Italian Media Research Articles

El éxito diferente. Recepciones italianas de la Nueva Canción Chilena en los años 1970

Throughout the 70s, exiled artists of the New Chilean Song –in primis, the band Inti-Illimani– promoted a mass audience of Latin American folk music genres. In the discourse that accompanied Chilean success in the Italian media of the time, we find little insistence on explicit exoticism. Instead, in the newly imported musical genres, there is a certain desire to acknowledge a project of renewal regarding social song, shared by the Italian leftist culture of that time. The New Chilean Song seemed to be an advanced and exemplary realization of that project. By examining a wide range of documents from that time, we understand how the success attributed to Chilean / Andean music in Italy is linked not only to well-known political factors or to the fascination for that novel sound, but also to the ability of some artists to generate interactions in the reception context opened as a result of exile.

‘Cin ciun cian’ (ching chong): Yellowness and neo-orientalism in Italy at the time of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has put in the foreground the dramatic actuality of global and local inequalities, undermining neo-liberal, communitarian, democratic or cosmopolitan projects of collective identity. In the light of intersecting inequalities such as class, race/ethnicity and gender, an explosion of Sinophobia, social stigma and physical attacks targeting people of East Asian and Southeast Asian appearance or heritage has been widely reported in Euro-American media. This article will focus on the case of Italy during the initial stage of the pandemic in early 2020. Italy has not only been the first European country to be exposed to the pandemic and to undergo national lockdown but also a country where the wave of racist assaults started in late January 2020, even before the first clusters have been detected. The critical investigation of Italian media discourses will highlight how deep-rooted, colonialist and ambivalent assumptions about the ‘Oriental’, ‘Asian’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘yellow’ other may have been crucial to the reproduction of racism against specific people, cultures and civilizations, regardless of nationality, class and gender. It will refer in particular to the concept of ‘yellowness’, resulting from a process of bio-cultural racialization within the hegemonic frame of ‘Western’, ‘White’ or ‘Italian’ identity. Furthermore, it will indicate how this process of racialized othering has emerged, but has also been contested, within the specific context of citizenship, Asian immigrants and governmental actions in contemporary Italy. The overall aim is not so much to denounce higher levels of racism in Italy compared to other Euro-American countries; rather, this article refers to the Italian case to stress how both global and local trajectories do mutually overlap to shape, and eventually to transform, a national context, offering further insights on the glo-calization of the civilizational ‘West’/’East’ divide in the 21st century.

COVID-19 Pandemic in Italian Digital Media

This article studies media behavior and information consumption during the COVID-19 health crisis using quantitative content analysis of the news published by Italian digital media between January 1 and April 27, 2020 (n = 841,786). The data shows a direct relationship between the number of publications and the capacity for engagement and a greater reach with classic, general media and Facebook.

The Framing of COVID-19 in Italian Media and Its Relationship with Community Mobility: A Mixed-Method Approach

Media framing of epidemics was found to influence public perceptions and behaviors in experiments, yet no research has been conducted on real-world behaviors during public health crises. We examined the relationship between Italian news media coverage of COVID-19 and compliance with stay-at-home orders, which could impact the spread of epidemics. We used a computational method for framing analysis (ANTMN) and combined it with Google’s Community Mobility data. A time-series analysis using vector autoregressive models showed that the Italian media used media frames that were largely congruent with ones used by journalists in other countries: A scientific frame focusing on symptoms and health effects, a containment frame focusing on attempts to ameliorate risks, and a social frame, focusing on political and social impact. The prominence of different media frames over time was associated with changes in Italians’ mobility patterns. Specifically, we found that the social frame was associated with increased mobility, whereas the containment frame was associated with decreased mobility. The results demonstrate that the ways the news media discuss epidemics can influence changes in community mobility, above and beyond the effect of the number of deaths per day.

The «invisible enemy» and the usual suspects. How Covid-19 re-framed migration in Italian media representations

The last decade has been characterized by an intense inflow of people into borders of what has been called the "Fortress Europe". Italian governments, from Gentiloni-Minniti to Conte-Salvini, have implemented restrictive border management and migration control measures, fueled also by an over mediatization of the issue in and by public discourses. However, from February 2020 public debates and narratives have been dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic, a health emergency often described as a war against an invisible enemy. Through a qualitative analysis of Italian media representations, this paper analyses how Covid-19 overshadowed and reframed migration narratives and discourses. Moving within the concept of (in)visibility, this paper explores the two macrodiscourses around migration during the lockdown: on one side, the link between migration and illness (fear of infection) that led to strict border security measures; on the other, the utilitaristic x\regularization of migrants working in informal economy. The conclusion reflects on long-term implications of the pandemic on mobility justice (Sheller 2018) and what Mbembe (2020) has defined the "right to breath".

Evaluation factors in semantic mechanisms of manipulation (in italian)

The aim of the article is to analyze the manipulative potential of the modern Italian-speaking media space in terms of creating a negative image of Russia as an international player. The sources of language material for the analysis are two authoritative Italian publications − Internazionale newspaper and Formiche.net Internet portal − characterized by the exclusively analytical content of articles and expert comments in the field of international relations and geopolitics, the authors of which are able to significantly influence the readership. The methodological apparatus includes a descriptive method and a method of semantic and syntactic analysis of linguistic units with a manipulative potential. From a pragmatic point of view, examples of evaluation predicates used by the Italian mass media to inform the reader about the actions of the Russian Federation are given. The article may be of interest to linguistic researchers dealing with romance studies, political linguistics, as well as to political scientists interested in Russian-Italian relations.

Brain death in pregnancy: what will be left of the life of foetus?

Brain death in pregnancy (BDinP) has been described in literature as a “rare event” and “hopeless condition for patients”, who has a devastating potential to negatively affect the poetry of the moment of welcoming a new human life to the world. Clinical consequences of BDinP are extremely dangerous for the life of a foetus that, without prompt medical actions, is doomed to suffer the same fate as the mother. Modern medical techniques make it possible to maintain basic vital functions of the pregnant woman for months, in order to achieve a level of development of the foetus. Although maternal somatic support requires the consideration of specific medical parameters, from a bioethical standpoint, this option gives rise to multiple ethical and social implications. In this manuscript, we identify the main ethical and social implications about maternal somatic support, including the potential impact on the clinical practice of medical staff, and discuss some Italian high-impact media cases.* The authors contributed equally to the work.

Four Italian Media Repertoires between Legacy, Social and Digital Media

The contemporary media environment is characterized by a high degree of complexity. Users move across different media outlets and digital platforms, and media consumption practices are entangled with other everyday practices. However, this does not imply that everyone uses every existing media outlet or digital platform. Different elements may play a role in media choice and attention location. Relying on the media repertoires approach, and through factor analysis and cluster analysis (based on the cross-country and cross-regional survey PIN – “The Peoples’ Internet”) the aim of this article is to identify different clusters of users characterized by specific patterns and combinations of legacy media and digital platforms. Special attention will be given at the placement of social media in media repertoires as they have a profound impact on mediated societal processes such as political debate, everyday communication, and impact on the whole media ecology. The article will describe which clusters of Italian users can be identified based on their digital and legacy media use; which socio-demographic variables characterize the clusters and how the uses of social media differ within these clusters.

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.

A taxonomic approach to the use of English in the Italian media

AbstractInvestigating English borrowings in Italian media, this study analyzes various uses of English in headlines of the online version of the popular Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera. It addresses the pervasiveness of English borrowings in contexts where their use does not seem motivated by necessity. The analysis disambiguates informative loans from loans of manner (as well as pseudo‐Anglicisms from integral loans) in different topic domains. Findings show that non‐specialized borrowings are especially abundant in domains where the advertising power of English is exploited, and that borrowings are often hybridized in a systematic way, adapting to Italian morphosyntax. Moreover, this study responds to language ideological debates about the alleged ‘invasion’ of English into Italian and, by taking a taxonomic approach, demonstrates that such uses of English are associated with distinct pragmatic functions within the hybridized genre of news‐as‐advertising discourse.

Simultanea: A Journal of Italian Media and Pop Culture

Simultanea: A Journal of Italian Media and Pop Culture

Information on the COVID-19 Pandemic in Daily Newspapers' Front Pages: Case Study of Spain and Italy.

Spain and Italy are amongst the European countries where the COVID-19 pandemic has produced its major impact and where lockdown measures have been the harshest. This research aims at understanding how the corona crisis has been represented in Spanish and Italian media, focusing on reference newspapers. The study analyzes 72 front pages of El País and El Mundo in Spain and Italy’s Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, collecting 710 news items and 3456 data evidences employing a mixed method (both qualitative and quantitative) based on content analysis and hemerographic analysis. Results show a predominance of informative journalistic genres (especially brief and news), while the visual framing emerging from the photographic choice, tend to foster humanization through an emotional representation of the pandemic. Politicians are the most represented actors, showing a high degree of politicization of the crisis.

“Lip-Sync for Your Life” (Abroad)

The article aims to critically explore and understand the ways both RuPaul’s star persona and its program, RuPaul’s Drag Race, are distributed in Italy, circulate across, and impact on the Italian television industry and media culture, it also aims to show how many forms of national mediation, professional negotiation and audience reception deeply modify, and re-shape the TV product. To tackle the manifold facets of this case, four aspects will be analyzed: (trans)national distribution; adaptation and dubbing; global/local stardom; reception and cultural impact. Over a decade, the Italian edition and distribution of the show have changed, together with the national media landscape and its audiences.

Framing migrations. Frames and representations in Italian news media

Framing migrations. Frames and representations in Italian news media

Unlabelling Authenticity: Food and Wine in Mario Soldati

ABSTRACT This essay begins with a survey of approaches to food in Italian media culture, and then explores how food studies and the environmental humanities can come together. We take two enogastronomic projects carried out by Mario Soldati, Nella valle del Po: alla ricerca dei cibi genuini (1957) and Vino al vino: alla ricerca dei vini genuini (1968–75), as a case study. These documentaries spanned the arc of Italy's postwar economic boom and the slow opening of Europe’s economic and political borders. Soldati’s search for authenticity in food and wine was a search for what would remain recognisably Italian even after Italy and its inhabitants changed shape yet again. His enogastronomic work maps the emergence of a new code of cultural values, and enables a new method for interpreting the terrain on which consumer practice, ecology, representation, and taste intersect.

Public Discourse and Category Formation: A Topic Modelling Exploration of ‘Historical Shops’ on Italian Media

This paper addresses the role of public discourse in processes of category formation. Tracing the emergence and diffusion of a category on the media, and exploring the discourses generated on the media within and around the emerging category, the paper reflects on how these discourses concur in performing the very category they portray. The focus is set on the Historical Shops category, as part of broader processes of urban categorisations for local development and regeneration. By means of a Topic Modelling of a corpus of 3262 press articles collected from Italian news sources between 2009 and 2019, the paper finds that public discourse plays three main roles: echoing category creation processes by policymakers, grounding the rising category in wider discourses of retail crisis, urban degradation, regeneration and overtourism, and narrating it by explaining what Historical Shops are, where they are located, which issues they face and which responses they receive at different institutional levels. Overall, in this paper, the semi-automated techniques afforded by Topic Modelling offer a way to enter the meaning construction processes and elicit the agential role of public discourse in the formation of a category.

Ius soli: Vezet-e út Rómába?

Demographic changes in Italy over the last decades – growing number of immigrants, shrinking and aging population – have made it increasingly urgent to reform the citizenship law in order to adapt it to the international context. The Italian politics and media focus on new arrivals and on stopping illegal immigration, while many foreign communities (e.g. Moroccan, Albanian, Chinese, Romanian) are already living and socialising in Italy with their second generations, many of them without Italian citizenship. The proportion and visibility of the population concerned is increasing, but the fragmented Italian political system is unable to reach a consensus on the citizenship law reform, so the introduction of the (conditional) ius soli – which has been on the agenda for years – is lagging behind.

Media-Based Research on Selfie-Related Deaths in Italy.

The incidence of taking selfies and sharing them on social media as well as selfie-related dangerous behaviors is increasing, particularly among young people, also leading to selfie-related trauma and death. This study was performed to obtain epidemiological characteristics of selfie-related mortality in Italy. Scientific literature and Italian media were reviewed. Twelve victims from 11 events, from 2014 to 2018, were analyzed (sex, age, accident types, the nationality, the Italian region where the incident took place, if the person involved was indigenous or a tourist, the dynamics and the causa mortis, if other people have been involved in the selfie, and if other people were deceased). The majority of selfie victims were male teenagers, the average age was 23.6 years, the most preferred site of taking selfies was the natural environment followed by the railway one, the most frequently reported event or accident type was falling from a height, and the most frequent causes of selfie-related deaths were multitrauma and drowning. Selfie-related deaths in Italy appear to be an issue and appear to be increasing. Particularly, male teenagers and young adults are at high risk for selfie-related deaths. Measures should be taken to reduce their incidence.

Salvini exploits “lack of trust” in Italian media: The reputation of Italian media is poor, which plays straight into the hands of the far-right politician

Salvini exploits “lack of trust” in Italian media: The reputation of Italian media is poor, which plays straight into the hands of the far-right politician

Similar Politicians, Different Media

The article analyzes the media treatment of two sex scandals: the “Stormy Daniels scandal”, which involved the current US President Donald Trump in 2018 and the “Ruby scandal”, which involved Silvio Berlusconi in 2010, while he was Italy’s Prime Minister. By combining both quantitative and qualitative methodologies the aim is to discover whether the media treatment is different, as we can expect since the two countries belong to two different media systems, or if, following the theory of Americanization of political communication, the Italian media will tend to emulate the American model. Furthermore, another aim of this study is to detect whether a shift towards a more Polarized Pluralist model can be identified in the USA, as some authors have started foreseeing. The results will show that both countries’ media behave coherently with the traditional feature of their media system, the Polarized Pluralist and the Liberal.