"Not All that Glitters is Gold": An Exploratory Research on the Meanings of Crime in Italian Trap Culture

The current research explores the meanings of violence, drugs, and gang and mafia affiliations within Italian trap culture based on a virtual ethnography, an ethnographic content analysis and online semi-structured interviews with 57 respondents among trap singers, producers and followers. These methods have been carried out entirely on Instagram where Italian trap culture mainly creates, disseminates, and consumes their contents that serve as an expressive purpose in terms of reputation building, but also shed lights on the instrumental use of crime in the era of trap-postmodernity. Italian trap culture is often criminalised by moral entrepreneurs getting confused on the authenticity of the reality and virtuality towards the self-portray of artists as extreme criminals in songs and Instagram. This research has demonstrated that the processes of criminalisation underlying Italian trap culture reinforce the criminal behaviours and attitudes of the members of such culture which are actually shown to be entertaining and carnivalesque performances to entrepreneurially attract the audience and achieve the Italian trap dream consisting of monetary success and fame. The pursue of this dream has given ambition and excitement for many young people in Italy to conduct a consumeristic and luxurious lifestyle, but at the same time, the excessive individualism - at the core of the structure of feelings of Italian trap culture - resulting from climbing the trap ladder has revealed deep-seated feelings of sadness and loneliness spread among the whole culture that belie within the meanings of gang and mafia affiliations, and specific uses of new drugs. The current study thus contributes to the cultural criminology research from Italy, and the growing body of literature on youth (sub)-cultures and their relationship with new media.