Mediascapes journal

Comunicazione istituzionale e prospettive di genere

Lucia D'Ambrosi — 2024-08-03

Over the past few years, marked by issues and activism from feminists, women's movements, and the LGBTQ+ community, there has been increasing attention in the public discourse on gender-sensitive policies, advocating for a more ethical and responsible dimension of public sector communication. In Italy, the focus on gender issues in public sector communication strategies has been slow to emerge, often remaining barely visible. However, particularly during the pandemic, gender studies in public sector communication have intensified, partly due to pressure from engaged citizens. Significant emphasis has been placed on promoting non-discriminatory and gender-sensitive language in institutional recommendations and local guidelines, with various initiatives implemented by municipalities and regions aiming to enhance women's identity in public sector communication and counter stereotypical and discriminatory representations. The paper presents the findings of a pilot study addressing gender perspectives in public sector communication by examining the complex dynamics between rule adoption, the tendency to replicate established practices, and the development of a creative dimension in communication strategies. The research focuses on selected Italian regions and investigates their communication practices through official Facebook accounts, analyzing verbal, visual, and audio-visual languages. The study's findings confirm the delicate balance between the rules governing gender-sensitive approaches and their manifestation in communication practices, influenced by the creative variable and the empowerment of public communication professionals. Additionally, the research aims to test a methodology that can be replicated in other regions or local contexts, potentially facilitating comparative analyses.

L’Innovazione dei Servizi Pubblici attraverso l’Intelligenza Artificiale

Antonio Opromolla — 2024-08-03

I servizi pubblici digitali possono migliorare i processi di comunicazione e il coinvolgimento dei cittadini, contribuendo così a rafforzare le relazioni tra cittadini e pubblica amministrazione. Fino ad ora poche amministrazioni pubbliche stanno esplorando il ruolo dell'Intelligenza Artificiale (IA) per innovare l'interazione dei cittadini con i servizi pubblici digitali. La letteratura accademica ha esplorato il modo in cui l’intelligenza artificiale può migliorare i servizi e il coinvolgimento complessivo dei cittadini: l’intelligenza artificiale può migliorare l’efficacia e l’automazione dei servizi, fornire servizi su misura, offrire assistenza in contesti specifici e prevedere l’evoluzione di diversi scenari. Per raggiungere questi obiettivi i servizi pubblici digitali dovrebbero essere progettati seguendo un approccio “human-centered”, garantendo così la sostenibilità nel tempo. Le scienze sociali dovrebbero studiare il modo in cui i cittadini si avvicinano all’IA. La ricerca mostra i risultati di 4 focus group realizzati in Italia che hanno coinvolto 40 giovani appartenenti a due diverse fasce di età (14-18 e 19-24), con l'obiettivo di indagare conoscenze, aspettative e priorità dei giovani rispetto al ruolo dell’IA nei servizi pubblici digitali e per progettare nuovi scenari di innovazione. Il paper rivela che i giovani italiani sono riluttanti ad applicare i sistemi di IA ai servizi pubblici. Non si fidano dell’IA in relazione al trattamento dei dati personali e sensibili. Utilizzando metodi di service design ai partecipanti è stato chiesto di definire possibili scenari di innovazione. I partecipanti identificano alcune aree di intervento (ad esempio mobilità, istruzione e salute) e problematizzano alcune questioni principali, ad esempio la mancanza di competenze nell’interazione con l’IA. In conclusione, la ricerca evidenzia alcune interessanti aspettative e priorità dei giovani in relazione all'IA e conferma l'importanza di co-progettare servizi di IA con le persone.

Affective Polarisation

Alice Baroni — 2024-08-03

Journalism has a conflicting relationship with emotions, and thus scholars are divided in the critique about the nexus between emotions and professional ideals in journalism. While some authors argue that emotions ought to have no place in journalism, as they challenge established notions of objectivity and impartiality, others recognise their value and precise role in calling into question hidden power relations within the classic liberal journalism tradition. Yet the fast-changing digital media environment in which news media organisations must fight for news users’ attention on social media has redesigned mainstream news production and distribution, and made some authors proclaim an “emotional turn” in journalism (Wahl-Jorgensen & Pantti, 2021). Studies that link social media, news and emotions mainly focus on the audience-centric perspective, aiming to assess which types of emotions increase the sharing potential of news stories and virality (Al-Rawi, 2019; Hasell, 2021). These studies also focus on the differences between the uses of emotional expression by partisan and non-partisan news media, predominantly in the UK and US contexts. In this paper, we build upon Iyengar et al’s (2019) notion of “affective polarisation” to contribute to this discussion by extending the investigation to the Italian news media and Twittersphere. Differently from the liberal journalism tradition, the Italian media system is representative of the Polarised Pluralist Model or Mediterranean that is considered to be strongly politicised and exhibits significant levels of parallelism (Hallin & Mancini, 2004; Papathanassopoulos, Giannouli & Archontaki, 2023). Methodologically, we deploy machine learning techniques for sentiment and emotion analysis to almost half million tweets retrieved from the pages of eight Italian news outlets on Twitter (recently rebranded as ‘X’). Namely, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Corriere della Sera, Il Post, Fanpage, La Gazzetta dello Sport, Il Sole 24 Ore, La Repubblica, HuffPost Italia. This aims to address a twofold research question that asks: How do different types of news outlets use emotional valence and language in tweets? Which types of emotions trigger more engagement with news users? We also hypothesise that the more partisan a newspaper is, the more it uses negative valence and language, in addition to speculating about news engagement with negative posts. The findings open up new avenues for further investigations about the interplay between partisan media and emotion, alongside journalists’ intentionality and strategies for crafting the affective composition of news content.

Fake news

Nicola Strizzolo — 2024-08-03

The objective of this research is to analyse the evolution and connotations of the expression “fake news” from its inception to its current use. The investigation focuses on the origin, the quantitative trajectory of its use, and the macro-categories of meaning associated with this term. To achieve these objectives, a content analysis was conducted on prominent media outlets between 2016 and 2022. The dataset, comprising 30,035 articles, enabled the tracing of the term’s usage trends. Furthermore, sub-corpus sampling and computer-assisted qualitative techniques were employed to assess the evolving connotations and macro-categories of meaning related to the expression. The results indicate that the mature usage of the term “fake news” emerged in November 2016. The term’s usage increased significantly, reaching its peak in 2018, and then spread into broader realms. Initially, the expression was primarily associated with the “world of the Net” and the specific political events of 2016, but it gradually expanded to encompass journalism and socio-political conflict in general. Even during the decline and stabilisation that took place between 2019 and 2022, the term “fake news” continued to be used pervasively, with references to journalism overtaking those to the online world. This was combined with a continuous “background noise” of oppositional and emotional connotations. The term “fake news” was originally designed to criticise online information. However, it has since evolved into a stigmatising and generic label that is utilised in political and social discourse to discredit opponents. This negative connotation erodes trust in media and institutions, intensifies divisive rhetoric, and hinders open and democratic debate in increasingly complex social systems.

Cross-platform political communication

Enzo Loner — 2024-08-03

Research shows that social media favors personalized, intimate, and emotional political communication and underlines the elective affinity between social media and populist leaders. However, cross-platform research on political communication is still rare. Existing studies focus on three aspects: how party strategists or politicians assess the relative importance of different social media platforms based on their affordances, the parties’ and politicians’ different investments in the various platforms and audience engagement, and message-tailoring on specific social media platforms. In this paper, we aim to compare the political communication of two right-wing populist party leaders in Italy—Giorgia Meloni (FdI) and Matteo Salvini (Lega)—between 2021 and 2022 on three social media platforms: Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. The analysis focuses on time, content, and similarity. The results of the cross-platform analysis confirm the evidence of a permanent campaign mode of the two leaders and point to four main results: a cross-platform similarity in communication, a difference in audience engagement, the relevance of depoliticized political communication, and a higher audience engagement when communication focuses on positive rather than aggressive content. These findings significantly impact our understanding of political communication in the digital age.

Strappare lungo i bordi di genere

Antonella Capalbi — 2024-08-03

Moving from the idea that gender is a creative social praxis, Men’s Studies have highlighted how masculinity, far from being perceived and universal, has different dimensions. There are different ways of inhabiting masculinity, and different postures in relation to hegemonic models of masculinity. Within’ this framework is the animated miniseries Strappare lungo i bordi by Zerocalcare, distributed by Netflix Italia in 2021. The series proposes a representation of gender identity in opposition to the model of hegemonic (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) and normative (Kimmel 1995) masculinity, in accordance with plural masculinities (Connell 1995). Based on this theoretical framework, the aim of the paper is to analyze in depth (Eisenhardt 1989) the series, with specific reference to strategies of resistance and intolerance with respect to the hegemonic masculinity model. The analysis will also frame the series within the Netflix show schedule, which is characterized by an increasing focus on inclusion and diversity as a promotional strategy and as part of its brand (Jenner 2023). Specifically, the analysis intends to observe whether and how the editorial perspective of an international platform has influenced - from a gender perspective - the representation processes of a national series.

La Rit-macchina e la Piattaforma

Antonio Ricciardi — 2024-08-23

The birth of cybernetics, starting with the Macy Conferences and Wiener's early works, has provided a decisive contribution to the development of a concept of machine capable of overcoming the limits of pure and simple instrumentality. If the so-called first-order cybernetics, however, has thought the machine and its ontology within the narrow limits of a homeostatic, closed and self-sufficient system, second-order cybernetics has expanded this concept, extending the idea of the machine to that of a system, inserting it in a regime of constant interaction and iteration: a real machine between machines. Nevertheless, it was not possible, in the classical cybernetic context, to think of the constitution of an authentic machinic proto-subjectivity. It will only be in the works of Felix Guattari (Guattari 2020 & 2022) that we will see the birth of a machine (and of a real machinism) capable of assuming this theoretical consistency. In this context, the proto-subjectivity will be that of an abstract machine which, going beyond the material limits of the technical machine, transversely intersects all the elements of the concrete assemblage within which it operates. The abstract machine dynamizes all the components it articulates, dragging them into a real rhythmology, giving rise to what Kodwo Eshun (2019) defines as a rhythmachine. It is not simply a question of a new way of thinking the technical machine: rather, what is at stake here will be the idea of a reality conceived sub specie machinae. On the basis of this Guattarian machinism we will try to build a general theory of the machine by examining a very specific case study: the Netflix platform. In this sense, first of all, we will see to what extent the Guattarian machine differs as much from that of Wiener and Ashby, as from that of Maturana and Varela. Once we have defined this scenario, we will move on to the analysis of the Netflix machine. Here, a detailed genealogy of the platform will be followed by an analysis of its rhyth-machinic nature. The final aim of the work will be to identify the fundamental traits that distinguish the rhythmachine from the machinic concepts elaborated within the first and second cybernetics.

L’operazione documentaria attraverso gli ambienti mediali interattivi

Elio Ugenti — 2024-08-03

The contemporary scenario demands an interpretation of reality as inherently hybrid, and of the individual's condition as osmotic and “ecomedial”, marked by a constant – and seamless – transition between off- and on-screen realities (that of the digital devices we use, which configure – and are configured as – the environments we inhabit). Contemporary audiovisual production seems to take this into consideration by configuring multiple forms of interaction with interactive digital media. If fictional desktop cinema has demonstrated the possibility of representing these media spaces as environments in which to develop sometimes complex stories, also using the framework of film genres, other forms of experimentation lie outside the regime of fictional storytelling, establishing a fruitful dialogue with contemporary documentary forms. I intend to focus attention precisely on this aspect. What is at stake is both the modes of access to narrative materials and their organization during consumption – as in the case of web documentaries – and the interplay between archival material research and imaginative configuration of the film during production, as in the desktop documentary, where what Francesco Casetti has defined as a complex “ecology of operations” seems to be at the center of attention. In all these forms of contamination between audiovisual production and interactive digital media, a fusion between contemporary documentary cinema, archival materials, and digital technologies emerges and reinforces itself, also manifesting in the visual-organizational fabric of the film, a peculiar perceptual and operational ecology characterizing the relationship between user and interface, which needs to be carefully examined and understood. This article is structured into three parts. In the first part, I will attempt to theoretically define the ecological configuration on which today’s media system – within which we act and carry out our daily activities – is based. I will specifically outline the peculiar aspects of the contemporary ecological perspective, which presents significant differences compared to traditional media ecology. In the second part, I will focus on two films by the French scholar and filmmaker Chloé Galibert-Laîné with the aim of investigating certain modes of “staging” contemporary digital media made possible by audiovisual media. In the conclusions, I will attempt to advance some considerations regarding the narrative and aesthetic specificities of the desktop documentary and its potential to intercept and narrate a reality that seamlessly traverses both material and virtual spaces.

Mapping users’ participation in brand publics

Alessandro Caliandro — 2024-08-03

This is a methodological contribution aimed at providing researchers with some practical guidance to better and more thoroughly map brand publics. The notion of brand public is steadily gaining traction in digital media and consumer culture research, especially so in studies that address liquid and platformized forms of consumption characteristic of social media. However, despite the growing academic interest in this concept, there is still a lack of methodological research in this area. In particular, one of the major methodological gaps consists in the fact that studies on brand publics fail in proposing a typology of the different kinds of users participating in them. In order to fill this gap, we propose an ad hoc typology of users participating in a brand public based on the different digital practices through which they use the digital devices that structure the public itself – rather than on users’ individual status. To this purpose we identify three main types of styles of participation in brand publics: brand loving, visibility seeking, everyday storytelling. To do that we draw on a dataset of 488,365 Instagram posts marked with the hashtag #starbucks, that we explored using digital methods. The article contribution is twofold: it provides the reader with systematic methodological guidelines and it expands the theoretical boundaries of the brand public’s notion.

AI e newsmaking

Maria Francesca Murru — 2024-08-03

This article delves into the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (IA) on Italian journalism, providing an in-depth examination of how AI technologies are being integrated into and reshaping the journalistic landscape. Through a qualitative study, which includes 10 qualitative interviews with journalists, digital editors, and IT managers from leading Italian media companies, this research investigates the attitudes, expectations, and concerns surrounding AI adoption in newsrooms. The core of the study revolves around the nuanced perceptions and discursive frames that journalism professionals mobilize to describe the incorporation of AI into newsmaking. It is nearly impossible to investigate AI without considering the imaginations, perceptions, and expectations associated with it, especially considering two structural elements—opacity and communicative capacity—that make it particularly susceptible to distortions and uncontrollable interpretative projections (Milne, 2021). The centrality of discourse has been highlighted by the neo-institutionalist approach, which views journalism as a discursive institution founded on a complex set of rules, practices, and values that are constructed and legitimized through discourse (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017). From this perspective, discursive legitimation represents both a process of internal organization of rules, practices, and values and a tool to confirm, defend, and claim the institution's reputation within society. The interviewees offer diverse perspectives on the potential of AI to revolutionize journalistic workflows by introducing efficiency and new capabilities, such as automated content generation and data analysis. However, rather than seeing AI as a replacement for human journalists, most view it as a complementary tool that could enhance the quality of news production and facilitate more in-depth journalism. Despite the recognized potential, the study highlights a prevailing sense of caution among the participants. Some express concerns about the ethical implications of AI in journalism, including issues related to transparency, risk of job displacement and the maintenance of professional standards in an increasingly automated environment. The article suggests the need for clear editorial strategies that transparently establish shared guidelines of AI use in newsrooms. It also highlights the necessity for significant technological investments by publishers to ensure that the use of generative AI is not left to the initiative of individual journalists, but that its adoption makes sense within a wider project of a rational, efficient, and shared restructuring of workflow processes. In this regard, it is imperative to recognize the need to invest in significantly enhancing the computer skills of journalists within a more comprehensive frame of AI literacy that is mindful of the ethical and democratic implications of these tools.

Charles Bukowski sui Social Media

Luca Martignani — 2024-08-03

This essay focuses on the reactions to the circulation of aphorisms and quotes from Charles Bukowski’s work available on social media. The detractors of this trend consider themselves admirers of the novelist and essentially object that those who improperly post his sentences are people who misunderstand his poetics and anti-romantic spirit. The article reports and comments some of these reactions and analyzes the text. A central thesis of the text maintains that the critical approach of these reactions undoubtedly captures elements of truth if traced back to the poetics of the writer, but they do not capture a fundamental point: quotes and aphorisms, that circulate on social media, are specific media themselves and they lend to citation in a peculiar way. Tracing the habit of quoting an iconic character of literature to the spirit that accompanies and marks the totality of his production is misleading, because it does not allow us to understand that whoever uses the quotation in turn behaves like a producer of images and captions, and therefore like an author. Perhaps those who quote Bukowski on the web do not necessarily know all of his literature or his place in the literary field. Rather, they express their position in a virtual ethnographic community through vernacular forms of communication, suited to the digital context in which the quote takes shape, to the point of reinterpreting the original meaning of the text in a subjective key.