Fausto Colombo

In 2014 the Communication and Performing Arts Department at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano launched the projec

Un’operazione editoriale unica nel suo genere: una storia dei media e dello spettacolo in Italia raccontata da un eccezionale team di studiosi, tra i più accreditati del nostro Paese.

A partire dalla famosa immagine di Alan Kurdi, Fausto Colombo ripercorre le più famose immagini giornalistiche di guerra e sofferenza diventate icone in grado di segnare la storia.

Tutti ricordiamo l’immagine di Alan Kurdi, il bambino di tre anni annegato sul finire dell’estate 2015 nel Mar Egeo mentre

Siamo un Paese di poveri (di cultura), seduti su una miniera d’oro (di beni culturali) che non sappiamo apprezzare e di cui non ci sappiamo servire. Non c’è politica che non debba partire da qui, da questa rinuncia allo sfruttamento delle nostre risorse...

“Post-truth”, the 2016 word of the year, has been defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. In fact, the notion risks becoming little more than a buzzword, given that the epistemic, social, political, and cultural issues at stake behind the current debate on Post-Truth are so numerous, so differentiated and intertwined...

La grande narrazione dell'Italia attraverso i media. Dal 25 aprile 1945, giorno della Liberazione, al 9 maggio 1978, giorno in cui fu ritrovato in Via Caetani il cadavere di Aldo Moro.

Questo breve contributo analizza un caso storico di performance teatrale ospitata in Tv. Il caso analizzato risale al 1987 ed ebbe per protagonista Franca Rame e il suo celebre monologo Lo stupro, ospitato per l’occasione dal varietà Fantastico, ideato e condotto da Adriano Celentano...

RIASSUNTO Ho provato a esplorare l’applicabilità di tre concetti foucaultiani (rapporto tra potere e controllo sociale, dire di sé, rapporto tra diritto di parola e verità nei contesti democratici) al dibattito sul web 2.0. Mi pare di aver dimostrato che – più che le risposte – le domande di Foucault abbiano una forte applicabilità, soprattutto se il metodo di analisi dello studioso francese viene assunto nelle sue radici o nella sua forma specifica, che consiste nell’interrogare i fenomeni in relazione agli statuti e ai dispositivi sociali complessivi anziché ai luoghi, alle tecniche, o alle manifestazioni specifiche. Se ho ragione, accogliere metodo e domande foucaultiane significa ridefinire alcune questioni: il dibattito fra libertà e potere sul web può trasformarsi in indagine sulle forme specifiche dell’inevitabile potere nella società delle reti. L’approccio all’esplosione autobiografica si traduce in una domanda sulle modalità e le condizioni del dire di sé a partire dalla pressione sociale a esercitarlo. La polemica sulla democraticità della rete si può rimodulare in una interrogazione sulle condizioni della verità e sulla forma del sapere che vi circola. Tre riformulazioni, la cui chiave giace nelle pagine lasciate da Foucault, ben prima della nascita del web. Ma ben dentro, si intende, il divenire della società tardo moderna. SUMMARY I tried to apply three of Foucault’s concepts (relation between power and social control, talking about oneself, relation between the right of speech and truth in democratic contexts) to the debate on web 2.0. I believe I have proved that – not just his answers – but above all Foucault’s questions have a strong applicability, especially if the analysis method of the French scholar is taken to its roots and its specific forms, i.e. the interpretation of phenomena in relationship to statutes and social apparatuses at large, instead of specific places, techniques, or events. If I am correct, welcoming Foucault’s method and questions means re-defining certain issues: the debate between freedom and power over the web may be transformed into a survey on the specific and inevitable forms of web power over society. The approach to an autobiographical outburst becomes translated into a question regarding the ways and conditions of talking about oneself in order that social pressure may wield it. The controversy over web democracy can be re-modulated as an interrogation on the conditions of truth and the forms of knowledge which flow through it. Three rephrasings then. Their key lies in the pages left by Foucault, long before the web was born. But of course well inside the rise of post modern society.

The essays collected in this volume (ideally addressed to our European colleagues and fellow citizens) treat the relationship between media and politics in Italy through the analysis of some exemplary cases. The essays deal with a variety of subjects: television formats, the counter-informative effectiveness of blogs, political scandal and gossip on political leaders, the actual political dimension of journalism dealing with national or international events. Although the focus is the Italian context, the research perspective is international and our country is considered as exemplary of a trend involving the late Western democracies. In this sense, the Italian case is not intended as a curiosity or exception, but as a strong indicator of this trans-national trend, that not only alters the substance of democracy, but reduces its strength and puts this same substance at risk.

The article gives an account of a research on the information treatment given to the attacks of Madrid happened on March 11 th 2004 by four national daily papers. In the first days after the attacks it is verifiable a predictable massive coverage of the facts, that joins the newspapers taken into consideration. In parallel, a universalist isotope transversally dominates, founded upon the humanitarian rhetoric: the description both oral and iconic of the innocent victims, the definition of the terrorist acts in themselves as anti-human and pre-political actions. In the initial phase of the information, the narrative and commented registers are open to a plurality of interpretative hypothesis. This, however, leaves well soon the place to some choices on which the headings are markedly divided. If in fact the victims are universally innocent, and the solidarity with them can only be immediate, the executioners’ identification brings along political interpretation and different results in journalistic attitudes. We find therefore a narrative formulation, founded upon investigation and mystery, strong in a newspapers such as «Repubblica», in which the talent for detective journalism is stronger. It occurs then a diplomatic attitude, of disenchanted comment, as far as possible, in which what is reconstructed is the International scenery, with particular reference to the fight of the democratic countries against global terrorism; the «Corriere della Sera» seems to privilege this perspective. Finally there is a political-ideological attitude, which slowly brings the themes to an ideological scenery applicable to Italian history. «The Giornale» and «the Manifesto» are inserted in this discursive choice: therefore, the victims and the executioners continually exchange their place and the proximity between the Spanish government of Aznar and the Italian one of Berlusconi are read only as one front (to be supported in «the Giornale»’s opinion, to be fought in «the manifesto»’s opinion). The defeat of Aznar becomes the pre-figuration of Silvio Berlusconi’s defeat. The scene changes, the victims, slowly fade away.

La politica si sta trasformando in pettegolezzo: le questioni private dei governanti si intrecciano con il loro profilo pubblico. Ciò compromette la fiducia dei cittadini, allontanandoli sempre di più dalle istituzioni. Le responsabilità dei media.

The special issue addresses the development of the media system and creative industries in relation both to the major economic crises and to the role played by innovation in making the media – with respect to the crisis itself – assume a cyclical or anti-cyclical role. Starting from the conference, devoted to “Italian Society and the Great Economic Crises 1929-2016” and held by ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics) in Rome on 25-26 November 2016, the essays collected here addresses the ways in which economic and social crisis of the past (1929, the 70s etc.) and media in their history are set in relation to crises (specific attention is given to the last post-2008 global crises). However the special issue aims to expand this framework providing the basis for a new periodization of the national media system. The emerging picture illustrates how the Italian media, following the 60s economic boom, have faced for the last forty years a time of uninterrupted crisis. In this wide time span, the crisis has sometimes functioned as a depressive element on the media system, and sometimes as a promoter of systemic innovation, favouring the rise of new content and forms of consumer options (for instance with the explosion of private broadcasting, or the advent of the social media, and the birth of connective media). Questo monografico affronta lo sviluppo del sistema dei media e delle industrie creative in relazione sia alle principali crisi economiche che al ruolo svolto dall'innovazione nel far sì che i media assumano un ruolo ciclico o anticiclico rispetto alla crisi stessa.

Numero due del 2012 della rivista "Comunicazioni Sociali"

This publication arises from a conference entitled Television and Interactivity in Europe held in Milan, at the Università Cattolica, on 12 December 2003, under the auspices of Cost (European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) Action 20 (The Impact of the Internet on the Mass Media in Europe). The aim of the essays here collected is to throw light, from the perspective of social research, on the concept of interactivity, which is presented as the value driver of digital television in the contemporary debate. The first section in which Digital Television is contextualized in its technological, economic and socio-cultural dimensions, is focused on the theoretical discussion of interactivity, considered both in its strong and weak versions. The second section gathers a series of national case histories, offering a comparison between different European ways to Terrestrial Digital.