Francesca Pasquali

In 2016 – the annus horribilis of pop – the death of music artists such as David Bowie, George Michael and Prince produced a prodigious amount of commemorative initiatives, both spontaneously and within the media and celebrity worlds, with an impressive level of online expressions of grief...

This article discusses the many implications of participation in a cross-media scenario where...

La natura pervasiva dei media digitali e di rete – dal web 2.0 ai personal media – definisce uno scenario complesso in cui i soggetti si muovono e compiono le loro scelte. Uno scenario dove la televisione generalista convive con la televisione multicanale e tematica; dove la tradizionale distribuzione dei contenuti mediali si mescola a nuove forme di circolazione online e peer to peer; dove le modalità di comunicazione uno-a-uno del telefono si intrecciano a forme molti-a-molti dei blog e dei social network, in cui i contenuti istituzionali vivono accanto ai contenuti generati dagli utenti. A fronte di questo scenario e a partire da una serie di ricerche empiriche condotte presso l’OssCom - Centro di Ricerca sui Media e la Comunicazione dell’Università Cattolica, il volume si concentra sui consumi crossmediali dei giovani italiani e si articola intorno a tre grandi snodi: le pratiche della comunicazione interpersonale mediata, l’emergenza di nuove pratiche produttive e la ridefinizione del consumo televisivo. Nel volume sono raccolti i contributi di Piermarco Aroldi, Simone Carlo, Claudia Giocondo, Giovanna Mascheroni, Daniele Milesi, Maria Francesca Murru, Matteo Stefanelli e Marco Tomassini.

The coming of the digital terrestrial television in Italy was accompanied by a thick network of social issues that in various ways have built and promoted it as a technology endowed with innovative characteristics, able to transform the experience of television and to satisfy specific needs for interaction and participation. In this launching and promotional phase of the service and of the necessary devices to access it, which also had economic characteristics, the attention obviously concentrated more on the production and offer side than on that of consumption; the audience was taken into account from a potential point of view. The essay faces an analysis of the television audience which is busy in domesticating the digital terrestrial platform facing the horizon of consumption, not only through the simple act of purchasing, the simple usage or the interpretation of its meaning, but collocating it in a circular process with a number of phases including both the pre-determination of consumption on the production side and its integration in the consumer’s everyday life. The essay exposes an explorative, ethnographic and multi-situated research which has extended the observation to a variety of contexts, supporting negotiation in the family group (through interviews to 31 persons in 12 domestic units) or in other contexts in which the decision to adopt or not Dtt is taken: from one side the sales points, from the other the condominium meetings. The essay, therefore, analyzes the appropriation forms of Dtt between 2005 and 2006, highlighting the conceptualization of the medium in the imaginary phase, the modalities of appropriation, the incorporation practices and levels. It can be therefore noticed how Dtt is ‘domesticated’ in the form of integration to the traditional television, collocating it inside the evolution line of the television medium and excluding, in this phase, the reference to the wider field of ICTs.

Internet è ormai parte della giornata di milioni di persone in Italia e le forme dell'offerta della rete si vanno sempre più c

The concept of the digital divide, on which many institutions and scholars have been focusing since the 1990s, has in most cases been considered in terms of availability of technology, comparing those who have versus those who do not have the opportunity to use Information and Communication Technologies. This vision has delineated a geography of the phenomenon and prompted a series of local measures which do not take into account the true complexity unhomogeneity of the scenario. This essay underlines the need to focus on the use of technology, promoting studies that encompass the sociological, cultural, political and economic framework. Taking into consideration local contexts and people in addition to the purely technological dimension, represents a valid starting point for digital inclusion policies: from the tendency to transfer to disadvantaged regions the media and technologies that have proved to be most successful in the industrialised areas, to strategies aiming at getting individuals and communities able to pursue sustainable development and an improvement in their quality of life. An approach considering ICT not for their own sake but as tools was adopted by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held in Geneva in 2003, during which a firm commitment was undertaken to «transform the digital divide into a digital opportunity for everyone».

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.