madrid (N = 7 in both cities) was too limited to provide explanatory power to our analysis, we did not include the results of the year 2011.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aurora Perego

Aurora Perego is a Ph.D. student in Sociology and Social Research at Trento University (Italy). She holds a Research Master’s degree in Gender and Ethnicity from Utrecht University (the Netherlands) and a Bachelor’s degree in Peace Studies, International Cooperation, and Development from the University of Pisa (Italy). Aurora’s RMA thesis examined the legal status of LGBTIQ* asylum seekers in Spain and was awarded the 2018 Best Research Master’s Thesis Prize of the Humanities at Utrecht University. Her Ph.D. project investigates how LGBTQIA* civil society organizations interact in the online sphere. Her research interests broadly concern digital activism and social movement alliances, with particular attention to gender and intersectionality.

Katia Pilati

Katia Pilati is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Research (DSRS) at the University of Trento, Italy. Prior to working at DSRS, she was a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science, University of Geneva, and a FRS-FNRS postdoctoral fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Her research interests include social and labor movements, civic and political participation, immigration. Her work has appeared in various journals including Acta Sociologica, European Journal of Political Research, Mobilization, Social Movement Studies, West European Politics. She is the author of three books (Armando 2010; Palgrave Macmillan 2016; Il Mulino 2018).