Mediascapes journal

Trust, transparency and disintermediation: an analysis of blockchain implementation in the supply-chain

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

Blockchain represents the backbone of cryptocurrencies, their underlying technology. It can be seen as a large database shared by a peer-to-peer network of users, which collectively validates the information that is recorded on it. Not residing on a single central server, it overcomes a centralised logic, the one used by the best-known web applications like Amazon, Google or Facebook. Instead, DApps (DApp being the acronym of Decentralised Application) are distributed, decentralised applications specifically designed to run on blockchain systems. Blockchain does not involve intermediaries or trusted third parties and its main feature lies in its ability to increase transparency and traceability in transactions. A recent resolution of the European Parliament called for measures to increase the adoption of public and private blockchains, particularly in supply chain management, stating that they can have an indirect effect both at a social and economic level. Several studies have already analysed the potential of blockchain in the agri-food sector, but also in the production and distribution chain of luxury goods or other consumer goods. The existing literature focuses mainly on the role of blockchain in improving the processes related to safety and efficiency of the supply chain, yet it does not seem to problematize the concept of transparency. Despite this, the relationship between transparency and trust, which is generally confirmed by literature, is far from linear. Following an introduction of the technical characteristics of blockchain technology and its possible implementation, we address the way in which blockchain affects the issues of disintermediation, such as in the public sector, where the role of blockchain is still being defined. We also focus on the way blockchain shifts the centre of gravity of trust from an institutional, central entity, either towards the periphery or towards a technological system. Comparing the constructs of trust and transparency, we question the a priori desirability of transparency. In fact, the relationship between trust and transparency becomes rather complex in organizational communication processes. A spotlight is also placed on the aspects that affect the relationship between an organization implementing the blockchain and its relevant stakeholders, along with their different needs. We argue that blockchain still leaves a need for a relationship of trust, as much as the achievement of a trust-free model is pursued. Finally, we mention some of the major critical issues of blockchain, which are still to be resolved.

Women in the lockdown in Europe. Media representations of gender differences in “phase 1” of the coronavirus pandemic

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

How have women been portrayed during the initial phase of the coronavirus pandemic? What issues were discussed across European newspapers when women were at the center of the narrative during the lockdown? This paper aims to provide some initial answers to these questions by looking at a bulk of 462 articles collected across 5 different European countries during the so-called “phase 1” of the COVID-19 pandemic when strict stay-at-home policies were imposed to contain the spread of the virus. Results show that four frames were mostly used by the media: women as a vulnerable group, women as actors in the pandemic, women’s health, and women as a transformative force in society. Implications of these findings will be discussed and the emergence of a “women’s narrative” in the coronavirus crisis will be proposed.

Digital Animal Advocacy: A Study on Facebook Communication Styles of Italian Animal Rights Organizations and their Followers’ Reactions

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

Despite online media having become an increasingly valuable tool for social movements to achieve their goals, the digital presence of animal advocacy organizations is still under-explored. This paper contributes to fill the gap by analyzing the social media communication of Italian animal advocates against the backdrop of a typology developed in the offline context that distinguishes political, anarchist, anti-political and mainstream animal advocacy. By using text and data mining techniques, the Facebook pages of eight Italian organizations representative of each type of advocacy were analyzed, based on over 7,000 posts and followers’ reactions. The findings complicated the offline typology by showing elements of continuity, discontinuity and hybridization between offline and online activism. They also shed light on the online communication of animal advocates and provided some initial insight into how online media can affect animal rights activism, thus providing a contribution to the emerging field of digital media and social movement studies.

I discorsi d’odio online in una prospettiva comunicativa: un’agenda per la ricerca

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

The phenomenon of hate speech has become a predominant component of public debate and a point of great interest in academic research. Plenty of studies investigating the various expressions of hate speech, including online hate speech, have been conducted. Despite the efforts made, however, the outlines of this phenomenon remain extremely uncertain. In fact, limitations in the intention to reduce hate speech to a purely legal approach is emerging. Even though the latter was originally the dominant approach, it appears to be inadequate for capturing a fluid and ever-changing phenomenon such as the hate speech today. Despite the similarities with offline hatred, online hatred has widened to include the most diverse expressions, messages, and hostility practices, which can be either organized or individual, and often implicit. All these features proper of the online hate speech make it difficult to establish, according to the specific circumstances, whether these are forms openly aimed at inciting hatred and violence against target groups likely to harm victims. Nonetheless, distinguishing the different roles of the actors involved into the spread of hate speech (e.g. perpetrators of online speech, more or less aware spreaders of hate, victims) can be a source of uncertainty. Building on this foundation, the article aims to investigate hate speech of today’s world through a multidimensional framework fit into the context of hybrid media. Moving from Lasswell (1948)’s Communication Model, this contribution illustrates the importance of observing all the dimensions involved in hate speech, including the communicator, the message, the receiver, considering as well the digital media’s context and the related specific properties, and the consequences arising from the interaction between the different dimensions. The idea behind this proposal is that in order to understand both mechanisms and hallmarks of ordinary online hate practices, it is necessary to move away from specific and fragmented approaches. These, indeed, (selectively) analyse specific portions of the phenomenon while losing sight of other dimensions’ roles and their action and feedback relations. The transformative nature of hate speech requires the adoption of an innovative approach, which cannot be limited to the compilation of a list of examples and cases to be banned. On the contrary, it should aim for tuning in to cultural and digital practices used by users in the production of hate speech. Because, if it is true that online hate does not differ from hate tout court, it is also true that progressive communicative shifts might occur and lead to the transformation of forms of discrimination into something apparently harmless such as “just funny stuff”.

Dalla “Violenza mitica” alla Violenza digitale. Nuove soggettività e forme di potere nella Sociologia dei nuovi media

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

This article proposes a study on the new subjectivities of living digital networks that considers quest as the time as the place where the contrast between mythical violence and divine violence identified by Walter Benjamin is transfigured into the current one between political authority and popular power.

Parts 1 and 2 are written by Serena Minnella. She introduced Benjamin’s violence conception and questions. Parts 3 and 4 are written by Guerino N. Bovalino, where he depicted actual subjectivities in digital world.

Odisseo torna a Itaca: il grande viaggio della scrittura. Per un’analisi mediologica dei testi antichi

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

The article proposes a mediological analysis applied to Homeric texts and in particular to the Odyssey. The study is based on three main phases: the reconstruction of the medial framework within which the poems are born and constitute themselves; the observation of the various representations of poetic figures read in a mediological sense; the interpretation of some textual metaphors which in turn express a radical medial conflict within Greek society between the 7th and 6th centuries. The Odyssey thus reveals a very powerful operation of re-mediation and integration between different media environments. The poem in fact witnesses the definitive passage from a phase in which writing supports and helps oral performance to one in which writing becomes a winning medium capable of incorporating the oral one, an operation that is the basis of Western literature over the centuries and even millennia.

Piattaforme, adolescenti e forme di soggettivazione. Una lettura foucaltiana del progetto Transmedia Literacy

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

The article illustrates some results of the international Transmedia literacy project, funded under the Horizon 2020 program. The contribution focuses, in particular, on the relationship between the centrality of the peer to peer dimension in teens’ communication practices and the forms of subjectivation produced in relation to such practices.

Through the use of the concept of technologies of the self, developed by Michel Foucault (1988), the selected research data demonstrate how children (in the age group 12-18 years) are subjectivated and, at the same time, subjectivate themselves by developing knowledge, skills and identity in their "digital social life", finally reaching the maturation of an ethical awareness (Serpieri 2018; 2020). Through activities of fruition and production of contents and co-construction of relationships, they promote a transformation of the self that takes place in the context of peer-to-peer interactions located in the practices of digital platforms uses.

The project shows how in the context of peer relations, especially in social media, but also through the use of video games, teens develop an unexplored and stratified set of skills, in accordance with the concept of transmedia literacy, “a set of skills, practices, values, priorities, sensibilities, and learning/sharing strategies developed and applied within the context of the new participatory cultures” (Scolari 2018, 11).

In this sense, the research results, in the light of Foucalt's reflection, photograph the young students, capturing them in an unprecedented way, enhancing educational actions and skills that they have acquired in the informal sphere and that could be recognized and supported also within the world of school, where education, in its broadest and most inclusive meaning, often struggles to cross the border of "education". Thus, the practices of subjectivation exercised through the technologies of the self, such as writing, reflexivity, meditation, putting oneself to the test (just to name a few) contribute to forming identity by unfolding their ethical value and are associated with the maturation of transmedia skills which become skills of identity management and interpersonal relationships among peers.

Concepts such as that of "society of control" (Deleuze 1990), "platform society" (van Dijck, Poell and de Waal 2018), "surveillance capitalism" (Zuboff 2019), "neurocapitalism" (Griziotti 2016) or "bio capitalism" -cognitive ”(Fumagalli 2018) provide the conceptual frame of reference that defines the increasingly complex society in which these transformation strategies are situated and nourished.

Intermediale, transmediale, crossmediale in Westworld

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

In this essay we will discuss through the lens of Lotman’s “semiosphere” (1984) the media ecosystem (Pescatore, 2018) of the HBO show "Westworld" (Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, 2016 – ongoing). The replicability thematized in it, between loops, repetitions, memorial overlaps, together with the problem of consciousness and empathy which distinguish a human being from a cyborg since P.K. Dick’s science fiction stories, define a constantly translating and reinterpreting fictional universe.

Observing a sequence from the first episode of the first season and the mobile video game linked to the show, we propose a continuum that crosses the "Westworld" semiosphere, intended here as a complex set of relationships – inter-textual and inter-medial, trans-medial and cross-medial – that can be interpreted coherently. In this continuum we see on the one hand the intertextual and intermedial relations that retranslate the fictional universe into an intersemiotic continuity that moves from the 1973 movie “Westworld” (Michael Crichton) and its sequel, continues through the TV show “Beyond Westworld” (Lou Shaw) briefly aired in 1980, and lands in the transmedia continuity on which the HBO show "Westworld" and its promotional paratexts are built. On the other hand we propose to place crossmedia products like video games and fan works on the opposite pole of the continuum, in partial discontinuity with the original fictional world.

We intend intermediality not only as a hybridization of thresholds between media (Rajewsky, 2005), but also as a bridge of continuity and a translation invariance (Dusi, 2015). In these terms, also adaptation, remake, repetition, and variation, are to be considered inter-medial products. Intermediality so becomes one of the poles of an interpretative and transformative process based on mechanisms of translation, to be always considered in their sociocultural context and constraints. On the other pole we will instead have all the cross-medial practices allowed by a strong discontinuity from their sources, as mash-ups and creative reworkings produced by the fans. In the tension between these two poles, in the middle of the semiotic continuum, we will find re-elaborations and transmedial expansions that have a continuity with the reference fictional world (like remixes). In our opinion, this idea broadens Jenkins' distinction between "adaptation" and "extension", the former taking the same narrative from one medium and telling it again in another, and the latter trying to add something to the existing story in its passage from one medium to another (2011). We will therefore talk about intermediality in front of adaptations and remakes, and about transmediality when the original fictional world is extended through inventions and new variants (like sequels, prequels, paraquels), also reaching radical transformations as in the case of cross-media products.

Letteratura serializzata. L’adattamento interculturale e le logiche commerciali televisive: il caso Babylon Berlin

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

In the last decades TV series have utilised literary sources to create their subjects, and not only for TV costume dramas. A particular example of adaptation from a literary text to TV series is Babylon Berlin produced in Germany from Volker Kutscher’s novels focused on police commissioner Gereon Rath. At the heart of the narration are not only Rath’s investigations but the attention to the novels’ historical and cultural references. The story is set in Weimar Republic between 1929 and1933 and the audiovisual format clearly recreates the locations and the entire cultural context of the time with an almost philological care. The process of adaptation is interesting not only for the inevitable differences between the two expressive forms and inherent semiotic processes, but also because it is the result of a chosen process (and project) of internazionalization of the narrative product. The series has been thought for an international market with an extremely high budget for this kind of production in Europe, more than forty millions euros. If for American Tv series these mechanisms are common, for European productions it is not so. However, these mechanisms connected to production and marketing – used also within the literary panorama with examples such as Dan Brown’s and Joel Dicker’s works – inevitably change narrative forms, even more so when an intermedial adaptation occurs. How does this cultural adaptation of the audiovisual product linked to its internazionalization change the narrative form? To which point economical and marketing dynamics determine a change in narrative forms, beginning with a serialization of the product? Which fruition of a refined and visually well-finished product like Babylon Berlin presuppose for its specific audience?

Dimmi che sigla guardi e ti dirò chi sei

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

Opening credits, sequences which accompany each episode of a television series, have radically changed over time. From being brief and marginal texts, edited with low care e watched with a low level of attention, they have become artistic and elegant sequences, often created by specialized companies to keep the viewer’s eyes glued to the screen. The opening credits still keep their original function – giving information about the programme – but nowadays they achieve their goal in various ways. The main titles refer to the content of the series using different tones, thereby setting a particular mood that prepares the viewer for the show. In this article, we will try to focus on these different and refined strategies used for attracting and keeping the viewer’s attention.

Distopie contemporanee: Bandersnatch come evento seriale

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

The article investigates new forms of dystopic narration in relation to the emerging phenomenon of TV series and broader culture of media consumption. The spectacle of contemporary fragility is at the same time pre-mediated by hyperdiegetic narrations reproduced by the daily consumption of these media products. Zombies, vampires, lycanthropes, and all the kinds of monsters that used to inhabit the post-apocalyptic imagery have been introjected by human and post-human characters, struggling against both their interior consciousness and their technological and media prosthesis. In so doing, narratives of a dystopic future build a link with our post-media present, pointing to a wider cultural/epistemological issue. Reflexively, the same dystopic universe expands its limits by locating within its narrative and media structure the subjective and social experience of the audience. In this respect, the anthological series Black Mirror is emblematic in both representing and reproducing a diegetic and medial collapse between dystopic fiction and reality. In particular, the episode “Bandersnatch” actualizes this narrative and its temporalities in terms of interactivity as a mode of consumption. The spectator-user rather than being actually engaged in the narrative construction of the episode, is further integrated in the serial reproduction of the text itself, and of the dystopic media ecosystem in which both the episode and the audience’s experience occur.

VoD: la nuova era del lettore modello (Arde Madrid, Movistar+, 2018)

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

La plataforma VoD española Movistar+ estrenó Arde Madrid en 2018, una comedia negra ambientada en el Madrid de 1961 donde vivía Ava Gardner, que combina personajes reales y ficcionales con eventos históricos e inventados para construir un retrato en blanco y negro de un período relevante de la historia de España: el desarrollismo. La serie capitaliza el hecho de que la actriz tuviera como vecinos en la vida real al expresidente argentino Juan Domingo Perón y a su tercera esposa Isabelita, exiliados por aquel entonces en España, para anclar en la realidad un relato que revela su fascinación por la cinefilia en las numerosas referencias a la biografía y la filmografía de Ava Gardner, así como al cine español de los años cincuenta en el que se inspira. Arde Madrid constituye un mnemotopo del patrimonio cultural cinematográfico ligado al mito de la actriz, cuya localización en un tiempo y un espacio específicos convierte la serie en un referente de la memoria social que pretende recuperar. Su estructura narrativa configura una constelación de microhistorias carente de una única trama totalizadora, cuyo sistema axiológico se asienta en la oposición arriba/abajo figurativizada mediante el contraste pobres vs ricos; libertad (sexual) vs represión. El lanzamiento de Arde Madrid estuvo precedido de una intensa campaña promocional orquestada por sus creadores, el polifacético Paco León y su mujer y guionista, Anna R. Costa, quienes remontan precisamente el origen de su relato a una anécdota entre la actriz y el general Perón. Las informaciones sobre la serie, diseminadas a través de una exhaustiva campaña de transmedia marketing en prensa y redes sociales, conforman un paratexto ejemplar, tanto en la acepción hjelmsleviana de adecuación, pertinencia y representatividad , como en el sentido que Todorov (2000[1998]) atribuye a aquellos textos sobre el pasado que nos permiten aplicar las enseñanzas recibidas al presente. Este artículo explora el rol subsidiario de dicho paratexto en el proceso de interpretación de una serie cuya localización en un tiempo y un espacio extratextuales la convierte en un referente de la memoria social que se propone recuperar. Se parte de la hipótesis de que el lector (modelo) transmedia, construido en dos tiempos por el paratexto y el texto respectivamente, encuentra su correlato en la existencia de un autor (modelo) transmedia destinado a tender un puente entre la interpretación extatextual y la interpretación intratexual, por donde el espectador ubicuo de la ficción televisiva en la era del VoD transita cómodamente.

Tv playlist: serie tv, musica e supervisione musicale

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

The essay focuses - within a semiotic methodological setting - on the role of music within the TV series in recent years, starting with a comparing with Seventies. That television sound universe - including commercials - constituted a sort of world apart with respect to the music heard on the radio in that same period. An historical disjunction between music and television which seems to change coinciding with the mid-eighties. In this regard the innovative example of the Miami Vice series is here mentioned, and a crucial role seems having been played also by the advent of music videos and the MTV network. An influence felt both in television and in cinema, with a new relevance acquired by compilation scores, that is, only composed of pop songs (think of the Q. Tarantino case), or in any case of non-original compositions. A significantly different role of music in the TV series appeared with the "The OC" case: a series where music was not meant to have only an underscore function but it should have being an essential element of the storytelling process. The choice of Alexandra Patsavas as musical supervisor marked a change in the relevance of this productive role. Usually music supervisor has the task of finding the suitable songs to compose the soundtrack of an audiovisual. A role involving taste and legal skills, but which in recent years is also crucial in the creation of television storytelling. For this purpose, a case analysis of some sequences of the "Better Call Saul" series is proposed here. In addition, some examples of contemporary use of music in the TV series are treated, relating for instance to the use of diegetic music (music belonging to the fictional world of characters) and to the use of compilation scores coming from past soundtracks, as is the case of the "Homecoming" series.

Figure eretiche e conflitti socioculturali ne "Il nome della rosa", fra serie tv e romanzo

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

The intention of this article is to analyze and discuss, from a socio-semiotic and media theory point of view, some emerging narratives and discursive figures, starting from the novel by Eco (1980), from its film adaptation (1986), but above all to get to the new Tv series (2019). We will discuss the "figure of the heretic", also considering the scientific and general interest that this multiple image has always aroused, of course, also starting from the studies on the Middle Ages. We will consider some characters, as they are built within the novel of Eco, trying to see how they reticulate above all in the adaptation to a television series, with the aim of understanding their genesis and the transformation of those figures and their discursive devices (as well as ideological and axiological one). And also providing a broader reference to the recent panorama of media and Tv studies, applied to digital media and social media; but also trying to evaluate the "subtextual" network and the textual archipelago (like historical references, both medieval and contemporary) created by Eco. Finally considering it as a starting point for a possible reasoning on the "palimpsestual" forms of current media phenomena, including social media and cross- and trans-media narrative practices.

Sul genere serial. “Shtisel” forma di vita ebraica ortodossa e traduzione culturale

2020-12-01T22:15:29+00:00

Trascrizione dell’intervento tenuto presso l’Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia alla Giornata di Studi “Semiotica e sociosemiotica della serialità postmediale” (3 maggio 2019, Reggio Emilia), organizzato da UNIMORE (DCE), con la collaborazione del CiSS Centro Internazionale di Scienze Semiotiche Umberto Eco (Università di Urbino Carlo Bo).

Introduzione. Costruire mondi complessi. La fiction televisiva contemporanea e le sue sfide semiotiche

2020-12-01T22:39:33+00:00