Mediascapes journal

Serial Imaginaries

2026-06-30T16:04:23+00:00

This issue of Mediascapes Journal, titled GEMINI-SCAPES. Detecting the Interplay between Serial Dramas, Gender Issues and European Young Audiences and edited by Marica Spalletta, Louise Brix Jacobsen and Valentina Re, investigates the interplay between gender, seriality and youth in the contemporary mediascape. Originating from the final conference of the European project GEMINI (CERV-2022-GE), it brings together eighteen contributions by forty scholars from Italian, European and US universities. Bridging the social sciences and the humanities, the articles show how serial dramas have become privileged spaces in which gendered imaginaries are produced and circulated, and at the same time accepted, opposed or negotiated by increasingly transnational audiences. They also lay bare the ambiguity of a cultural diversity that, in the platform society, works as a strategic asset and a marketing lever rather than a value to be safeguarded – and, still more sharply, the question of authenticity, which marks the boundary between transformative inclusion and cosmetic normalisation. What emerges is an ambivalent picture, one in which progressive visibility coexists with persistent conventions, and where diversity and inclusion prove to be contested achievements rather than settled gains.

Media e cambiamento sociale

2025-11-19T14:57:33+00:00

This paper analyzes some particularly important issues relating to the relationship between the media and the main processes of change affecting advanced societies. First, it considers how the way in which the media address their audience has changed, in particular the shift in media studies from the concept of mass to that of swarm. It then analyzes the changes in the role played in society by communication tools, which have progressively improved their communication capabilities, thereby increasing the level of influence they are able to exert in the cultural sphere. Finally, it reflects on how these tools are increasingly taking the form of a new type of media: true ‘bio-media’. That is, media that are capable of eliciting emotional responses in individuals. This explains why individuals today tend to establish relationships with these tools that are characterized by ever-increasing emotional intensity.

Playing for the Planet?

2026-03-17T15:09:36+00:00

As environmental crises intensify, video games have emerged as vehicles for sustainability communication. Stakeholders increasingly pursue “green activations” – campaigns mobilizing commercial gaming platforms to develop ecogames aimed at environmental awareness. This article refines and operationalizes a process-centric analytical framework to examine how socio-ecological contexts, campaign structures, and video game ecosystems co-shape ecogame design and circulation in such initiatives. Through a case study of a museum-led Minecraft campaign in Venice, employing stakeholder interviews, paratext analysis, and socio-material mapping, findings reveal persistent tensions: platforms reducing infrastructure and audience acquisition costs while imposing constraints on content design and distribution; awareness-raising aims without impact assessment; the perceived accessibility of popular platforms masking pay-to-access barriers; and erosion of institutional control as ecogames transition to third-party commercial distribution. The refined framework offers analytical tools for comparative research, enabling scholars and practitioners to critically navigate the processes shaping sustainability communication within commercial gaming platforms.

Intrattenimento e impegno

2026-02-26T15:57:37+00:00

In politica, umorismo e satira sono oggetto di studio da molti anni, sebbene la maggior parte degli approcci teorici tenda a minimizzare il significato di questi elementi, trasformandoli in generi o strumenti retorici che non consentono di comprenderne appieno l'impatto. Questo articolo si propone di analizzarne l'impiego in ambito politico, studiandone l'efficacia e il conseguente ruolo all'interno dell'ampio e sfaccettato universo della comunicazione politica. L'articolo si propone di offrire una panoramica delle dinamiche che caratterizzano l'applicazione di queste note forme di retorica e del loro valore per l'interpretazione del flusso mediatico a livello politico. Suggerisce inoltre una prospettiva sociologica che identifica umorismo e satira come sistemi culturali indipendenti e flessibili, capaci di catturare l'interesse del pubblico verso le sfide sociali e politiche. Questa prospettiva consente di apprezzarne il potenziale come strumenti nelle strategie di divulgazione e di comprenderne il significato nel contesto variegato sdello stato dell'arte. In questo contesto, piattaforme come TikTok risultano fondamentali, in quanto offrono un canale privilegiato per la diffusione virale di contenuti umoristici e satirici, capaci di raggiungere un pubblico vasto ed eterogeneo, spesso giovane e poco propenso alle forme tradizionali di comunicazione politica. L'interazione diretta e immediata che queste piattaforme favoriscono contribuisce ad accrescere l'efficacia dell'umorismo e della satira, rendendoli strumenti ancora più potenti per orientare e informare l'opinione pubblica.

From God to Caesar

2026-03-05T16:32:39+00:00

This article investigates how the Catholic Church’s presence, authority, and legitimacy are negotiated within Italy’s digital public sphere. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of public religion and digital religion, and adopting an agenda-building perspective, the study examines how social media platforms reshape both the actors involved in public debates about religion and the issues through which religious institutions gain visibility. The Italian case is particularly relevant given the Catholic Church’s longstanding influence in public life and the growing challenges to its authority in contemporary media environments. The analysis is based on a large-scale dataset of 75,959 Facebook posts published during the first six months of 2018 and 2019 - two pivotal years marked by national and European election campaigns and a renewed political instrumentalization of religious symbols. Data collected via CrowdTangle are examined through a mixed-methods approach. Findings show that social media platforms foster a marked expansion and diversification of actors engaging with the Catholic Church. Alongside institutional voices at the national level, local parishes, clergy, religious orders, associations, citizens, media outlets, political actors, and even disinformation sources all contribute to shaping the Catholic Church’s public visibility. This plurality of voices fragments institutional authority and undermines the possibility of a unified communicative narrative. At the same time, the Catholic Church’s online presence extends beyond traditional political or moral controversies to include a wide range of strictly religious content - such as prayers, liturgical life, and ecclesial news - that had previously received little attention in legacy media. To conceptualize these dynamics, the article proposes and empirically tests a typology of the Catholic Church’s presence in public debate based on two dimensions: the type of actor and the type of issue. The resulting four categories capture the hybrid and contested nature of religion’s visibility in contemporary digital media ecosystems.

Exploring the Zombie Internet

2026-03-16T09:14:15+00:00

This study advances the concept of deceptive information operations as an analytical framework that moves beyond traditional false-news taxonomies to capture a broader spectrum of manipulative and harmful communicative activities on social media. Drawing on Starbird et al.'s (2019) work on strategic information operations, Chadwick and Stanyer's (2022) theory of deception and META’s Coordinated Inauthentic behaviour (Gleicher, 2018), we examine three cases discovered through an automated detection workflow that continuously monitors coordinated sharing behaviour on Facebook: a state-aligned pro-Putin propaganda network, a coordinated campaign promoting online gambling, and a network of poorly moderated public groups distributing adult content and fraudulent links. Each case is analysed through three dimensions: the deceptive nature of the content, the exploitation of platform affordances, and the participatory behaviours that sustain and amplify these operations. We used an inductive grounded coding approach applied to account-level metadata and the 500 most-viewed posts per network retrieved via the Meta Content Library. The findings reveal shared mechanisms across all three operations, e.g. coordinated behaviour to exploitat Facebook's algorithmic ranking and simulate organic popularity, and the deliberate mixing of benign and harmful content to obscure intent and evade moderation. These dynamics resonate with the notion of the "Zombie Internet", an information ecosystem in which the boundary between human and automated, toxic behaviour becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. Together, the cases expose structural vulnerabilities in platform governance that allow deceptive operations to persist, scale, and evade detection. The study contributes an empirically grounded conceptualisation of deceptive information operations and identifies critical gaps in platform governance frameworks that focus narrowly on content inauthenticity rather than addressing the structural conditions that enable manipulation at scale.

The findings reveal shared mechanisms across all three operations: coordinated timing of posts, exploitation of Facebook's algorithmic ranking to simulate organic popularity, synthetic engagement, and the deliberate mixing of benign and harmful content to obscure intent and evade moderation. These dynamics resonate with the notion of the "Zombie Internet", an information ecosystem in which the boundary between human and automated, toxic behaviour becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. Together, the cases expose structural vulnerabilities in platform governance that allow deceptive operations to persist, scale, and evade detection. The study contributes an empirically grounded conceptualisation of deceptive information operations and identifies critical gaps in platform governance frameworks that focus narrowly on content inauthenticity rather than addressing the structural conditions that enable manipulation at scale.

Rappresentazioni della migrazione e borderwork artistico nello spazio pubblico

2026-02-26T16:23:41+00:00

This article critically analyses the hegemonic representation of migration in European public discourse, structured around two dominant yet complementary frames: the securitarian-emergency frame, which constructs migration as an “invasion” and a threat to public order, and the humanitarian-victimhood frame, which reduces migrants to passive subjects of compassion. Both frames enact a process of othering and depoliticisation, systematically obscuring migrant agency, complex subjectivities, and the structural causes of human mobility. In response to this representational and epistemological impasse, the study examines the R.E.D. (Reframing the European Dream) Carpet project as a methodological intervention. Through a process of artistic co-creation involving an intercultural theatre company and a visual artist, interviews with migrants, frontline workers, and law enforcement officers were transposed into an interactive public installation: a 13-metre red carpet that, via embedded QR codes, provides access to a constellation of performative video clips and symbolic illustrations. A multi-layered analysis reveals how the device operates as a form of critical borderwork, deconstructing hegemonic representations across three interconnected levels: the semiotic-narrative, by restoring polyphonic voices and complex intentionality; the spatial-material level, by repurposing public space as a site for reflexive encounter; and the phenomenological level, by generating cognitive and empathetic shifts in its audiences. The findings underscore that the strategic convergence of participatory research and critical artistic practice offers a viable pathway not merely to critique dominant narratives, but to materially co-construct alternative public spheres where plural citizenship can be symbolically reimagined.

The potential for solidarity in fiction

2026-05-19T07:56:00+00:00

This article examines how fiction produced by and for transnational, regional and public service platforms respectively open up possibilities for imaginaries of solidarity. Using feminist and narrative theory, we explore how information guides sympathy for the characters, and what the characters and the plot reveal about the embedded gaze. The results highlight the significance of racial and geographic segregation across all three series. Thin Blue Line offers a structural critique of racism while promoting inclusion and solidarity based on middle-class tolerance. In contrast, the more commercially oriented Top Dog and Snabba Cash present a war of all against all to rule society, building on suspense to create sympathy for the characters. These two series imply a “peeping” middle-class gaze into the dangerous world of criminality, thus activating racialized boundaries for who is included in the community of solidarity. Based on the reading of the three series, the article finds that local contexts are important for opening imaginaries of solidarity.

Young Audiences’ Engagement with Danish Film and Television

2026-03-31T09:48:32+00:00

Reaching young audiences has become a challenge for broadcasters and content producers across Europe. This article examines the media consumption and tastes of children and young adults in the small market Denmark. It is based mainly on the qualitative data from two research projects, Reaching Young Audiences (Independent Research Fund Denmark, 2019-24) and Crescine (Horizon Europe, 2023-26). Findings reveal that supported by the abundant availability of content, young audiences display highly personalised, and gendered, preferences in media, influenced by their interests, hobbies, and gender. In social situations, such as co-viewing or going to the cinema, collective mood-management, group needs, and potential for fostering common talk become key factors for content choice. Young audiences’ preferences for higher budgets, visceral genres and their need for choices that match individual as well as group interests challenge small markets like Denmark with limited production capacity.

The role of serial dramas in shifting gender boundaries for teenage audiences, in a conservative context

2026-03-12T14:05:21+00:00

The reception of serial dramas by teenagers is a fertile field for analyzing how symbolic gender boundaries are negotiated, in an environment with strong, yet contested social boundaries. Internationally, structural changes in production and distribution of popular culture have made multiple gender identities more visible. In addition, shifting values have made gender issues more salient. Nevertheless, social contexts remain conservative in many countries, with evidence ranging from opinion polls and populist parties positioning to political initiatives and gender-related crimes. Based on focus groups with teenagers and semi-structured interviews with high-school teachers, this article discusses the effects of international serial dramas on young adults’ construction of symbolic gender boundaries, against a conservative background in an Eastern European country. The results indicate that many teenagers have a different perception of multiple gender identities and gender issues, as compared to their relatives and other members of their community. This perception is directly influenced by their cultural consumption. Young adults have little or no opportunity to talk about gender equality issues within the family, at school or in their community. Some admit to avoiding discussing gender equality with both adults and their peers, because it is a controversial subject. Nevertheless, they are all aware of the main gender-related issues discussed worldwide, from women’s representation in politics to LGBTQ+ rights. The main source of information for these teenagers is social media and serial dramas on streaming platforms, and their cultural consumption is shifting symbolic gender boundaries towards more inclusive views.

From Conflict to Connection

2026-03-20T17:52:58+00:00

The mother–daughter relationship is often described as “natural,” rooted in biology and emotional continuity. Yet both motherhood and daughterhood are historically and culturally constructed roles, shaped by social expectations, symbolic hierarchies, and media representations. This article reflects on the evolution of these constructions in contemporary society, combining empirical research on Italian female adolescence with an analysis of recent Italian media. Interviews with adolescent girls reveal a strong idealization of the mother as independent, courageous, emotionally present, and authoritative. However, this aspirational image contrasts sharply with current representations in Italian television series and films, where mothers frequently appear absent, fragile, or emotionally disconnected. The article argues that this tension reflects layered media models that, over time, have redefined what mothers and daughters can or should be. Motherhood and daughterhood thus emerge not as natural givens, but as negotiated and culturally mediated positions.

Shame, Platforms, and the Spectacular Girl

2026-04-20T13:28:04+00:00

This article examines how three recent Italian teen dramas — Baby (Netflix, 2018–2020), Skam Italia (TIMvision/Netflix, 2018–2020), and Nudes (RaiPlay, 2021–2024) — construct girlhood as a mediated performance shaped by shame and conflicting modes of agency. Drawing on feminist shame theory, postfeminist media critique, affect theory, and platform studies, the article argues that shame functions less as a private emotion than as a structuring cultural force: it is through shame that girlhood becomes legible, narratable, and spectacular within a media ecosystem governed by platform logics, algorithmic visibility, and participatory culture. Reconstructing the series' production histories and ce ultimately argues that the adolescent girl's affective precarity is not incidental to platform culture's commercial logic but constitutive of it.

New Girl(hood)

2026-04-07T12:34:11+00:00

This article analyses the representation of girlhood in contemporary Italian teen series produced by the public service broadcaster Rai, with particular attention to the divergences between linear broadcast television and the streaming platform RaiPlay. First, the study situates the analysis within the transformations of the Italian television landscape over the past decade, following the entry of global SVOD platforms such as Netflix, which have reshaped production practices, audience expectations, and representational norms. Within this context, it examines the rise of youth-oriented seriality and the increasing centrality of themes related to identity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging, highlighting the emergence of girlhood as a key narrative site within Italian teen drama. The article then turns to Rai’s response to these shifts, focusing on its transition from public service broadcaster to public service media – a process that has effectively produced two distinct spaces for serial storytelling: prime-time generalist television and the digital-first environment of RaiPlay. Finally, through a comparative textual analysis of selected teen series, the article shows how prime-time productions remain shaped by co-viewing logics and pedagogical imperatives, whereas RaiPlay enables more youth-centred, intersectional, and empowerment-oriented narratives aligned with the cultural expectations of Gen Z audiences. In doing so, the article contributes to ongoing debates on public service media, platformisation, and the evolving representation of girlhood in contemporary European television.

Complex Femininities in Television Series

2026-04-01T14:51:16+00:00

Questo articolo esamina l’evoluzione delle rappresentazioni femminili nella serialità televisiva contemporanea, con particolare attenzione alla crescente complessità dei personaggi femminili e al loro rapporto con le diverse correnti del femminismo. Adottando un quadro teorico integrato che combina media studies, sociologia della cultura e gender studies, lo studio analizza quattro serie televisive - Orange Is the New Black, The Handmaid’s Tale, Fleabag e Bridgerton - selezionate attraverso un campionamento ragionato per la loro rilevanza culturale e per la capacità di illustrare diverse configurazioni narrative della femminilità. L’analisi evidenzia come le narrazioni seriali contemporanee si discostino dalle rappresentazioni tradizionali delle donne, introducendo protagoniste caratterizzate da ambivalenza, vulnerabilità e complessità morale. Particolare attenzione è dedicata alla figura dell’antieroina, intesa non semplicemente come controparte femminile dell’antieroe maschile, ma come una configurazione narrativa autonoma che destabilizza le aspettative normative di femminilità. I risultati mostrano come le rappresentazioni femminili non seguano una traiettoria lineare di emancipazione, ma si sviluppino all’interno di continuum complessi e contraddittori, in cui istanze femministe, sensibilità postfemministe e prospettive intersezionali si intrecciano e vengono continuamente rinegoziate. L’articolo sostiene inoltre che le serie televisive funzionino come importanti spazi di produzione culturale e di apprendimento sociale. Attraverso le loro strutture narrative, le strategie estetiche e la circolazione transmediale, esse contribuiscono a plasmare gli immaginari di genere e a diffondere modelli di identità, agency e relazionalità. In questo senso, la serialità si configura come un dispositivo pedagogico informale, capace di favorire processi di socializzazione al genere e di richiedere lo sviluppo di una critical gender media literacy. In conclusione, lo studio contribuisce ad ampliare il concetto di complessità narrativa, mettendo in luce il ruolo dei personaggi femminili nella ridefinizione sia del racconto televisivo sia delle concezioni culturali contemporanee della femminilità.

From the “glass cliff” to the “ice floe”

2026-03-16T17:00:46+00:00

This article examines the narrative construction of crisis leadership at the intersection of gender and ageing through the analysis of the Danish political drama Borgen - Power & Glory (Netflix–DR, 2022), situated within the Nordic noir tradition. Focusing on the trajectory of Brigitte Nyborg – a former Danish prime minister who returns to high political office as Minister of Foreign Affairs in her fifties – the study investigates how the series represents leadership under conditions of overlapping crises and how these conditions shape the legitimacy of female later-life leadership.

Methodologically, the study combines a background analysis which situates the series within its cultural and production context with a qualitative narrative analysis of the season, organised around two interconnected dimensions: crisis visibility as the condition through which leadership is continuously evaluated, and gender and ageing as intersecting sites of public legitimacy and personal vulnerability. The findings show how Nyborg’s leadership is progressively shaped by the accumulation of crises – namely geopolitical, environmental, institutional and personal ones. While early assertions of sovereign authority increase political visibility, they also contribute over time to isolation, delegitimisation and moral strain. Leadership evaluation is further intensified by gendered and age-related expectations, as authority becomes entangled with motherhood, generational conflict, emotional conduct and the visible ageing female body, particularly through the narrative problematization of menopause.

The article argues that, rather than conforming to the logic of a sudden fall implied by the glass cliff, Borgen - Power & Glory articulates a shift from the “glass cliff” to the “ice floe”, capturing a gradual process of erosion, in which prolonged crisis management, adaptive compromise and sustained visibility destabilize leadership from within, contributing to a more complex and ambivalent representation of female leadership in contemporary serial drama.

Constructing Non-Parenthood

2026-04-21T13:22:48+00:00

This article analyses how non-motherhood and voluntary non-parenthood are discursively constructed at the intersection between contemporary TV series and digital communities, focusing on the distinction between childfree and childless positions. Anchored in social constructionism and media and cultural studies approaches, the study examines a mixed corpus of posts and comments from r/childfree and four TV-related subreddits (The Handmaid’s Tale, How I Met Your Mother, Workin’ Moms, Fleabag), using quantitative (lexical frequencies, topic modelling) and qualitative (digital ethnography, interpretive coding) methods. The findings show that serialized narratives continue to foreground motherhood and frame non-motherhood mainly in terms of lack or failure, while sidelining childfree trajectories, whereas r/childfree functions as a gender-neutral space in which non-parenthood is explicitly named and normalised as a positive biographical choice. Here, non-motherhood and non-fatherhood are negotiated more horizontally, weakening the symbolic link between femininity, motherhood and a “successful” life course. Read through Fraser and Foucault, online childfree communities appear as counter-spaces where alternative grammars of reproduction and adulthood are elaborated against mainstream audiovisual imaginaries.

Perilous Journeys

2026-03-12T15:20:16+00:00

The debate surrounding gender equality and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in cultural and creative industries has intensified globally. Yet, progress remains slow, often resulting in what is termed “precarious diversity”. This article presents the methodological framework and comprehensive findings of the E|Quality project (2024–2026), an interdisciplinary research initiative conducted by the Università Anonima 1 and the Università Anonima 2. The project employs a multi-level, mixed-methods approach to examine the persistence of exclusionary dynamics within the Italian cinema and television sectors across three relational dimensions: off-screen (labour structures), on-screen (representation), and in-front-of-screen (audience reception). The study first examines the regional funding landscape from 2017 to 2025, revealing a gradual yet uneven integration of DEI principles. A systematic review of 219 funding calls shows that while 77% include DEI-related criteria, these measures often focus on a narrow range of variables – primarily binary gender and age – and frequently adopt punitive “sanctioning” models rather than rewarding proactive inclusion. Furthermore, an institutional analysis of the top 95 Italian production companies reveals limited formalisation of DEI; only 31% have adopted formal documentation, with initiatives largely driven by international corporate groups responding to market pressures rather than by a deep-seated cultural shift within independent firms. Regarding off-screen hierarchies, a longitudinal analysis of 12,820 television episodes (2000–2023) shows a stark and persistent gender gap, with women accounting for only one-third of the workforce. Beyond raw headcount, women work 12% fewer episodes than men, indicating reduced employment continuity. The data reveals that while technical “below-the-line” roles show marginal growth, creative “above-the-line” positions remain stubbornly resistant to change. Paradoxically, as roles gain prestige and economic value, they become harder for women to access, as recruitment continues to rely on informal, male-dominated networks and precarious work arrangements that disadvantage those with caregiving responsibilities. On-screen, the project utilised automated speech recognition to measure female visibility. The results confirm that narrative genres function as formulaic systems with distinctive gender dynamics: comedy is the most accommodating to female dialogue (up to 61%), while crime dramas and dramas exhibit extreme marginalisation, with female speaking time as low as 5%. Although focusing on female protagonists can override these patterns, it does not automatically guarantee parity in speech distribution. In conclusion, the Italian audiovisual industry remains characterised by exclusionary logics that operate across systemic, organisational, and narrative levels. The limited effectiveness of current policies stems from a partial understanding of exclusion mechanisms and a lack of inclusive culture within production routines. To move beyond “performative washes”, the article argues for a shift toward structural changes that embed DEI within the very creative and organisational fabric of the industry.

Disability on Screen

2026-03-17T15:06:35+00:00

This article examines the representation of disability in contemporary Italian public service media, focusing on Rai productions between 2015 and 2022 within a media landscape reshaped by platformisation, regulatory reform, and evolving inclusion strategies. Developed within the framework of the research project WokeIt, the study addresses disability – particularly at its intersection with gender – as a key site for interrogating the relationship between visibility, narrative form, and institutional responsibility.

Drawing on feminist disability studies and Disability Media Studies, the article analyses two case studies: the prime-time television series Blanca (2021-) and Federico Bondi’s film Dafne (2019). Through close textual analysis, it explores how these works construct disabled female subjectivity, negotiate the politics of the gaze, and articulate different configurations of empowerment, humanisation, and relationality.

The article situates these representations within the broader tensions that shape public service broadcasting, examining how disability becomes a narrative and cultural terrain through which competing models of legitimacy, authenticity, and social responsibility are staged.

Gender Narratives and Serial Production

2026-03-16T16:33:20+00:00

Television series have emerged as a central cultural force in contemporary media, functioning as narrative form that both reflect and influence societal values and attitudes. For researchers examining youth cultures, the distinctive connection between serialized productions and younger audiences offers crucial insights into identity formation processes and how cultural meanings are negotiated within these demographics. In today’s media environment, dominated by global digital platforms and social media networks, television fiction plays a key role in forming the collective imagination of young adults, who constitute the most engaged and interactive segment of digital audiences.

Recent serialized productions attuned to social dynamics have become essential tools for depicting the complexities of adolescent and young adult life. Serial fictions like Euphoria and Skam have achieved considerable success by tackling challenging topics including sexuality education, gender politics, harassment, problematic relationships, and diversity. These narratives actively participate in shaping youth experience rather than merely reflecting it, offering linguistic frameworks, interpretive lenses, and meaningful patterns through which younger viewers process their daily lives. Within this landscape, gender emerges as a central organizing principle for youth-oriented serial fiction. While adolescent programming has traditionally reproduced conventional gender stereotypes, more recent productions offer increasingly nuanced portrayals of young people’s experiences, engaging with difficult subjects like sexual abuse and gender-based violence. This contribution examines Nudes, the Italian adaptation of a Norwegian format produced in 2021 by Rai Fiction. The series follows three young characters – Vittorio, Sofia and Ada – whose lives are affected by online harassment and non-consensual intimate images (NCII), also known as revenge porn. The production explores this phenomenon from various generational and gendered perspectives, shedding light on the stark inequalities inherent in digital harm.

The analysis reveals how unauthorized circulation of intimate visual content produces vastly different consequences depending on victims’ gender. The series exposes a continuing gendered double standard governing young women’s bodies and sexual expression, compelling them toward constant self-monitoring and pre-emptive restraint. Actions that might be dismissed as mistakes or adventures for young men become permanent stains on young women’s reputations. Drawing on media analysis frameworks, this study highlights how current serial narratives occupy a critical position between depicting and constructing youth realities, serving as vehicles for critical examination and cultural evolution, particularly regarding gender inequities and power imbalances that continue to define younger generations’ lives in digital society.

LGBTQIA+ Youth in European Series

2026-04-28T08:23:29+00:00

This article examines the circulation of queer coming-of-age narratives in contemporary European television through a transnational and transcultural perspective. Drawing on queer television studies, transnational media theory, and fandom studies, it analyzes how LGBTQIA+ youth representation is shaped by different cultural, industrial, and socio-political contexts, while simultaneously enabling shared modes of audience identification across borders. The article focuses on two case studies: the multinational format SKAM and its Italian and German adaptations, and Un professore, the Italian adaptation of the Catalan series Merlì. Through close textual analysis and attention to audience reception and fan practices, the article explores how narratives of coming out, queer desire, and community formation are articulated differently within streaming-oriented and mainstream broadcast contexts. While national specificities strongly influence representational choices, the analysis shows that queer experience functions as a key unifying framework for audiences. Transcending linguistic and national boundaries, queer viewers form intimate publics grounded in shared affective structures, emotional recognition, and collective meaning-making. The article argues that contemporary European queer television is defined by a productive tension between contextual specificity and transcultural identification.

Streaming Gender

2026-04-07T09:21:50+00:00

The research examines the representation of gender dynamics in serial narratives produced in non-Western countries and distributed through Netflix. Owing to the prominent role of television series as both entertainment and cultural platforms that facilitate societal engagement - particularly among young adults - and critical reflection on contemporary social issues, they represent an ideal medium for examining the political and social challenges faced by youth today. The study focuses on three series, each consisting of one season, from Netflix Italy's catalog: A Love So Beautiful (China), Sparta (Russia), and Love 101 (Turkey). The audiovisual products share a common school setting centered on adolescent protagonists. The main objective is to understand how gender-related issues and gender roles are narrated in countries with political and cultural systems different from those of so-called Western Europe. The study integrates qualitative content analysis and visual analysis to evaluate 48 episodes. We developed an analytical-qualitative grid to explore how gender roles, relationships, and stereotypes are constructed through a gender-focused analysis while accounting for specific historical and local cultural contexts. Findings show that the three series articulate distinct affective regimes through which gender relations function as infrastructures of social regulation: normalization and emotional discipline in the Chinese case, negotiated relationality in the Turkish one, and coercive and dystopian configurations in the Russian narrative. Rather than converging toward Western liberal models of gender empowerment, these productions propose alternative configurations of youth subjectivity and intimacy, revealing how platform-mediated circulation contributes to the everyday enactment of soft power through affective and relational narratives. The study bridges local audiovisual production and global platform distribution, highlighting gendered youth narratives as key sites where cultural imaginaries, political meanings, and transnational audiences intersect.

Between Stereotypes, Awkwardness, and Queer Utopia

2026-03-16T16:24:06+00:00

Television series provide a rich terrain for exploring the complexities of adolescence as a transitional period, especially because of the uncertainty they are made of, and because they are able to create what I call “minor passions.” This paper aims to contribute to an “affective turn” in television studies by tackling the ways TV fiction portrays the paradoxical moment of adolescence—when one is no longer a child and not yet an adult—through both stereotypes and alternatives to conventional gender expectations. Queer theory helps us frame this process not as a linear one, but as a constant transition made of multiple, minor passions. These include frustration, injustice, and boredom, which are not simplistically resolved. Instead, they become intertwined with characters’ everyday lives, challenging the societal imperative of “growing up well,” as well as the injunction to “happiness”—the idea that everything is in place for anyone to thrive (Ahmed 2010). This paper focuses on the awkwardness tied to gender expression and identity, highlighting characters who challenge binary norms and confront embarrassing or painful scenarios, in the course of their “sideways growth”. The case study is the French series Chair Tendre (2022), available on France Télévisions’ Slash platform. Launched in 2018, the platform targets high-school students and young professionals. It seeks to foster a deeper and more nuanced understanding of sexuality and gender by challenging stereotypes and offering viewers alternative models of development and self-understanding. By proposing alternatives to conventional expectations and linear developmental paths, Chair Tendre stands out as an intriguing project. While it may not be a “successful” series in traditional terms—and perhaps precisely because of this—it allows us to engage with dissonant emotions and uncertainties that mark both adolescence and serial narratives.

Escape from the Streets

2026-06-24T08:57:51+00:00

The category of the “adolescent” entered public discourse in the early twentieth century primarily as a problem. Newspaper accounts described the unsettling visibility of urban youth who appeared to elude the main agencies of modern socialisation – school, family, and wage labour – and were often associated with street bands, deviance, and petty crime. After the Second World War, however, the figure of the “teenager” gradually acquired cultural autonomy and, in many narratives, a positive aura. Cinema, popular music, and youth subcultures transformed the street into an initiatory space: a laboratory of identity, a theatre of conflict, and a site in which adolescents could temporarily exit institutional interiors and experiment with autonomy.

From the 1980s onwards, this configuration began to change. Mainstream television and the expanding circuits of consumer culture increasingly relocated adolescence to regulated interiors – bedrooms, schools, malls, and other domesticated settings – while late-twentieth-century street-based subcultures persisted only as a residual “long tail”. This process intensified in the early 2000s and radicalised in the 2010s. Contemporary teen dramas depict adolescents less as urban nomads than as subjects enclosed within micro-spaces such as bedrooms, corridors, and platform interfaces. The street largely reappears as a sign of danger, surveillance, or moral downfall, rather than as a space of discovery or freedom. This article conceptualises this transformation as a form of spatial withdrawal within the media imaginary of adolescence and interprets it as the outcome of a long historical genealogy rather than as a sudden decline in sociability. Focusing on teen seriality of the last fifteen years, the analysis traces this shift through three intertwined dimensions: the rise of a pervasive digital mediasphere that virtualises practices once tied to urban movement; the consolidation of informational capitalism, which erodes the boundary between leisure and labour by anticipating expectations of productivity and visibility into youth; and the intensification of social pressures, which displace conflict inward and foreground mental health, identity work, and defensive forms of self-protection. By treating the imaginary as an active symbolic infrastructure, the article shows how transformations of experience become narratively plausible before they are fully legible as sociological facts. In this perspective, the marginalisation of the street signals broader redefinitions of subjectivity, social control, and the conditions of becoming adult.

Blending Genres, Crossing Generations

2026-04-17T16:45:40+00:00

Over the past decade, the expansion of streaming platforms has reshaped the landscape of teen television, fostering more open, complex, and nuanced representations of adolescence. Series such as SKAM, Sex Education, Never Have I Ever…, Heartstopper, as well as the Italian Baby, SKAM Italia, Nudes, Prisma have contributed to redefining the genre, addressing themes including mental health, gender identity, and sexuality with increasing depth. At the same time, however, recent industrial shifts suggest a partial retreat from these renewed forms of teen series, as economic pressures and platform strategies favour content with broader, intergenerational appeal. We identify one key manifestation of this transition in the growing hybridisation of teen drama with other genres, often accompanied by more adult-oriented narrative frameworks and intergenerational perspectives. This article examines two interrelated questions: to what extent genre hybridisation contributes to processes of “adultification” in both content and audience, and how teenage viewers – particularly girls – perceive and negotiate these transformations. Drawing on an exploratory qualitative study based on focus groups with high school and university students, the analysis shows that young audiences display a critical awareness of the adult gaze embedded in contemporary teen series and reflect on how such representations may shape broader social understandings of adolescence.

“Old” Series and “Young” Generations

2026-03-23T09:14:50+00:00

Il presente contributo si inserisce in un più ampio progetto di ricerca volto ad analizzare la trasformazione della natura, del ruolo, delle funzioni e delle modalità di produzione e riproduzione della cultura popolare in Italia nel contesto della deep mediatization e della platformization. In particolare, esso esamina l’attuale capacità della cultura popolare di contribuire alla costruzione di identità collettive, al dialogo intergenerazionale e a un shared we-sense nel contesto italiano.

Alla luce di questo quadro teorico, il paper presenta i primi risultati di una sezione della ricerca dedicata a esplorare il potenziale attuale di specifici contenuti mediali come veicolo di espressione, condivisione e diffusione di valori socialmente rilevanti tra generazioni. Nello specifico, questa parte del lavoro si concentra su due serie televisive (Sex and the City e Desperate Housewives), considerate pietre miliari nella rappresentazione delle questioni di genere per il pubblico dei Baby Boomers e, soprattutto, della Generazione X , interrogandosi se e in quale misura esse siano ancora in grado di trasmettere valori legati al genere al pubblico della Generazione Z, come accaduto per le generazioni precedenti.

Il contributo presenta quindi il quadro teorico di riferimento sulla cultura popolare, per poi illustrare obiettivi e metodologia della ricerca sui prodotti culturali e, infine, discutere i risultati e i principali spunti emersi da questa fase dell’indagine. L’obiettivo principale è delineare le criticità, le potenzialità e i limiti della cultura popolare come habitat utile alla trasmissione di valori tra generazioni. Da questa fase della ricerca emergono diversi elementi di interesse, tra cui il fatto che i partecipanti interpretano Sex and the City e Desperate Housewives attraverso una prospettiva fortemente presentista. Valori e conflitti vengono valutati come “attuali” o “superati”, mentre le forme narrative un tempo percepite come dirompenti risultano in larga parte normalizzate. Ciò suggerisce uno scarto tra il riconoscimento dei temi e il riconoscimento del loro impatto culturale, confermando come la capacità della cultura popolare di sostenere un “we-sense” stabile e condiviso tra generazioni appaia oggi messa in discussione.