La Repubblica Research Articles

Environmental conflicts in the mass media: insight from the media representation of ecological distributive conflicts (EDCs) in Italy

ABSTRACT Despite the increasing prominence of local ecological-distributive conflicts (EDCs) as subjects of social science research in recent decades, interaction between the media and territorial conflict has remained overlooked, still requiring further investigation. Indeed, there is currently a lack of systematic, up-to-date analysis of the relationship between the media and ecological-distributive protests that goes beyond the investigation of NIMBY narratives to provide a general overview of territorial protest representations and their implications for conflict. Based on the application of Political Claims Analysis to the national newspaper, la Repubblica, and its reporting of six Italian local EDCs, this article aims to discuss the ambivalent representations of territorial protest in the media, while also highlighting the implications of different narrative patterns for the values and perspectives embedded in public opinion. The twofold aim is to investigate the media’s narrative strategies with regard to local protests and their evolution throughout the mobilizations and to assess how the cultural context influences the likelihood that different messages will gain support. This investigation is crucial not only for filling the existing gap regarding the relationship between media and the ongoing spread of EDCs in Italy, but also for grasping broader dynamics concerning media management of environmental conflict, something that is becoming increasingly relevant to both the political and media spheres.

The media coverage of the European Union and the extreme right. A comparative study between Spain, France, and Italy

The parliamentary representation of far-right political parties is growing in several European Union countries, particularly after the Great Recession. This has increased the media attention they receive. These parties share eurosceptic positions or question the idea of European integration, but does their rise alter public discussion on the European Union? Using a quantitative content analysis (N=974) conducted in 6 media outlets: El País and El Mundo (Spain), Le Monde and Le Figaro (France), and Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica (Italy), the research describes and compares media coverage on issues related to the European Union before and after the Great Recession and how the rise of the far-right has affected the European public sphere. The results indicate that public discussion about the European Union is in decline and that national and top-down Europeanisation approaches are on the rise, coinciding with increased coverage of the far-right.

Contested languages in the contemporary Italian press: an analysis of language ideology

ABSTRACT Based on a critical discursive perspective, this work analyses the ideology around the languages spoken in Italy, namely Italian and contested languages such as Lombard, Neapolitan or Sicilian, which are commonly referred to as ‘dialects’. The aim is to study how journalists construct, spread and justify a monolingual ideology that favours central nationalism (or macronationalism). Seventy-one articles have been examined, which were published online by the major Italian newspaper la Repubblica (www.repubblica.it) in 2011, the year of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. The analysis shows that journalists contribute to Italian macronationalism mainly through three discursive strategies: references to plurality, language hierarchisation, and suffering erasure. In the first strategy, contested languages are negatively framed as many, unintelligible and divisive. In the second, a categorisation such as ‘language/dialect’ is used which legitimises Italian and delegitimises contested languages by negating their very languageness. In the third strategy, narratives on the unification process are used that erase the suffering brought about by the eradication of contested languages.

Russian invasion of Ukraine in the Italian media coverage

Introduction. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Italy, which has long had close economic, political and cultural ties with Russia, has found itself in a situation of some social and political imbalance. The presence of different, even opposing, views was reflected in the media: some publications have adopted an openly pro-Ukrainian position, while others have taken an openly anti-NATO position, if not openly pro-Russian, providing information about the causes, course and possible solutions to the war in accordance with these positions. Relevance and purpose. The relevance of the study lies in the need to research the narratives of the Italian press about the Russian-Ukrainian war. The purpose of the article is to outline the vision of the Russian-Ukrainian war in one of the leading Italian newspapers “La Repubblica”. The research methodology involves a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the publications of the website and the archive of issues of “La Repubblica” in the period from 24.02.2022 to 1.05.2022. The systematisation method allowed to systematise the results obtained during the automated research, the generalisation method – to draw conclusions of research. Results. A qualitative analysis of publications shows that news reports related to Ukraine on the La Repubblica website since the beginning of the Russian invasion have been published in a separate daily publication “The Russia-Ukraine War, News for [date]”. The total number of mentions in the publications using the keyword “war Ukraine” using the automatic search is 7,767 mentions. The most frequently used phrases were selected from this array and grouped into 8 thematic blocks: “Zelenskyy”, “refugees”, “Mariupol”, “Russian troops”, “Bucha”. It has been found that only a small proportion of publications on the pages and website of “La Repubblica” contain the terms “Nazis” and “neo-Nazis”. Conclusions. Based on the data processing results, it was found that the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” covers information about the Russian-Ukrainian war using frames of a war for democratic values, where Ukraine and its population is considered to be a victim of unmotivated aggression of Russia Federation, and Ukrainian politicians are portrayed as new symbols of humanistic values. There is an attempt to avoid focusing on acute issues related to Ukraine or internal Ukrainian politics, which can be partially defined as “pro-Ukrainian” propaganda. The findings are important for the inclusion of Italian media in the broader framework of European media coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE DISCOURSE OF NEWSPAPER ARTICLES IN THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE ON THE (NON)PARTICIPATION OF NOVAK ĐOKOVIĆ IN THE AUSTRALIAN OPEN

This paper, within the framework of critical discourse analysis, deals with newspaper articles about the (non)participation of Novak Djokovic at the 2022 Australian Open, published in the electronic editions of the Italian daily newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica in January 2022. The aim of this paper was to, following Van Dijk (1988a), investigate the schematic organisation of the texts from our corpus, as well as to examine which linguistic units are used in those texts to create a positive and negative image of Novak Djokovic. The results of the research show that a very small number of analysed articles fit into Van Dijk's model of organisation of newspaper texts. The results of the linguistic analysis of the texts indicate that, on the one hand, the discourse strategies of nomination and predication are used to highlight Novak's sporting success, and on the other hand, they serve to portray Novak, who did not receive the vaccine against covid 19, as the culprit for not participating in the Australian Open in 2022 and as a person who behaves recklessly and irresponsibly during the coronavirus pandemic.

HOW THE ITALIAN PRESS MAKE SENSE OF PHYSIOTHERAPY AND THE PHYSIOTHERAPIST A RETROSPECTIVE STUDY FROM 1989 TO 2019.

IntroductionThe legitimation of a profession provides for legal, formative, ethical, self-regulating and socially recognized development, which must pass through the appropriate mass media communication channels. The purpose of this study is to investigate the way in which the profession of physiotherapist and physiotherapy as a science are communicated in the newspapers.MethodsA cross-sectional, descriptive, structured, anonymous, non-funded survey was conducted through the analysis of articles in the daily newspaper "La Repubblica" in 2 distinct periods. A 21-item questionnaire was used, in which a distinction was made between semantic characteristics and content. The differences in the way the physiotherapist as a professional and the discipline of physiotherapy as a science are evaluated before and after the recognition of the professional profile in Italy (1994).ResultsThere is an improvement in the way the physiotherapist as a professional is communicated (from 14.6% to 25%), while physiotherapy as a science does not show any significant changes (from 19.5% to 22.2%). There is a meaningful improvement in the communication of various fields from few to multiple. A significant article in communicating educational aspects is often associated with the transmission of the value of Physiotherapy in research (VC 0.598), and the same association occurs between prevention and education (VC 0.552), autonomy of the physiotherapist and communication of the physiotherapist as professional (VC 0.503).DiscussionThe evolution of the profession and of the discipline over time was not matched by an adequate improvement in communication by the newspapers. The term rehabilitation cannot be distinctive from nor synonymous with the discipline of physiotherapy, of which it is an integral part but which cannot be defined by it.

Italian Migration Policies and Newspaper Communication: A Case Study

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.

Ezio Mauro e il suo scrittore senza nome Mauro Ezio, Lo scrittore senza nome. Mosca 1966: processo alla letteratura, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2021, 333 p.

This review deals with the most recent novel written by Italian journalist and former editor-in-chief of la Repubblica Ezio Mauro, Lo scrittore senza nome: processo alla letteratura (2021). The plot revolves around the events that precede and follow the arrest and trial of Russian authors Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel. However, from the very beginning, the reader is made aware of the character around whom the story is centered: Yuli Daniel. To tell this story, the author writes a journalistic novel, which is a variation of the traditional literary genres combining fictional and non-fictional elements.

The geopolitics of the European super league: A historiographical approach and a media analysis of the failed project in 2021.

The main objective of this article is to analyse the reasons why the 2021 European Super League project failed. The authors ask whether, in addition to the popular clamour against a semi-closed competition, it was the combination of geopolitical interests of the different actors currently involved in European elite football that prevented the project from going ahead. The main methodological framework is based on a case study, which follows an Stakian approach. To do so, on the one hand, a historiographical analysis of the case has been done; on the other hand, authors have complemented this case study with an analysis of 23 pieces of news published on the website of five mainstream newspapers (from April to June 2021) from those countries with the most significant European football leagues: The United Kingdom (The Guardian), Spain (El País), France (Le Monde), Italy (La Repubblica) and Germany (Der Spiegel). To supplement the analysis of this phenomenon, authors have also considered other relevant news published in other mainstream press or news agencies (such as The New York Times, Politico, The Yorkshire Post, The Times, Marca, Bloomberg and Reuters). The authors conclude that, while financially the Super League debate has not been closed, in defending the current business and competition model of European football, UEFA has had the complicity of owners and shareholders of the founding clubs outside of their traditional historical roots, as well as governments that have made football an asset because of their geopolitical positioning, such as Qatar and the UK post-Brexit.

POJMOVNE METAFORE U ITALIJANSKOM I SRPSKOM JEZIKU EKONOMIJE NA PRIMERU CILJNOG DOMENA INFLACIJA

Acknowledging the conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff, Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1992) and the fact that throughout history metaphors have been omnipresent in explaining and under- standing economic concepts (Kövecses 2002, Sosnowski 2006), this paper reveals, analyses, and compares Serbian and Italian linguistic metaphors used in journalistic economic jargon for creating conceptual metaphors whose target domain is the lexeme INFLATION. The cor- pus of texts was taken from the Italian daily la Repubblica and the Serbian newspaper Politika in the period between March and June 2022. This period coincided with the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, which caused the global economic crisis. In this way, we justify the choice and the supposition that the target domain lexeme will be highly frequent in texts about the economies of the two countries. The paper aims to find similarities and differences between the Italian and Serbian language metaphors, as well as to reveal similarities or differences in conceptual, collective, and empiri- cal thinking, as well as the comprehension of the inflation phenomenon by these two nations, while using the methods of qualitative and contrastive analysis. The results confirm the presence of metaphorical expressions in both languages within all conceptual metaphors emphasised by many authors in their papers to date, mainly in English, as well as a high level of coincidence in the selection of lexemes and the source domain expressions. The findings of this research lead to the conclusion that Serbian and Italian speakers share similar, or identical, empirical and con- ceptual understanding, but also the collective feeling about the concept of inflation.

Discussing vaccine and autism in a mainstream newspaper in Italy: A thematic analysis

Over the past few years, there has been a great deal of concern regarding the potential links between childhood vaccinations and the development of ASD, possibly leading to vaccine hesitancy. This study aims to explore the representational field related to the vaccine-autism link in a mainstream Italian newspaper. We analyzed newspaper articles published on La Repubblica, from January 2009 untill January 2017 (N = 168 newspaper articles), via T-Lab software. The analysis produced four clusters: a) Trust and sense of belonging; b) Judgment dimension; c) Catastrophic narratives; d) Organization of the public healthcare system. The need to monitor media coverage on key healthcare topics was considered of paramount importance.

P11.35: Using Emotional Text Mining to Explore the Cultural Representation of Organ Donation in the Spanish and Italian Culture

Introduction: Spain is considered the world leader in the field of organ donation, reaching the highest percentage of donors. This is the effect of an organization based on strong network relationships, specific training for health professionals and a focus on the promotion of organ donation among the population. Other countries, such as Italy, have adopted the Spanish model in their healthcare model for this issue, but still failing to reach the Spanish primacy. Cultural representation of organ donation can variate among countries, explaining the differences in the number of final donors. In literature there are no research on this facet of organ donation. With this work we aimed to investigate the cultural elements influencing the choice to donate in Italy and Spain. Method: To achieve this goal, we collected from two of the major newspapers of Italy (Il Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica) and Spain (El Pais and El Mundo) all the published articles between 2001 and 2021, containing the respective translation of “Organ Donation”. The two large final corpus, made up of 846 articles for the Italian and 571 for the Spanish one, were analyzed through the Emotional Text Mining (ETM; Greco & Polli, 2020), a non-supervised text mining methodology that allows the detection of cultural representations that sets people interactions, behaviors, attitudes, and communication. Results: The analysis produced 4 cultural representations for the Italian corpus and 5 cultural representations for the Spanish one. The principal representation for Spain is the organ donation as a national project, while in Italy prevails the facet of donation as a saving-life product, more oriented to an individual point of view. In Italian newspapers emerges the theme of death, an element felt as necessary as unacceptable. In Spain the principal step for donation is the family where citizens, as potential donor, can discuss about donation. Moreover, donation has a point of view on the circle of life, where death is a step to a final vision of lifesaving. Another big difference between the two nations is related to developmental process: the Italian model seems to be rooted in established promotional models, while in Spain emerges the desire for continuous growth and innovation, founding the promotion of organ donation on a strict relation between the citizen and the State. Finally, in Spain organ donation is connected to other fields (e.g. blood, gamete and tissue donation), while in Italy the issue is lived as totally isolated from other context. Conclusion: In conclusion, exploring the cultural representations of organ donation in these two countries allowed us to understand deep cultural differences. Results would be used for countries to work on the sensible areas, such as with focused promotional campaigns to the citizens. This work could help to improve the substantial differences in donation rates, increasing in this case the number of Italian donors.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine: some readings from Italian newspapers (20 February–5 March 2022)

AbstractOver the last two years, the metaphor of war has often been used in Italy when discussing the fight against the pandemic, to describe the restrictions that have been introduced as a result, from lockdown to the Green Pass. Paradoxically, once the state of emergency ended, just as we were on the cusp of the long-awaited return to normality (to ‘peace’ in a sense), Russia's sudden invasion of Ukraine meant that war truly became part of Italians’ lives through the media. In this context, I have analysed the positions taken by the major Italian periodicals (Avvenire, Corriere della Sera, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Il Foglio, La Repubblica, La Stampa, Il Mattino di Napoli, Il Messaggero and Il Tempo di Roma) between 20 February and 5 March. What becomes clear through examination of the main articles is that the themes that would characterise the subsequent Italian debate – from a strategic, humanitarian, political, and economic point of view – were already present in the two weeks from the end of February to the beginning of March 2022.

Missing Children in Italy from 2000 to 2020: A Review of the Phenomenon Reported by Newspapers

The disappearance of children has become a public social issue that has captured the attention of many in the last two decades, especially because there is not a worldwide consensus on the definition of “missing child”. This research analyzed events of missing children from 2000 to 2020 in Italy; data were collected from the main national sources of information: the websites of two Italian press agencies (ANSA and Adnkronos) and the four main Italian newspapers (Il Messaggero, La Repubblica, Il Corriere Della Sera, La Stampa) with a double-blind procedure. Our data show that male minors disappear to a greater extent than female minors and the disappearance of Italian minors is more represented than that of foreign minors. The majority of minors are found and when they are found they are still alive often within the first week after the disappearance. Our data shows that children disappear between the ages of 0–5 more than the cases involving adolescents. Also, of 182 missing and found children, information regarding the presence of abuse was reported in only 18 cases. The data of the present study were discussed in comparison with those of the Italian Government’s Extraordinary Commissioner for Missing Persons highlighting differences between the official data on missing children and those reported by newspapers; this study is intended to highlight a growing focus on the phenomenon, not only from a media perspective but also from an institutional one.

Metonymy and the polysemy ofCovidin Italian

AbstractAmong the linguistic consequences of the current pandemic, we focus on the usage of the lexemeCovid(-19)in Italian, both in the language of the daily press and in institutional/technical language. More specifically, we analyze the range of its polysemy and the role of metonymy in the semantic shifts that have produced it. The salience of the highly infectious pathogen, which also prompted its metaphorical reconceptualization, triggered the first extension of the term, originally denoting the disease, to predominantly denote the virus that causes it. This has also resulted in an almost complete shift of grammatical gender from feminine to masculine. Beside the primary metonymic shift,Covid(-19)developed a variety of further meanings which highlight different components of the emergingcovid frame. The linguistic data are drawn fromLa Repubblica, a daily general-interest newspaper, and from a selection of texts by major governmental and health institutions.

Eugenio Scalfari’s La Repubblica, the Italian Left and the ‘European Question’ 1984–1992

ABSTRACT This article examines the contribution the La Repubblica newspaper and its founder and editor-in-chief Eugenio Scalfari made to the debate on the ‘European question’. In particular, it focuses on the role the newspaper played in the evolution of Europeanism on the Italian Left from 1984, the year when the second elections were held to the Strasbourg Parliament with universal suffrage and Enrico Berlinguer died, to 1992, covering the period when, as well as signature of the Maastricht treaty, the final act took place in the demise of Italy’s ‘Republic of the Parties’.

Inversione dello stigma e aggiornamento delle retoriche anti-Lgbt: l’omofobia “contesa” nel discorso mediatico italiano

The essay builds on a research investigating the inclusion of the term ?homophobia? in two relevant Italian newspapers (Corriere della Sera and la Repubblica) between 1979 and 2007. The choice of this time-period goes from the first appearance of the term to its decisive diffusion in the considered media. The analysis detects the meanings attached to the term by different communities of interpretation, shading light on the accommodation – or normalization – of the term ‘homophobia’ into heteronormative discourses. In this paper, in particular, we focus on the link between the need to reject the stigma of homophobia and the renewal of anti-Lgbt narratives. For example, the representation of “polluted” queer subjectivities is gradually replaced by that of a “polluting” ideology promoted by Lgbt movement. Results are relevant for the ongoing literature investigating the new rhetoric and strategies implied by neo-conservative and anti-gender campaigns and movements. Keywords: discourse analysis, Italian press, new homophobia, sexual citizenship, (post)secularization

Guilt by association? The criminalisation of sea rescue NGOs in Italian media

ABSTRACT The non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rescuing migrants off the coast of Libya have been increasingly criminalised. We investigate the discursive underpinnings of this process by analyzing all the articles on sea rescue NGOs published between 2014 and 2019 by two major Italian newspapers located at opposite sides of the political spectrum: Il Giornale and La Repubblica. Our discourse analysis shows that the media salience of non-governmental sea rescue increased enormously following the first public allegations against humanitarians and peaked in 2019 after some standoffs between some NGOs and the Italian government, when the number of migrants rescued at sea had already dropped to a minimum. This inflated and heavily politicised media coverage contains both direct and indirect criminalisation discourses. Though sometimes directly accused of colluding with human smugglers and profiting from irregular migration, sea rescue NGOs have more often been indirectly criminalised through the same framing devices typically used to stigmatise irregular mobility at large, namely associational links, metaphors, frame-jacking, and othering.

What Kind of Islamophobia? Representation of Muslims and Islam in Italian and Spanish Media

News media play a crucial role in the production and reproduction of stereotypes, influencing public opinions regarding different groups and minorities. Thus, acquiring a deeper understanding of media coverage of Muslims and Islam is decisive for understanding the sources of public attitudes towards Muslims. This study aims at displaying how Muslims and Islam are represented in Italian and Spanish media. Focusing on the online version of the two most influential newspapers in each country (El Mundo and El País for Spain and Il Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica for Italy) from 2015 to 2020, the results show how Muslims in both countries are mostly framed either related to terrorism or within the general discourse on immigration. In both cases, they are portrayed as “others”. The article also presents a novelty, defining and observing two different types of Islamophobia, Banal and Ontological Islamophobia.

The construction of the meanings of #coronavirus on Twitter: An analysis of the initial reactions of the Italian people

ABSTRACT The first months of 2020 saw the coronavirus pandemic explode. Moving from China, it arrived in Europe and hit Italy. The place where the debate around it exploded was the media ecosystem. In a short time, it was an explosion of tweets related to the hashtag #coronavirus on Twitter. With the aim of reconstructing the meanings of the hashtag and the content, in terms of sentiment and opinions, of the reactions of the Italians, we collected in a large size corpus, the hundred thousand Italian tweets containing the #coronavirus produced during the media hype period from the Twitter repository (February 24th - 28th, 2020). Media hype period was discovered by digging in the online articles of ‘la Repubblica', based on the presence of the words: coronavirus and Italy. The media hype is February 26th. The corpus underwent Emotional Text Mining (ETM), an unsupervised methodology, which allows social profiling based on communication. The study of the word chosen to talk about a topic and their co-occurrence allows the understanding of people’s symbolizations, representations, and sentiment, about the coronavirus. In a retrospective logic, this mechanism allows us to reconstruct the sensemaking and nuances of meaning attributed by users to the coronavirus hashtag.