Italian Migration Policies and Newspaper Communication: A Case Study

Abstract

Communication and migrations can represent a binomial that pushes towards changes that involve manifest actions or not of individuals in societies in which the presence of multiple cultures is now a given. The theoretical starting point is the sociology of knowledge in Mannheim. This article investigates the effects on cultural changes of the communication-migration binomial, specifically on the media language and system of ideas around migrations. We will consider as “milestones” (with a before and after) the laws or agreements that marked the historical and social context of migration in Italy over the past few years. We aim to verify through the analysis of the “words” whether and how the media's language (limited to «la Repubblica») has modified the language used to represent migrations and the related contents dealing with problems of general interest connected to the phenomenon of migration.