{"title":"Slittamenti. Oltre la postdemocrazia = Slipping. Beyond post-democracy","authors":"Lorenzo Fattori","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N17P135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N17P135","url":null,"abstract":"The concept of post-democracy, proposed by Colin Crouch, has achieved great success in political and sociological studies. However, the transformation processes undergone by democracy, especially in Europe, have significantly changed the scenario since the central part of the twentieth century. In this situation, the question that arises is whether the concept of post-democracy is still adequate or if it needs to be redefined. Therefore, if democratic processes have evolved technologically, the overall functioning of government systems seems to trace back ancient ways: the technocracy, the elitism of participation, the growth of political proposals which, recalling Max Weber, seem to become less legal and rational than charismatic. In this paper we will try to understand if democracy in Western world is really going through a time of crisis, and if post-democracy is still today adequate to describe it","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":"2020 1","pages":"135-156"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43109216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Emozioni, luoghi e parole. Senso di appartenenza e meccanica emozionale, tra cultura del territorio ed evoluzione del linguaggio = Emotions, places and words. Sense of belonging and emotional mechanics, between local culture and language evolution","authors":"G. Spagna","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N17P271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N17P271","url":null,"abstract":"This article enquires into the association between emotions, culture and languages by providing an analysis that has two reading keys. The first will refer to the individual-territory relationship, at the time of examining both the creation and development of the emotional-social binding structure by means of socio-historical as well as anthropological orientations. We will explore the building phase of a sense of identity, which brings each subject to the places of origin, emotionally and cognitively. The second reading key will concern the study of new words, which actually exist in other languages to define apparently inexplicable emotional reactions. The entry of these terms into the common language structure would demonstrate both the evolution of communication keys in the current post-global society and the possibility of adopting them to reduce the interpretative complexity and emotional difficulties in the individual/society relationship. In the conclusion, we surmise a relationship between the two objects of analyses, which is meant to improve one's interpretation and understanding of emotional dynamics from a socio-communicative perspective","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":"2020 1","pages":"271-294"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41744895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Carlo Sorrentino, L. Solito, S. Pezzoli, L. Materassi
{"title":"Relazioni promiscue. Appunti per una possibile ridefinizione dello spazio comunicativo = Promiscuous relationships. Notes for a possible redefinition of the communicative space","authors":"Carlo Sorrentino, L. Solito, S. Pezzoli, L. Materassi","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N17P239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N17P239","url":null,"abstract":"The key and monopolistic role played by the pandemic issue in the last months is a lens through which we can observe how the digital environment is reshaping the entire communicative space. In fact, the latter is constantly becoming denser, thanks to the plurality and heterogeneity of players, as well as to the expansion of their communication modalities. Starting from Bourdieu's notion of \"journalistic field\", we come to a new situation where voices of journalists and public sector's communicators are side by side with those of many other actors with other specific skills, who build a polyphonic and multidimensional communicative space. This multifaceted communicative space pushes us to rethink the categories of orthodoxy and informational heresy introduced by the French sociologist, considering the fact that many actors are now more interested in building their public visibility, by managing their different communication resources. In so doing, they can obtain a peculiar role and position in the communicative space, where transparency and the \"power of convocation\" become always more important. Based on these premises, this paper aims at exploring empirically how 10 different main actors of the public debate managed their communication strategies during the first emergency phase of the Italian lockdown. In order to test the theoretical framework here proposed, the authors investigate 6 different kinds of communication resources: reputational, institutional, professional, argumentative, performative and relational ones. The analysis focus on the activities of the following Facebook accounts: Civil Protection, Higher Institute of Health, Prime Minister, Lombardy Region, Veneto Region, as well as the personal ones of Prime Minister Conte, of Presidents Fontana and Zaia, and of the two currently most followed journalists on social media (Andrea Scanzi and Nicola Porro).","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":"2020 1","pages":"239-268"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43684223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Gamification to AI-Gamification: The Case of Social Network Journalism","authors":"L. Serafini","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N17P97","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N17P97","url":null,"abstract":"Gamification, understood as the use of ludic mechanisms in non-ludic contexts, is seen today as a practice ingrained in new technologies, especially in new media. The shift of journalism onto social networks has laid the foundations for a ludic communicative paradigm that revolves specifically around gaming mechanisms. Nevertheless, recent developments in artificial intelligence call for a partial redefinition of the term \"gamification,\" so as to situate it in its relations with machines and algorithms. For some time now, what are known as empathic media have signaled a turning point in the development of an emotional artificial intelligence, capable of eliciting and responding to the emotional states of consumers and users for commercial purposes. In recent years, this use of artificial emotional intelligence has also made its way into journalism on social networks. This communications channel builds on tools such as sensationalism, irony, and the creation of an empathetic connection with readers—centered on sharing a ludic, humorous paradigm of communication. In this instance, gamification is transformed into AI-gamification, since the aim is to make these mechanisms scientific and commercially profitable through the use of artificial intelligence. Echobox, a social media platform based on artificial intelligence, used by media to communicate more efficiently with readers on social platforms, will provide a case study by which to analyze this effort. I will also show the benefits and drawbacks of this shift from gamification to AI-gamification, examining in particular the capacities and limits of the algorithms in developing a ludic human language whose goal is to increase both users' emotional involvement and the readership of the articles (and, consequently, the revenue) of the media outlets","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":"2020 1","pages":"97-114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46183899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Traumi videoludici: la ricerca della stabilità emotiva in \"Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice\" e \"The Town of Light\" = Trauma in video games: Searching for emotional stability in \"Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice\" and \"The Town of Light\"","authors":"Matteo Genovesi","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N17P295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N17P295","url":null,"abstract":"This paper adopts a multidisciplinary perspective involving cognitive psychology and game studies for the analysis of the representation of a specific emotional condition, post-traumatic psychosis, in the video games \"Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice\" (Ninja Theory 2017) and \"The Town of Light\" (LKA 2016). \"Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice\" was developed under the supervision of Paul Fletcher, a neuroscientist. It is a third-person adventure video game that recalls Norse mythology and focuses on the psychosis of the protagonist Senua, who is constantly struck by visual and auditory hallucinations while making her way up a path to the top of a mountain to resurrect her beloved boyfriend. \"The Town of Light\" was developed in Italy after years of research at the former Volterra asylum. In this first-person exploratory thriller, players control Renee, a woman who tries to shed light on her traumatic past by returning, as an adult, to the asylum where she had been locked up as a young girl. Despite the ludic differences between the two cases under examination, similar narrative paths and strategies are employed to represent post-traumatic psychosis and deal with the theme of trauma in video games, such as seeing the protagonists face their deepest fears to reach a stable emotional condition","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":"2020 1","pages":"295-309"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47914742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Entertainment Highway in Cina. Il ruolo delle piattaforme online nell'analisi della reputazione sociale = Entertainment Highway in China. The role of online platforms in shaping the social credit system","authors":"G. Negro","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N16P27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N16P27","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides an analysis on the history of the Chinese Social System taking into account three directions: first, it refers to policy documents issued by the State Council of PRC; second, it refers to the experience of Sina Weibo Credit System; third, it focuses on the failed experience of the Sesame Credit System. The present research has a double aim. First, it highlights the importance of the media history to frame relevant Chinese Internet dynamics; second, it suggests an alternative to study the Chinese Social Credit System going beyond to the dichotomy vision state – citizens and its preconditions mainly based on state surveillance and Confucianism traditions. Whereas, the present article, in line with the rationale of the special issue, highlights the role played by Chinese private companies and more importantly, their attitude to shape the structure and the management of their platforms and services boosting the importance of entertainment.","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":"2020 1","pages":"27-48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1285/I22840753N16P27","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44020073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Football Re(me)mediation: i meme e l’estetizzazione dell'emozione calcistica nelle community social = Football Re(me)mediation: Memes and The Aestheticization of Football Emotions in Social Newtorks Communities","authors":"Mario Tirino, Simona Castellano","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N16P49","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N16P49","url":null,"abstract":"The relationship between sport, emotions and media is immediate. Football has a strong ability to emotionally involve huge masses of fans, thanks to the dramaturgical and ritualistic qualities of each match and thanks to the collective identification in footballer-heroes (Bifulco e Tirino, 2018). These qualities are further reinvigorated by media stories, which transform fans into media users (Gau, James e Kim, 2009). Due to the emergence of the SMS triangle (Sport, Media, Sponsor) (Martelli 2011, 2014) the figure of the fan is increasingly indistinguishable from the figures of the user and the consumer. However, football fans increasingly have the opportunity to participate in contemporary cultural production, for example by generating UGC to be disseminated in media environments such as social networks. Through the concept of “radical mediation”, Grusin argues that the media are configured as emotional environments. On the other hand, social networks constitute a privileged territory of exteriorization of one’s emotional commitment (Boccia Artieri et al. 2017). Starting from these sociological and mediological perspectives, the aim of our paper is to investigate media modalities and processes by which football fans’ emotions are remediated, on social networks, through the production and dissemination of meme. Meme are relevant examples of user-generated content (Boccia Artieri, 2012, Jenkins, Ford e Green, 2013), and also are central media objects to understand the participatory cultures of web 2.0 and the typical logic of remix cultures. Our paper will try to highlight how these grassroots practices, within a new participatory aesthetic, elaborate the connection between mediation and affection (Grusin 2017), (social) media and emotions, football communication (mainstream and bottom-top) and fans.","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":"2020 1","pages":"49-80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44832175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gli elementi nostalgici dei punta-e-clicca italiani degli Anni Dieci = Nostalgic elements in Italian point-and-click video games of the 2010s","authors":"F. Toniolo, S. Giovannini","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N16P81","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N16P81","url":null,"abstract":"This paper inquiries the insertion of nostalgic elements in Italian point-and-click video games of the 2010s, highlighting those elements that still survive in spite of being out-of-date from the points of view of technology and gameplay. After having clarified the notions of \"point-and-click\" and nostalgia, the paper presents the corpus of titles considered in the analysis, that is, thirty-seven Italian point-and-click video games of the last decade. The choice of such corpus is based on three reasons: limiting the size of the corpus to make it manageable; maintaining an adequate temporal distance from the classic and post-classic point-and-click video games, such a lapse of time being a precondition of nostalgia; focussing on video games \"indie\", a label including all the corpus's titles. Three categories of nostalgic insertion were detected: \"technical\", \"thematically dense\" and \"thematically rarefied\". The first includes titles technically similar to the classics (1990-1995), which they idealise and emulate by an explicit interface (e.g. SCUMM v. 4). The second comprises games whose inspiration is rather that of the second half of the Nineties, when new technological solutions were introduced (e.g. pseudo-3D). The third contains products more innovative than nostalgic, still interspersed with quotations. Three case studies are presented to testimony of these categories, respectively: Chronicle of Innsmouth (PsychoDev, 2017), Detective Gallo (Footprints Games, 2018) and The Wardrobe (C.I.N.I.C. Games, 2017).","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":"2020 1","pages":"81-98"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45310114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Niente sarà più come prima. Il Covid-19 come narrazione apocalittica di successo = Nothing will ever be the same: COVID 19, an apocalyptic narrative of success","authors":"Luigi Giungato","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N16P99","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N16P99","url":null,"abstract":"The paper aims to investigate the interactions between public, media and authorities that emerged during the Covid-19 emergency as variables of a state of systemic anxiety, characteristic of information societies. The Coronavirus crisis involved around four billion individuals. No pandemic or traumatic event on a global scale, however serious or risky, had ever managed to lead authorities and multitudes to such a resolution. The measures prescribed for the containment of the pandemic implied maximum physical confinement and the widest freedom guaranteed to our digital avatars. That was the opportunity for an unprecedented and massive transhumance in digital territories. Using the paradigms of fear as a latent and functional emotional constant in advanced information society, (Beck, 1986; Bauman, 2006), the investigation makes a comparison between some mechanisms of defense against states of shock and some of the media narratives of the emergency by which the italian public constructed its own mediated experience of the pandemic during the quarantine. In particular, the theme of the apocalyptic/millennial narrative is studied in more detail, in the light of various literary theories that describe its characteristics and dynamics. The aim is to demonstrate how the collective anxiety state can be traced back to a constant oscillation on different semantic clusters, rather than a variable consequence of concrete events.","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":"2020 1","pages":"99-122"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42618785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond screens, beyond borders. Il caso SKAM = Beyond screens, beyond borders. SKAM, a case study","authors":"G. Galvagno","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N16P125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N16P125","url":null,"abstract":"The Norwegian series SKAM is one of the most interesting products of contemporary television, as a match between the structure of transmedia storytelling and the established tv genre of the teen-drama. In 2018 SKAM became an international success.The series is firstly published in real time, in the form of short clips on the dedicated website, and it is later assembled on television or on the streaming platform in weekly episodes. This format has trascended the borders between screens and between states as no other product before. If the transmedial structure of SKAM perfectly fits a media consumption practice linked to the briefness of contents shared on social media, the intrinsic power of this format allowed the original series to find a huge following in many countries thanks to appropriation experiences like fan subbing or fan art. The temporality of the series’ fruition is integrated in the daily routine of the viewers, thus cementing the parasocial bonds with the characters","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":"2020 1","pages":"125-135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1285/I22840753N16P125","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45811861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}