SOCIOLOGIA DELLA COMUNICAZIONE

Learning Objectives

• Evolution and development of communication

  To analyze media diachronically to show socio-historical contextuality as explaining element of media development.

• The essential characteristics of communications

  Describing the basic elements leading to interpret the key-role played by communication in the contemporary world and to transfer the abstract nature of the word to the concrete experience of everybody.

• Mass-communication theory

  Critical analysis of the main theories and most important models elaborated within mass communication research

• Mass-communication in Italy

  Analysis of Italian media under the historical, social, juridical and political point of view. In depth analysis of a case study : media representation of migration

Detailed Course Content

• Evolution and development of communication
  • The press revolution and its context
  • Media and public sphere in Europe in the modern age
  • Property, dimension and internationalization of media
  • Organization and media texts : production, autonomy and power
  • Audiences Studies
• The essential characteristics of communications
  • Communication : a definition
  • Basic processes
  • Signs
  • Languages
  • Images
  • Non verbal communication
  • Communicationas relation
  • Communicationas social practice
  • Mediated interaction
  • News
  • Advertising
• Mass-communication theory
  • Magic bullet paradigm
  • Selection and limited effects (psychology and sociology)
  • Functionalism
  • Critical theory
  • Cultural studies
  • Information and semiotic models
  • Communication and knowledge (agenda-setting, etc.)
• Mass-communication in Italy
  • The fragility of the Italian media system
  • Italian television and social change in the ‘80s
  • Welfare State and mass-media
  • Migration and media narration

Textbook Information

• Evolution and development of communication
  1. Briggs A., Burke P., Storia sociale dei media, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2007, pp. 25 – 127 ; 221 – 315

   

  1. Hesmondhalgh, D. (a cura di), Media production, Milano, Hoepli, 2007, pp. 1 – 100
• The essential characteristics of communications
  1. Priulla, G. , I caratteri elementari della comunicazione, Bari, Laterza
• Mass-communication theory
  1. Bentivegna, S., Teorie delle comunicazioni di massa, Bari, Laterza
• Mass-communication in Italy
  1. Mancini, P., Il sistema fragile, Roma, Carocci, pp. 37-107
  2. Nicolosi, G., Lampedusa. Corpi, immagini e narrazioni dell'immigrazioni, Milano, Franco Angeli