After Francesca Comunello’s opening remarks, recalling how Sapienza’s Department of Communication and Social Research has carried out nine PRIN projects funded by the PNRR (National Research Program)—a significant achievement nationally—Mariacristina Sciannamblo opened the proceedings of the final PRIN PNRR GIVRE conference, calling for a discussion of the relationship between gender and digital technologies. This was a call to move beyond deterministic visions of digital technology, emphasizing how technological architectures can enable forms of abuse but, at the same time, offer tools for defense and resistance.
Over the course of the conference, hosted on January 15, 2026, at the Sapienza University of Rome Conference Center, the exchange between research, institutions, and field practices yielded a shared understanding: gender-based digital violence is not an episodic emergency, but a structural and pervasive phenomenon, closely intertwined with offline violence.
During the morning keynote, Elisa Giomi reconstructed the international political and regulatory context, focusing on the tensions between big tech and the European Union following the introduction of the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. Giomi recalled how, following the election of Donald Trump, some platforms have progressively loosened their content moderation policies, legitimizing “lawful but awful” forms of hate, often sexist and heteropatriarchal. “The trap of neutrality,” she explained, “is to pass off violence as something neutral, when in reality it protects those already in a position of privilege.”
The panel dedicated to dialogue between the PRIN (National Research Council) research groups, moderated by Lorenza Parisi, explored the various manifestations of digital gender violence. Drawing on the findings of the GIVRE project interviews, Chiara Carbone urged people not to consider digital as a set of new technologies, but as new configurations of power, highlighting the continuity between online and offline and the normalization of violence in digital spaces, often perceived as “environmental” and not exceptional.
Arianna Bussoletti presented the results of the GIVRE project focus groups, demonstrating how women and LGBTQ+ individuals, the primary targets of online violence, develop self-protection strategies by reducing their visibility and limiting digital interactions. This awareness, while contributing to individual defense, also leads to isolation and a progressive decline in public participation.
Regarding adolescents, Francesca Ieracitano presented data from the PRIN DIGIT project, focusing on digital dating abuse, highlighting how gender significantly impacts both control practices and perceptions of violence. Reference to “red flag” and “green flag” trends demonstrated how young people attempt to name and recognize problematic and acceptable behaviors, even within still strongly heteronormative frameworks.
The topic of algorithmic bias was addressed by Paola Panarese, who, through the PRIN IMAGES project, presented the results of scoping reviews and interviews conducted with developers and artists who use artificial intelligence systems. Research confirms the persistence of the myth of algorithmic neutrality and the reproduction of gender stereotypes in datasets. In conversation with her, Angelo Oddi outlined technical work on collaborative risk assessment tools for AI systems.
In the afternoon, Tiziano Bonini’s keynote shifted attention to the moral economy of digital technologies. Revisiting the question “Do artifacts have politics?”, Bonini explained how platforms become moral actors through design choices, often oriented toward extractive and profit-driven logics, but continually renegotiated by users within alternative moral economies.
The final roundtable, moderated by Stefania Parisi, focused on practices of resistance and technological imagination. Chayn Italia, with Claudia Fratangeli and Irene Salvi, discussed their work on digital spaces designed outside of the logic of surveillance and attention capture, conceived as safe, participatory, and privacy-respecting environments. Marina Traylor questioned the role of anti-violence centers in combating online gender violence, while Elisa Tremolada emphasized the responsibility of those who design the platforms and the difficulty of combining participatory design and scale.
Institutional intervention by Michela Cicculli also highlighted the urgency of equipping anti-violence centers with adequate tools to address cyber violence, reiterating that “neutrality is not a way to be “It’s not a matter of impartiality, but rather a way to abdicate political responsibility.”
The GIVRE conference thus presented a complex picture: digital gender violence appears as a continuum of offline violence, supported by technological architectures, cultural norms, and structural inequalities. Countering it requires data, situated research, alliances between different fields of knowledge, and the ability to imagine technologies different from those currently dominant.
