A great amount of police investigations, judiciary cases, researches and the most recent literature on the subject show the process of deep change in which criminal mafia organizations are involved. Organised crime is interested in several changes concerning the organizational structure, the traffics and the main illegal activities, the international relationships and the connections between criminal groups, the forms of their territorial control, the police contrast assets, the relations with the world of politics. More flexible reticular structures take the place of the traditional patterns, or better they incorporate the old ones, with the aim to exploit new illegal markets. Mafia groups are characterized by a great financial and business dynamism, creating criminal cliques more similar to the white collar crime. The relationship with the world of politics, taking new attitudes, remains stable and strong thanks to an obscure plot which ties together deviated powers and criminal systems and makes difficult the research of clear borderlines between illegal worlds and legal economic activities. Within this changeable background it is crucially important to find features able to edge the identity of mafia entities and the main characteristics of each group. The illegal activities seem unified thanks to the use of the same mafia method, which reaches effective forms of financial markets' dominance. Mafia groups "method" seems to be a real successful trademark also on a symbolic level, it is useful to be employed in order to achieve credit in new territorial contexts and in different fields, far from the traditional ones and ready to be subcontracted to the foreign mafia groups. Sicilian mafia, examined in this reference background, actually appears as a complex system which interweaves change and continuity, roots attachment and modernization ability, adaptation strategies and the ability to drive change. The concept of mafia, since its arise, has been nebulous and polysemic; characterized by ambiguous affinity with an alleged Sicilian culture and surrounded by effective and instrumental apologetics. Phenomenon multifaceted and stratified, the concept of mafia has involved characters with very different features, seeping in several sectors of the social system and showing a particular sensitivity for the communicative strategies and a great attention to the own public image. The globalization process of international crime and more and more frequent contacts with the criminal economy have contributed to the mafia groups' change, causing evident forms of "methodological" and identitary hybridization. For these reasons it is very interesting delving into the Cosa Nostra identity deep transformation, caused by its more and more visible presence, by globalization challenges and by comparison with other crime organizations. Through an interdisciplinary observatory the research program aims to study the communicative and identitary changes of mafia groups, analyzing internal and external, institutional and self-produced representations. The aim of this research project is to piece together the different phases of Cosa Nostra identitary change processes since the ‘80s till today, making strong connections between the structural framework and the communicative and relational ones. Moreover, it is necessary to look up the role played by traditional and new media, which are steadily involved in the new mafia image construction, even if they are not always ready noting the mafia organised crime complexity. Because of this warped representation, which aims to an extreme representation of the mafia military wing, Cosa Nostra has started adapting to its public image. Adopting the most suited both qualitative and quantitative levels of analysis, research tools and theoretical patterns of comparative studies the complex concept of mafia identity will be decomposed in its several analysis dimensions in order to explore its continuation, identification, and recognition factors. Thanks to its interdisciplinary and plurithematical approach, insisting on the necessity to understand reality, our research will offer useful tools of interpretation and evaluation of the present situation, an appreciation of the efficiency of the strategies adopted so far (in particular, the relative importance of each of the factors studied). Indeed our research will also give tools for the elaboration of alternative legal, economic, communicative and social strategies which will take into account the challenge represented by phenomenon's hybridization between mafia groups and political-economic crime within legal and illegal economic framework.