Parties, Personalization, Primaries

Italian parties have clearly lost any control on the processes of political communication. Confronted with Berlusconi’s capability to dominate the personalization of politics and to stress its spectacularization, the centre-left parties, inadequately equipped, suffer the challenge of personalization. However, their recent resort to a variety of primary elections make it imperative the passage to some form of well-focused personalization. The Democratic Party has written the primaries in its Charter, but so far its use does not seem to be crowned with success precisely when shaping and personalizing its leadership.

Ancient Roots, Ambiguities, and Contradictions. Sociology and the Study of Political Communication.

In this article the ambiguous relationship that exists between the field of sociology and political communication studies is discussed. The article focuses mainly on the Italian context but there are also references to the situation in other countries. Even if it was born within the realm of sociology, the study of political communication soon became independent to become, mostly in the anglo-American world, an autonomous disciplinary field that nevertheless still suffers from a lack of full academic legitimization.

Language and Political Communication in Italian Linguistic Studies. An Assessment and some Current Issues.

This paper reviews some Italian studies focusing on the political uses of language and communication which have been published over the last 40 years. Firstly, a distinction is made between studies of a historical-linguistic type, the rhetorical analysis of leaders’ communication strategies, and semiotic investigations of the way political communication works on newspapers, Tv and the Internet. The author takes sides with scholars aiming at the realization of a permanent “observatory” of politics from a linguistic point of view. Secondly, attention is paid to the proposal of a “Superior Council” for the defence of the Italian language by legislators. Academic criticism of this project is reviewed, and a plea for a more careful consideration of the serious cultural gaps of Italian society is made.

Public Opinion and Political Communication: The Social Linkage Revisited. B

At the beginning of the complete achievement of mass society (during the Forties and the Fifties) public opinion and political communication were strictly interconnected. Later on, the empirical study of opinions trends was separated from the analysis of mediated communication (especially television), and in this way we have lost the social link between public discourse, collective interaction and individual attitudes.In the last thirty years this linkage has been reconstructed, and today we must confront with new forms of political relationship (mediated politics, mediated publicness, permanent campaigning) which can be defined as “audience democracy”. In this paper this link is revisited – especially with reference to Italian case – and is focused on the idea of “opinion climate” as conceptual device able to explain new trend in Italian political life (and general elections).

Leadership and Political Communication.

This note aims to review the main essays recently published in Italy on relationships between leadership, media and political communication. These are critically discussed referring to Max Weber’s classical model of leadership and to the present political situation in Italy. All authors focused their attention to Berlusconi’s political communication and his relationships with Italian media system, trying to analyse his electoral successes by a no-ideological perspective. Some final considerations are added about the cleavage between national and local level of leadership formation, which stops emerging of new leaders and changing of Italian political élite.

Subjects, Strategies, and the Effectiveness of Political Communication.

Some recent developments of psychological research on political communication are discussed. First, a focus on the efficacy of several features of politicians’ verbal and non-verbal communication, such as concreteness versus abstractedness of language employed or gestures. Second, a focus on the use and the efficacy of defence and attack communicative strategies by politicians and journalists, as well as of strategies aimed at enhancing citizens’ identification with given social categories. Finally, an increasing attention for the consequences of pragmatic constraints related to the various contexts in which political communication takes place.

The Staging of Democracy

Italian democracy in the Second Republic has been defined “anomalous” because it underwent mediatization, personalization, and spectacularization, while party organizations dissolved and coalesced in the figure of the leader. This article outlines the main features of this model and the steps through which it came into being. In particular, the article argues that the Italian case has not come about exclusively thanks to, or owing to, Berlusconi. This is so because, first of all, some of the Second Republic’s defining traits were inherited from the First Republic, from the entangled relationship between politics and television to politics’ ability to pervasively penetrate everyday life. Moreover, the tendencies that are on display in an extreme fashion in Italy can indeed be observed in other European countries, such as France and Great Britain, where, not coincidentally, “audience democracy” and “post-democracy” are debated.

Electoral Communication Between Sources, History, and Documents.

After a long period of scarce interest, in the last few years election campaigns have received increasing attention from various disciplines, as they offer a unique perspective on the power of the mass media and on the mediatization of the public sphere. As is documented by a review of the main strands of the literature, various scientific fields have begun to consider the forms of electoral communication no longer as superstructural factors vis-à-vis political, historical, and economic dynamics, but as forces capable of affecting and altering deep traits of a country’s tradition and political culture. It is from this new perspective that the study of political communication and election campaigns turns out to be a promising interpretive framework to understand the changes in parties’ and politics’ organizational forms, language, participation modes, and history. This endeavor, however, demands a reassessment of both the status of propaganda documents and the state of their sources.

Cyberspace between, States, Corporations and… Democratic Practices

This article deals with the transformations that cyberspace underwent between the end of the 1990’s and the beginning of the new century. In particular, after summarizing the main contours of the political and cultural conflict on the nature of digital networks, the article highlights the increasing importance of regulation and mechanisms of control through which states and hardware and software corporations shape the Internet’s architecture. As it has become a battlefield for political and economic power on a worldwide scale, cyberspace has lost its original libertarian and egalitarian spirit. Despite these transformations, and indeed partially thanks to them, the Internet and digital media are, and will increasingly be in the future, fundamental technologies for the renewal of politics.

The Imperfect Triangle. The Negotiation among Journalism, Politics, and Citizens

Through the media a cognitive and symbolic competition is struggled by an increasing number of social actors to impose its judgment on the public opinion.
Into this struggle, politics is losing its role of “primary definer”, able to impose its own interpretative frame, it has to compete also through an effective assumption of media logics, pending between polarization and banalization of the events.
So, the negotiation between citizens, media and politics is completely redefined, and modifies also the purpose of journalism, from which we should not merely demand objectivity, but wide and thoughtful routes to comprehension of reality.

The Market for Opinion Polls.

Global approach, market concentration, the importance of financial aspects, the role of technology and specialisation. These are the main changes the market research and public opinion analysis sector has invested in for the last 15 years. In addition to these, Italy has also witnessed changes in the way polls are used, increasingly more as a form of communication to influence voters, as a ‘compass’ for policy-making and an ‘oracle’. The image of polls has deteriorated drastically. Innovation is required to update the analysis tools, strengthen the bond with universities, emphasise quality and moral obligation, alter the relationship with the media and politics in order to restore prominence and social dignity to the whole sector.

The Return of the Word: From Marketing Tools to the Symbolic and Ritual Approach.

Significant changes happened in the last decade in the area of Italian political communication. Americanization is an insufficient and ineffective interpretive key.While pollsters continue to be central, the traditional advertising agencies and the new professionals of news management are emerging. Election campaigns seem less effective at changing voter orientation. Word centered activities, slogans and metaphor-building are on the rise.From an instrumental approach focused on the adoption of marketing techniques (from surveys to advertising) to a ritual, symbolic one. A fascinating challenge that must be tackled by opening up the discipline to linguistics, rhetoric and cognitive psychology, with great attention especially to the recent acquisitions of the neurosciences.