La Repubblica Research Articles

THE NEWS MEDIA AS NETWORKED POLITICAL ACTORS

Research on internet politics has found that digital media have contributed to a hybridization of the organizational practices of parties, movements and interest groups. Little attention, however, has been paid to how the news media employ online engagement tools to pursue political goals, as is the case when political parallelism is present. This study addresses this issue through an in-depth analysis of two Italian cases: the e-petition campaigns by the newspaper la Repubblica and the assemblage of a convergent media network to broadcast a protest rally organized by the television talk show host Michele Santoro. Online citizen engagement now constitutes a valuable political resource for journalists and news organizations that have historically been involved in the political battlefield rather than practicing objectivity and neutrality. However, these efforts are limited in their democratic potential to the extent that they constitute top-down leveraging of audience support by media elites rather than grassroots channels for citizens to set the agenda and voice their opinions. The relevance of these phenomena goes well beyond Italy, as parts of the media systems of most Western democracies are characterized by political parallelism.

Public Sphere 2.0? The Democratic Qualities of Citizen Debates in Online Newspapers

Comments in online news could be the contemporary enactment of the eighteenth-century cafés that founded public sphere. This article assesses to what extent do these forms of digital discussion fit in Habermas’ principles for democratic debate, using his discursive ethics as a demanding normative benchmark. The sample of more than 15,000 comments was selected from the online versions of five national newspapers of record from different political and journalistic contexts: The Guardian (United Kingdom), Le Monde (France), The New York Times (United States), El País (Spain), and La Repubblica (Italy). The ethical guidelines and legal frameworks set up by the newspapers as well as their moderation strategies were considered to understand the different settings of the conversations. Two models of audience participation emerge from the analysis, one where communities of debate are formed based on mostly respectful discussions between diverse points of view and another of homogenous communities, in which expressing feelings about current events dominates the contributions and there is less of an argumentative debate.

How do the media affect public perception of climate change and geohazards? An Italian case study

This paper uses a combination of a qualitative approach and a quantitative, software-based approach to explore the Italian print media construction of climate change and geohazards between 2007 and 2010. We have broken down our analysis in two sections: the first one deals with the coverage of climate change; the second one focuses on the media representation of hydrogeological hazards and extreme events in Italy.Our software-based, qualitative and quantitative analysis of 1253 storylines from two major Italian broadsheets (the La Repubblica and the Corriere della Sera) has enabled us to assess the presence of typical journalistic frames such as conflict and dramatization, as well as newly-introduced ones such as “prevention vs damages”, and “weather vs climate”. Our results show that the two newspapers appear to have different “agendas” that might have different impacts on their own readerships: the La Repubblica has been on the forefront of forging a broad public consensus on the need for actions aimed at tackling climate change, whereas the Corriere della Sera has gradually built a journalistic agenda aimed at minimizing the urgency of the climate change problem.As regards the media's representation of hydrogeological hazards, we have confirmed what assessed by previous research, i.e. that Italian journalists still prefer to focus on damages rather than prevention; on a better note, the tendency of the Italian press to confuse weather with climate, blaming climate change for extreme rainfalls causing landslides and floods, has decreased in the last four years.

Quality of reporting on the vegetative state in Italian newspapers. The case of Eluana Englaro.

BackgroundMedia coverage of the vegetative state (VS) includes refutations of the VS diagnosis and describes behaviors inconsistent with VS. We used a quality score to assess the reporting in articles describing the medical characteristics of VS in Italian newspapers.Methodology/Principal FindingsOur search covered a 7-month period from July 1, 2008, to February 28, 2009, using the online searchable databases of four major Italian newspapers: Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, La Stampa, and Avvenire. Medical reporting was judged as complete if three core VS characteristics were described: patient unawareness of self and the environment, preserved wakefulness (eyes open), and spontaneous respiration (artificial ventilator not needed). We retrieved 2,099 articles, and 967 were dedicated to VS. Of these, 853 (88.2%) were non-medical and mainly focused on describing the political, legal, and ethical aspects of VS. Of the 114 (11.8%) medical articles, 53 (5.5%) discussed other medical problems such as death by dehydration, artificial nutrition, neuroimaging, brain death, or uterine hemorrhage, and 61 (6.3%) described VS. Of these 61, only 18 (1.9%) reported all three CORE characteristics and were judged complete. We found no differences among the four investigated newspapers (Fisher's exact = 0.798), and incomplete articles were equally distributed between journalistic pieces and expert opinions (χ2 = 1.8854, P = 0.170). Incorrect descriptions of VS were significantly more common among incomplete articles (13 of 43 vs. 1 of 18; Fisher's exact P = 0.047).Conclusions/SignificanceCore VS characteristics are rarely reported in Italian newspaper articles, which can alter adequate comprehension of new developments and (mis)inform political, legal, and ethical decisions.

The Rosarno Revolt: Toward Political Mobilization for Immigrants?

“Rosarno: Immigrant revolt, hundreds of cars damaged” was the alarming headline in La Repubblica on 7 January 2010. An immigrant protest and ensuing episodes of violence in the small town of Rosarno in Calabria in southern Italy were followed with intense interest by the national and international media and prompted a heated public debate in Italy. Upcoming regional elections and shared political responsibility for immigration resulted in politicians blaming their opponents for the disorder. Minister of the Interior Roberto Maroni’s immediate response was to maintain that the events were the result of too much tolerance toward undocumented immigrants. Following the discovery that the majority of migrants involved were legally resident in Italy, the government subsequently emphasized the role of inadequate labor market controls and organized crime.

The Balance of the Coalition

As summed up by Denis Verdini, coordinator of Forza Italia (FI), in an interview in La Repubblica after the constitutional congress of People of Liberty (PdL) at the end of March 2009, “It is more difficult to unite the elites than to unite the voters.” This assessment is especially apt considering the tensions that have characterized relations between allies in the government during the early part of the current coalition’s tenure. This analysis can be extended to the entire government, which, beyond the newly formed PdL—composed of FI, the National Alliance (AN), and a small sub-group of the Christian Democrats who support northern Italian autonomy—also includes the Northern League (LN) of Umberto Bossi and some smaller parties, represented by a team of junior ministers: the Liberal Populists (a faction within the PdL), the Christian Democratic Party (DC), and the Movement for Autonomy (MpA) of the president of Sicily, Raffaele Lombardo.

Identity, place and culture: Patrick McCarthy's columns in the Bologna pages of La Repubblica

For six years between 1994 and 2000, Patrick McCarthy contributed occasional articles to the Bologna section of La Repubblica. These writings were intensely personal interventions on various themes that reflected their author's lifelong interest in literature, culture, politics and sport. Many of them addressed issues of civic life in a city that had once enjoyed a reputation as a showcase of Communist local administration in Italy, but which in 1999 elected a right-wing mayor. In contrast to an impersonal urban modernization that he saw as destructive, McCarthy championed a humane ideal of community that was not ‘traditional’, but rather open and flexible.

Islamic terrorism

Islamic terrorism

Genre and loans: English words in an Italian newspaper

‘Botti vietati agli under 14,’ La Repubblica, 29 Dec 03. The aim of this work is to examine the use of English loan words in a specific genre of language: parts of an Italian newspaper. In essence, it looks at how English is encroaching on one among many languages – and occurring in their texts. The key question is: ‘In a specific context, what are loanwords?’, in terms of which we will consider genre as it is exemplified in newspapers, following which there is an analysis of loan words used in the different sections of an Italian newspaper

The Elections in the Cities: Yet Another Defeat for the Center-Right

<section class="abstract"> In 2004, for the third successive year, the center-left opposition achieved political success in the local elections, while the center-right government suffered a clear defeat. The headlines of the main daily papers were unequivocal: “Cities and Provinces, the Victory of the Center- Left” (Corriere della Sera, 15 June); “Olive-Tree Coalition Victorious in the Cities” (la Repubblica, 15 June); “The Center-Left Wins the Race in Milan” (Corriere della Sera, 28 June); “The Polo Loses Even in Milan” (la Repubblica, 28 June); “The Center-Right Hands Milan over to the DS” (Il Giornale, 28 June). The 2002 and 2003 elections had already registered clear victories for the center-left, not least because of the symbolic importance of the successes of Riccardo Illy in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Enrico Gasbarra in the Rome provincial elections. </section>

Atlantis-Sardinia

This is a multi-authored review of a book that is extremely rich and lengthy (43 chapters, among whose titles are: Chapter III, In the name of the Lord God, this round Earth of the Ancients becomes flat again. Or perhaps not? (In which — by way of preface — the story is told of how our great Sphere, which was measured and drawn by Egyptian Alexandria, became a Mystery, Sacrilege and dark until ten years ago); Chapter X, Strabo: ‘The Pillars? Gibraltar or Cádiz! But none of us have ever really seen them' (An impossible Interview with the great Greek historian/geographer who summarizes for us what was known by the great men who preceded him. Christ had not yet been born and the site of those famous pillars had already been lost); Chapter XII, With Herodotus in the Eldorado of silver. A voyage to Tartessos, the Andalusian Atlantis (In which it will be seen that neither the Bible nor Herodotus ever said Tartessos was Spain. But only that it was in the West and beyond the Pillars of Hercules: exactly like Sardinia …); Chapter XXVIII, The Peoples-of-the-Sea versus Ramses III or the Very First World War). The author writes on culture for the daily newspaper La Repubblica.

Picturing Pasolini

Like many children, I kept a scrapbook. Even before I knew who he was, had read any of his poetry, or had I seen any of his films, I collected in it images of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pictures of Pasolini were abundant in the Italian language magazines and newspapers that were lifelines to my parents' native country, to their native language and culture. These publications served the same purpose for me. Between the mid-sixties and well into the seventies, magazines such as Gente, L'Europeo, Oggi, Epoca, Arnica, Panorama, and newspapers such as Il Messagero, La Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, were passed around, read, and then piled up in corners all around our house.

The social representation of immigrants: ThePantanellaissue in the pages ofLa Repubblica

Abstract The present case study examines the discourse of the leading Italian newspaper La Repubblica on the Pantanella, an irregular settlement of immigrants in a central area of Rome. The article portrays how the discourse helped to build consensus in favour of and justified the eviction of the immigrants from this building and their dispersal by the local authorities on 31 January 1991. The analysis uses the categories of the prejudiced attitude schema (Van Dijk 1987) to examine the social representation of the out‐group in descriptive news discourse, as well as in statements taken from popular and official discourses. In addition, the use of arguments and rhetorical moves contained in the public and political reactions to the issue indicate the need to provide (objective) reasons and to realise strategies of positive self‐presentation in order to present the solution of the eviction as acceptable. It is argued that these various elements of discourse contributed to the definition and management of the...

The communication systems of representations: psychosocial research into the representations of computers and information technology in Italian daily newspapers

This paper presents the results of research on representations of computers and information technology in the three daily Italian newspapers ( La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, La Repubblica, and II Corriere della Sera), between 1976 and 1984. The titles of 2816 articles were analysed by categorial content analysis. The aim of the research is the exploration of structural latent dimensions and of differential aspects of representations of computers in terms of `central nuclei' with respect to the three newspapers and to the nine years. The data were analysed by several steps of multiple correspondence analysis (statistical package: SPAD-N). Five dimensions were identified. They together accounted for 74% of the total variance ( optimistic formula of Benzecri) and were defined as: 'secondariness/emphasis in the typography of newspaper space dedicated to computers': `ambivalent/positive attitudes toward the computer': `descriptive/evaluative elements of opinions about the computers': `educative-performative/productive applications of the computer': `supplements/articles as editorial characterizations of news about computers'. With the DEMOD step of SPAD-N, eleven `central nuclei' were also recognized. They show the utilization of a `diffusion system' for La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno and La Repubblica, of a `propagation system' for II Corriere della Sera; and a movement from `diffusion' to `propagation' over the period considered. The outcome of the results is discussed in relation to the naturalization of technical language, and with respect to results of other researches on attitudes towards, opinions about, and representations of the computer in Italy.

Reviews and Short Notices

Reviews and Short Notices

The Italian Communists: Internationalisms Old and New

THE ITALIAN COMMUNISTS: INTERNATIONALISMS OLD AND NEW Patrick McCarthy Wh hen the Italian Communist party (PCI) selected Achille Occhetto to be its general secretary inJune 1988, it appeared to be in an "inevitable decline."1 Just one year later, however, in the June 18, 1989, European Parliament elections the PCI won 27.6 percent of the vote, 1 percent more than in the 1987 Italian legislative elections and its best result in years. While it is too soon to decide whether the decline has been reversed, halted, or merely slowed, this is a good moment to assess the PCI and its future. A thorough analysis of the Italian Communist party would consider its domestic policies, its place in the Italian political system, intra-party issues, and its bid to present itself not as a part of the communist world but as a democratic, West European left-wing party. For reasons ofspace, only the fourth aspect will be considered, with the first three mentioned in so far as they overlap with it. The problem of internationalism is all the more important because theJune 18 elections took place two weeks after the massacre of the Chinese students in Beijing and against the background of newspaper headlines about "The End of Communism" and "The Red Desert."2 While 1.Alberto Ronchey, "Un declino inevitabile," La Repubblica, June 1, 1989. 2.Panorama, June 18, 1989. Patrick McCarthy is professor of European studies at SAIS Bologna Center. He recently edited The French Socialists in Power (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987), and is working on a book on the Italian Communists in the 1980s. The research for this article was carried out at the Instituto Gramsci in Bologna, Italy. The author wishes to thank the staff for their kind help. 163 164 SAIS REVIEW the PCI has not won acceptance as a Western party like the German Social Democrats or the French Socialists, it has survived "the end of communism " because it has ceased to be a part of communism. To see how this occurred, one must analyze the PCI that Occhetto inherited and the impact he has made. Occhetto's First Year "Is the party over?" was the title of a 1988 Time article on the Italian Communist party.3 It expressed what many Italians, Communist and non-Communist, were wondering. In 1976, the PCI had won 34.4 percent of the vote, and for the next three years served in a government coalition. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the party consistently received 30 percent of the vote. Then in 1987, its support plunged to 26.6 percent , a sharp drop according to the arithmetic of Italian elections. Scattered local elections in May 1988 showed another 4 percent drop, to 22.8 percent. June saw a plunge in the Friuli regional elections in which the PCI received 17.8 percent of the vote, down from 21.7 percent five years earlier. Meanwhile, support for the Italian Socialist party (PSI) jumped to 17.5 percent from 11.3 percent in 1983. The reasons seemed obvious. The non-Communist left had defeated the Communists in all other West European countries, and now the "Italian anomaly" would be ended. World communism was in crisis, and the PCI would be dragged down with it. Italian Communists too were gloomy: "Our ideas, our models and our myths were worn out by the late 1970s," said one spokesman. "We are literally in a time of make-orbreak ," said another.4 A mildly sympathetic journalist wrote, "It is less and less clear what the PCI wants and what it wants to be."5 Financial problems grew— the party had a deficit of around $20 million— and membership dropped. In its stronghold of Turin, the number of PCI members plunged from 47,000 members in 1976 to 29,000 in 1989. Leadership was another part of the problem, and even before the June 1988 Friuli elections the party secretary, Alessandro Natta, was replaced by Occhetto, who chose as his slogan "discontinuity," a heretical term for traditional Communists. Flanked by a young and eminently unideological ruling group, Achille Occhetto announced the abandonment of the communist dream of a completely different society — there...