Public Sector Communication and Gender Perspectives. Italian Local Social Media Practices of Italian Regions

The EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020-25 emphasizes addressing and eliminating gender-based discrimination within the European Union, aiming to promote diversity and enhance human well-being as drivers for growth and innovation in all aspects of life (European Commission 2021). Gender mainstreaming is recognized as a long-term approach to policy-making that integrates a gender equality perspective at all stages and levels of policies, programs, and projects, leading to the transformation of institutions and influencing organisational culture (Eige 2016). Within this framework, gender-sensitive communication plays a crucial role in ensuring transparency, commitment, and adopting an intersectional approach that considers the interaction between various factors such as gender, ethnicity, disability, and sexual identity, in terms of verbal and visual languages. The Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025 clearly articulates the importance of implementing institutional communication campaigns to combat violence, raise awareness, and avoid gender stereotypes in both verbal and visual content. In this context, public sector communication emerges as a strategic tool for fostering a more inclusive society by reducing citizens’ distrust towards institutions and renewing public administrations (PAs), particularly within the current hybrid and convergent media ecosystem. This issue has gradually gained prominence in public discourse with the emergence of new forms of online activism and queer movements that have encouraged the implementation of sensitive policies at both international and European levels to prevent and address discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Moreover, there has been an increased emphasis on gender and public sector communication studies, particularly during the pandemic. However, in Italy, the adoption of a gender-sensitive approach has remained relatively limited, despite growing emphasis on the use of non-discriminatory language in PAs through institutional recommendations and local guidelines. A gap in the literature concerns also the analysis, with a gender lens, of the employment of public communication professionals within the information and communication offices in Italian PAs. Based on these premises, this pilot study aims to analyze the relationship between the institutionalization of gender-sensitive communication approaches and their implementation in social media practices. It is structured as follows: §2 introduces the theoretical framework, while aims, methods, and data collection are explained in §3; §§4-5-6 present the main empirical findings; §7 consists of discussion, conclusions and further implications.