“Casa mia o casa tua?” Platforms and Performed Identity of and within Italian Trap

Le piattaforme e l’identità performata dalla e nella trap in Italia

Abstract

Italian trap music offers a privileged vantage point for understanding how complex cultural identities are constructed and represented within digital environments. This study examines the intermedial representations of “Italianità” in contemporary trap, with particular attention to the ways in which artists and online communities perform symbols, languages, and cultural codes on social platforms. The analysis focuses on the creative use of vocabulary associated with “Italianità” – whether expressive, symbolic, or ironic – as both an identity-building device and a form of discursive participation. The methodological approach is grounded in digital methods, applied to Ghali’s 2024 track Casa mia and to the related content published on YouTube and TikTok. Music videos, captions, comments, and other forms of digital interaction are interpreted as spaces for producing and circulating imaginaries tied to urban peripheries, marginality, and self-performativity. The aim is to show how trap, through a strongly intermedial visual and sonic aesthetics, articulates new narratives of Italianità, often positioned between the local and the global, authenticity and spectacle. By bringing together platform studies and popular music studies, the research highlights the role of digital platforms not merely as channels of distribution, but as active media environments capable of shaping and directing the construction of cultural meaning.