On December 24, 2018, the Etna volcano has recorded a significant eruption. Linked to this phenomenon, after a seismic swarm of 72 shocks, a 4.8-magnitude earthquake struck a large area North of Catania city, on the Eastern coast of Sicily. Six villages reported 28 injured people and damages to the building. According to seismologists the earthquake had an unusual level of magnitude. Yet, despite the real danger of this event, many people who live around the volcano, in one of the most densely populated areas of Sicily, perceived these facts in an ambivalent way. Indeed, their lives continued as before even in awareness of the natural hazard, while several media presented the situation as really dangerous in a worried tone. This paper, part of a wider research still in progress, aims to analyse the perception of the risk towards the biggest and highest volcano of Europe by the inhabitants of some villages that rise around the Etna. Based on a previous research conducted in 2013 in the same area, this study compares the ways in which this recent earthquake was perceived by some residents in the area and the ways in which some online newspaper narrated the event. Therefore, by analysing and comparing the first results that come from interviews realized during a fieldwork and from online newspaper/magazine articles, this study tries to understand, from a geographical and cultural perspective, how the perception of the risk can be narrated attributing different values to hazard. The latter can have pragmatic implications because from this symbolic evaluation may depend the behaviour of an entire community.

The article is the Editorial of the Special Issue "Digital Education, Geography and Multidisciplinarity: Themes, Methods and Critical Issues". It explores some fundamental and theoretical issues on the interrelated subjects of digital education, geography and multidisciplinarity. More in particular, the article takes into account the manner in which this Special Issue of AIMS Geosciences reflects on links between the teaching/learning of geography (at any school/university level) and the digital world in a multidisciplinary perspective. That includes both the critical issues and the advantages in terms of sustainability and greater awareness of geographical phenomena, also in relation to cultural dynamics (e.g., migrations, urban transformations, development, geopolitics, tourism).

In the context of slow mobility, among the forms of tourism overlooked is motorcycle tourism, often described as a form of short excursions. On the contrary, some motorcyclists who use less powerful and less polluting vehicles organize themselves into small communities (clubs) to enjoy specific landscapes and visit small villages. The routes they favor are “slow”: e.g., they avoid motorways, using country roads; their destinations are often natural places. This article aims to study from the perspective of cultural geography some forms of this “slow” motorcycling, as these bikers define themselves. The research focuses on a group of motorcyclists in Sicily, Italy, and it is part of a larger fieldwork. Through ethnographic interviews, the article investigates the perception and the narratives that these motorcyclists have about their way of travelling. Objective of the research is to understand the ways in which bikers conceive and use the landscape and the environment from a tourist perspective. Finally, the article proposes a reflection on the possibility of considering motorcycle tourism as a form of slow tourism and a potential vehicle for territorial development.