SOLIDARITY THROUGH DIVERSITY? A frame analysis of the digital solidarities amongst Italian and Spanish LGBTQIA* organisations

Social movement scholars have extensively focused on solidarity ties between civil society organizations, emphasising that such ties encompass both a discursive dimension, where organisations express solidarity to other groups’ claims and actions, and a mobilising dimension, where organisations participate in other groups’ actions or engage in the organisation of joint activities. Researchers have also found that solidarity ties are more likely to be constructed across organisations with similar collective identity traits and framing strategies. Conversely, different collective identities may lead to conflicts, especially if these identities are mobilised around the sources of inequality (such as gender, sexuality, class, and race) that differently affect civil society organizations. Within this framework, movement scholars have described the LGBTQIA* collective action field as both rather internally fragmented and not tightly connected with other collective action fields. However, gender studies and feminist scholars have also emphasised that LGBTQIA* actors have often distinguished themselves from other identity-based organisations due to their focus on the diversity of LGBTQIA* identities and the promotion of a logic aimed at celebrating differences instead of monolithic identities. Following on these accounts, recent studies have discussed the emergence of so-called ‘intersectional solidarities’, emphasising that LGBTQIA* activists have increasingly addressed cross-cutting concerns and built solidarity ties with communities coping with intersecational inequality structures. Building on both social movement studies and gender scholarship, this paper addresses the discursive dimension of political solidarity and explores the digital solidarity ties created by LGBTQIA* organizations during the last decade. It does so by proposing an intersectional approach to political solidarity, where intersectionality is articulated both as an analytical lens to study how solidarity discourses deal with intersectional privilege and marginalisation, and as an empirical question to investigate its possible usage(s) by LGBTQIA* organisations. The aim of the paper is twofold. On the one hand, it sheds light on the multiple ways solidarity is signified and narrated in the digital sphere by LGBTQIA* organizations. On the other hand, it examines what collective action frames accompany different solidarity discourses, analysing how these frames evolve, travel, and are negotiated across contingencies. Particular attention is paid to the nexus between the mobilisation of intersectional frames and the creation of digital solidarity ties. To achieve these aims, the paper articulates a frame analysis of Facebook posts published between 2011 and 2020 on the public pages managed by LGBTQIA* organizations based in Milan and Madrid. These case studies allow us to compare how digital solidarities are articulated over time by LGBTQIA* activists embedded in different socio-political contexts. This paper aims to contribute to the study of political solidarity in several ways: firstly, by proposing an intersectional approach, it problematizes conventional social movement theories and explores their explanatory power in relation to sexuality and gender; secondly, it articulates an initial investigation of how digital communication platforms may be used by LGBTQIA* activists to articulate solidarity discourses; finally, it lays the preliminary ground to further investigate the relation between solidarity discourses and practices developed by LGBTQIA* collective actors.