For a Geography of the Daily Press: a GIS analysis of hard copies circulation of the newspapers Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica and La Stampa in Italy (2004-2019)

Abstract

Due the recent transformations that affected the sector of daily information, a new line of research defined as journalism studies is emerging within the academic debates, hitherto little approached by geographical research. Following the stimuli coming from French social geography, the paper deals with the analysis using a spatial approach of the circulation on the national territory of hard copies of some of the major Italian generalist newspapers. The certified data provided by Accertamenti Diffusione Stampa were collected and systematized in a geodatabase using a GIS software, in order to produce illustrative cartography and elaborate basic geostatistics calculations on the circulation of newspapers from 2004 to 2019; statistics on a provincial scale were compared and correlated with some territorial socio-economic indicators. The analysis highlights the differences in terms of circulating copies between the various areas of the peninsula, as well as the new areas of prevalence and distribution that have emerged in recent years; in addition, the existence of a positive spatial correlation between the circulation of copies and factors such as GDP per capita and the presence of local editions is suggested. In conclusion, the quantitative approach allows to trace a framework of the current geographies of the press as a heuristic tool for the monitoring of the present and future trend of the phenomenon.