Are e-bikes changing the social representation of cycling? An exploration of articles on cycling in Italian online publications

Despite policies aimed at increasing bicycle use, and the health benefits identified in the literature, cycling mobility is still quite limited in most cities. A cultural transformation is needed to change this situation. E-bikes might be capable of triggering this change, and turning the proposition of cycling into the preferred choice for everyday mobility. To explore this possibility, the present study extends a previous analysis conducted on the representation of cycling in Italian media, and further investigates its content as regards e-bikes. We identified a textual corpus of 3,239 articles dealing with bicycles published in Italian online publications in 2017 and subjected them to lexicometric analyses. The representation of cycling was found to be stable and only marginally fit the envisaged change in the mobility paradigm. Coverage revolved around a few main themes: infrastructure, mobility, and security and safety. The subcorpus relating to e-bikes (N = 200) showed that the representation of e-bikes added to the dominant representation of cycling without transforming it. Despite their still largely utilitarian and structural contents, the appearance of new perspectives relating to sustainable urban mobility associated with e-bikes introduces novelty in the representation of cycling that deserves to be carefully monitored.