Mafie &
Social Media:

interview with Anna Sergi with VIDEO

We conclude the “Mafie & Social Media” cycle with this interview.
The series of video interviews with scholars of the mafia phenomenon, which can be viewed in full on our YouTube channel, had as its primary objective that of delving into the complexity of the evolution of mafia communication in the age of social networks.

The protagonist this time is Anna Sergi, associate professor of criminology at the University of Essex. Dr. Sergi specializes in comparative criminal justice, organized crime and mafias. In 2018, she won the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award at the University of Essex for her research on the Calabrian mafia in Australia, and the Italian Chamber of Commerce awarded her the “Giovani Italiani di talento” Award in 2018.

Dr. Anna Sergi is the project manager of the C.R.I.M.E (Countering regional Italian Mafia expansion) funded by the UK ESRC Impact Acceleration Account at the University of Essex.
Using open data and direct resources, previous and ongoing research thanks to privileged partnerships with Eurojust Italian Desk and Operations and Europol, the report Mafiaround Europe – resulting from the CRIME project (Counting Regional Italian Mafia Expansion) presents the first analysis of the presence of Italian mafias in 7 European countries in addition to Italy and the challenges of cross-border policing in the fight against mafia-type organised crime.
The report highlights how mafia-style activities have adapted to individual countries, their economies, cultures, infrastructures and logistics networks.
Due to delays and restrictions introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic, CRIME was reshaped in the summer of 2020 to co-produce an exploratory report examining key trends in the mobility of Italian mafias in Europe today.

Dr. Sergi, has collaborated with Eurojust (Italian Desk and Operations) and Europol Italian Organised Crime Unit as privileged participants and partners of this project since the beginning, but the project has remained autonomous from both institutions.
These institutions, together with others (such as several Anti-Mafia District Directorates, the DIA – Italian Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate through its reports, and the Department of Public Security of the Italian Ministry of the Interior) have supported the project through interviews and data exchanges on Italian organised crime in Europe.

It is essential to continue and strengthen the fight against mafia-type crime at European level. This report represents a unique effort to systematize knowledge on Italian mafias and their worrying presence in some EU Member States.
It is also a valuable source of inspiration for addressing persistent shortcomings in criminal law and a tool to help practitioners in their daily cross-border cooperation with EU partners.”
Filippo Spiezia
NATIONAL MEMBER FOR ITALY AND FORMER VICE-PRESIDENT IN EUROJUST

In this interview, Prof. Sergi explains how the project idea was born and talks about the method underlying the investigation in question, presents the results and provides us with valid ideas to continue, through ad hoc projects, the work of her research team, to provide civil society with useful tools to fight and contrast the mafias in Europe.

We wanted to conclude this series of interviews by offering our readers a European vision of the problem in question.
Dr. Sergi explained to us that the data tells us that a large part of the problem is Italy’s schizophrenia.
Italy must decide whether the mafia is only its problem, or take the European route and say that all countries have the mafia, therefore the mafia
is not special. Either the mafia is too Italian or the mafia is not only Italian, it cannot be both things otherwise there is the risk of confusing foreign countries.

Many ideas have emerged from these weeks of discussion with the experts of our panel. Ideas that we will treasure to design practical and concrete forms of contrast and counter-narrative mafia.

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