Like other countries experiencing outbreaks of the COVID-19 coronavirus, Italy is also seeing an upsurge in narratives related to the health, economic, and political implications of the pandemic. Among this information chaos, a number of narratives targeting African immigrants have surfaced on some Italian media outlets, garnering significant engagement online.

Immigration policy is an ongoing debate in Italian politics, especially given the recent ascent of far-right populist parties that employ explicit anti-immigrant rhetoric. Now in the wake of COVID-19, some pro-right media outlets are using the coronavirus panic to feed existing anti-immigrant sentiment across the country.

Identifying the narratives

The DFRLab conducted a search of recent articles from across Italian media referencing immigration and COVID-19, then analyzed the ones that appeared to exploit the coronavirus panic while embracing the strongest anti-immigrant arguments, as well as those that led to spiked anti-immigration sentiment among readers. Across these articles, the DFRLab identified three main narratives:

1. The Italian government and nongovernmental organizations are encouraging new arrivals of immigrants in the South, despite the fact that Italians are suffering from the COVID-19 outbreak.

2. Recent Italian governments have cut public healthcare funding while increasing funding to help immigrants, but if they had done the reverse, the crisis could have been averted.

3. Despite the high number of immigrants allowed to land in the country, only a small percentage have been tested for COVID-19.