The risk of a “mafia cultural drift” in TikTok’s algorithms

Scrolling through videos on TikTok, users can quickly move from content celebrating Calabria’s culture, traditions and local identity to videos that justify or support behaviour linked to organised crime and the ’Ndrangheta. This dangerous “mafia cultural drift”, unintentionally triggered by the social media platform’s algorithms, has been highlighted by a study published in the journal Crime Media Culture and authored by Anna Sergi, professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Bologna.

“TikTok’s digital environment has an extraordinary ability to create ‘rabbit holes’, that is, endless sequences of content that is more or less interconnected,” explains Sergi. “As a result, superficial and moderate forms of parochialism, such as videos celebrating Calabria as the best region in Italy for its food, culture and climate, can quickly lead to more extreme and radical content.”

The study collected more than one thousand videos posted on TikTok over a three-month period and selected 225 of them for an analysis of their content, comments and associated audiovisual material. The aim was to investigate how the celebration of Calabria’s local culture can become intertwined with mafia subculture. Alongside food, landscapes, music and folklore, the videos identified also featured traditional values associated with Calabrian identity, such as honour, family loyalty, resilience and “good manners”. However, these values can be distorted to become part of a criminal subculture.

“A good example is the idea of ‘honour’ as personal integrity and social respect, which in the context of the ’Ndrangheta can be manipulated to justify criminal acts,” says Sergi. “Similarly, family loyalty, while promoting a sense of solidarity and unity, can protect criminal activities within a family, fostering silence and complicity.”

On TikTok, the potential ambiguities surrounding these values emerge across four types of content. The first is the “Admirers”: videos that simply and openly celebrate the beauty of Calabria’s places, food and traditions. These are followed by “Militant” content, which introduces the idea that Calabria’s cultural heritage needs to be preserved and protected from potential external attacks or interference, appealing to pride and a sense of belonging to one’s roots.

The next step is represented by “Supporter” videos, in which the celebration of Calabria’s beauty and culture is combined with the glorification of strength and respect associated with honour, including explicit references praising fugitives and prisoners while expressing contempt for informants and traitors. Finally, there are the “Apologists”, whose content openly and unequivocally supports the values of the ’Ndrangheta’s criminal culture and associates them with Calabrian culture.

“This last type of video is characterised by a radical form of parochialism and by the unmistakable presence of mafia values associated with ‘Calabrian identity’,” comments Sergi. “Here, support for the ’Ndrangheta and the values of the society of honour is often explicit, and praise for Calabria overlaps with these values.”

The appropriation of shared cultural and traditional values is one of the strategies through which criminal organisations gain legitimacy in a given area and exercise control over communities. The amplification of these values by the algorithms governing content on TikTok therefore risks turning the assertion of Calabrian cultural identity into the glorification of the appeal of mafia values, or even their outright justification.

“This analysis shows how TikTok’s digital environment can facilitate a phenomenon of ‘mafia cultural drift’, from which the ’Ndrangheta could benefit,” confirms Sergi. “There is an algorithm-driven process that progressively blurs the boundaries between the celebration of cultural heritage and the justification of criminal behaviour or values shared with members of the ’Ndrangheta, which are themselves shaped by cultural ambiguities and prejudices surrounding ‘Calabrian identity’.”

The “echo chambers” generated by TikTok’s algorithms can therefore end up celebrating mafia values and activities as part of “Calabrian identity”, thereby creating a sense of belonging that benefits the survival of the ’Ndrangheta and the resilience of its clans. Moreover, in this environment, members of the ’Ndrangheta themselves can become “mobfluencers”, promoting their values and lifestyles, particularly among young people, through images and narratives that emphasise their distorted ideas of honour and loyalty.

The study was published in the journal Crime Media Culture under the title “The ‘mafia cultural drift’: A digital ethnography of Calabrian parochialism and ’ndrangheta values on TikTok”. The author is Anna Sergi, professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Bologna.