Mass media and the web in the light of Luhmann’s media system

The aim of the article is to observe the contemporary media system in the light of Luhmann’s media system, namely a specific function system of society which has witnessed ever greater internal complexity vis-a-vis an environment marked by the spread of the web and social network sites. From the viewpoint of sociocybernetics, the question of increased complexity can be addressed through an ecological approach in order to analyse the distinction between the mass media and the web – in its specific 2.0 evolution, characterized by user-generated content and algorithms. This approach allows to observe the reciprocal relations by preserving the autonomy of the two spheres without resorting to explanations that have to do with hybridization or the blur of the boundaries. In this sense the article analyses Facebook – as an example of web 2.0 operational logic – as a social system distinct from that of the mass media, where the first substantial difference depends on the role played by individuals in reproducing communication and on the role of the algorithm. In this sense mass media and the web are treated on the basis of their relationship of structural coupling by observing how they irritate, or disturb, each other and at the same time maintain their autonomy

Rethinking public agenda in a time of high-choice media environment

Contemporary political communication is conditioned by an information environment characterised, on the one hand, by increased choice, and on the other by the fragmentation and multiplication of the ways of consuming information. This article introduces the notion of the ‘interrelated public agenda’ as a frame to study this context, taking into account elements of convergence and divergence from a single viewpoint, adopting a complex analysis model which proceeds along axes which make it possible to detect a continuum in which opposing forces are in a constant, problematic equilibrium. In this sense, we identified three dimensions which are helpful in describing public agenda interrelations. First, horizontality vs verticality, which contains the dynamics of power, and is generated in a context of political disintermediation, through the altered nature of the media system—in the complex relation between legacy media and web 2.0, and between social, institutional actors, and others. Second, personal vs aggregative, which stresses the need to take account of convergences and divergences between personal orientation towards certain issues and the aggregative pressure in different media spaces in which people feel at home: from information consumption via media diets of varying complexity to active participation in the production of content or in public discourse, offline and online. And finally, dynamic vs static, which points to the need to orient analysis towards the relation between media spaces rather than focusing on specific spaces, thus helping, importantly, to make up for the current dearth of research in comparison with studies of single platforms

The construction of the meanings of #coronavirus on Twitter: An analysis of the initial reactions of the Italian people

The first months of 2020 saw the coronavirus pandemic explode. Moving from China, it arrived in Europe and hit Italy. The place where the debate around it exploded was the media ecosystem. In a short time, it was an explosion of tweets related to the hashtag #coronavirus on Twitter. With the aim of reconstructing the meanings of the hashtag and the content, in terms of sentiment and opinions, of the reactions of the Italians, we collected in a large size corpus, the hundred thousand Italian tweets containing the #coronavirus produced during the media hype period from the Twitter repository (February 24th - 28th, 2020). Media hype period was discovered by digging in the online articles of ‘la Repubblica', based on the presence of the words: coronavirus and Italy. The media hype is February 26th. The corpus underwent Emotional Text Mining (ETM), an unsupervised methodology, which allows social profiling based on communication. The study of the word chosen to talk about a topic and their co-occurrence allows the understanding of people’s symbolizations, representations, and sentiment, about the coronavirus. In a retrospective logic, this mechanism allows us to reconstruct the sensemaking and nuances of meaning attributed by users to the coronavirus hashtag

Ontogeny and phylogeny: molecular signatures of selection, constraint, and temporal pleiotropy in the development of Drosophila

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Karl Ernst Von Baer noted that species tend to show greater morphological divergence in later stages of development when compared to earlier stages. Darwin originally interpreted these observations via a selectionist framework, suggesting that divergence should be greatest during ontogenic stages in which organisms experienced varying 'conditions of existence' and opportunity for differential selection. Modern hypotheses have focused on the notion that genes and structures involved in early development will be under stronger purifying selection due to the deleterious pleiotropic effects of mutations propagating over the course of ontogeny, also known as the developmental constraint hypothesis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using developmental stage-specific expressed sequence tag (EST) libraries, we tested the 2 hypotheses by comparing the rates of evolution of 7,180 genes obtained from 6 species of the <it>Drosophila melanogaster </it>group with respect to ontogeny, and sex and reproduction-related functions in gonadal tissues. Supporting morphological observations, we found evidence of a pattern of increasing mean evolutionary rate in genes that are expressed in subsequent stages of development. Furthermore, supporting expectations that early expressed genes are constrained in divergence, we found that embryo stage genes are involved in a higher mean number of interactions as compared to later stages. We noted that the accelerated divergence of genes in the adult stage is explained by those expressed specifically in the male gonads, whose divergence is driven by positive selection. In addition, accelerated gonadal gene divergence occurs only in the adult stage, suggesting that the effects of selection are observed primarily at the stages during which they are expected occur. Finally, we also found a significant correlation between temporal specificity of gene expression and evolutionary rate, supporting expectations that genes with ubiquitous expression are under stronger constraint.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Taken together, these results support both the developmental constraint hypothesis limiting the divergence of early expressed developmentally important genes, leading to a gradient of divergence rates over ontogeny (embryonic < larval/pupal < adult), as well as Darwin's 'selection opportunity' hypothesis leading to increased divergence in adults, particularly in the case of reproductive tissues. We suggest that a constraint early/opportunity late model best explains divergence over ontogeny.</p

Understanding Engagement and Willingness to Speak Up in Social Television: A Full-Season, Cross-Genre Analysis of TV Audience Participation on Twitter

The widespread use of digital platforms has changed the way people watch television. Despite an abundance of empirical studies, full-season, cross-genre analyses of different TV formats are rare. Based on a data set of 1,383,414 tweets, this study aims to close this gap by comparing Twitter commentaries around the 2012–2013 seasons of the Italian edition of The X Factor and the political talk show Servizio Pubblico. For each episode, we identify peaks of Twitter engagement and analyze the corresponding TV scene, revealing the role played by suspense and surprise in catalyzing the engagement of online audiences. A content analysis of 12,640 tweets created during peaks of engagement reveals how willingness to speak up varies when the topic is politics rather than entertainment

Lockdown and Breakdown in Italians' Reactions on Twitter during the First Phase of Covid-19

The article focuses on Italians' reactions to the pandemic on Twitter. During the first phase of the 2020 lockdown (from the beginning of March 2020 - to the beginning of May 2020), a real-time dataset was built, linking data scratching to three events related to the introduction of the Prime Minister's decrees and his press conferences. The chosen observation point is Twitter, platform that allows us to monitor the emergence of discussions on public issues, extremely synchronized with events and news – which is, moreover, a feature of use of this platform. The coronavirus hashtag was chosen as a mechanism to track the development of Italian reactions, following the evolution of its sense and sensemaking and considering it as a polysemic collector. The aim is to identify within the tweets the actors, the topics, and the tone of the debate in an open public space. Furthermore, the analysis is carried out in search of the Italians' perception of the lockdown and whether they are in favor of it because of the defense of public health or they see it as a restriction of their individual freedom. The analysis, which used the socio-constructivist approach of Emotional Text Mining, reveals two explanatory-dimensions in the governance of the crisis: lockdown and breakdown and allows us to understand the reasons for Twitter's instinct-reactions

Molecular evidence for increased regulatory conservation during metamorphosis, and against deleterious cascading effects of hybrid breakdown in Drosophila

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Speculation regarding the importance of changes in gene regulation in determining major phylogenetic patterns continues to accrue, despite a lack of broad-scale comparative studies examining how patterns of gene expression vary during development. Comparative transcriptional profiling of adult interspecific hybrids and their parental species has uncovered widespread divergence of the mechanisms controlling gene regulation, revealing incompatibilities that are masked in comparisons between the pure species. However, this has prompted the suggestion that misexpression in adult hybrids results from the downstream cascading effects of a subset of genes improperly regulated in early development.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We sought to determine how gene expression diverges over development, as well as test the cascade hypothesis, by profiling expression in males of <it>Drosophila melanogaster</it>, <it>D. sechellia</it>, and <it>D. simulans</it>, as well as the <it>D. simulans </it>(♀) × <it>D. sechellia </it>(♂) male F1 hybrids, at four different developmental time points (3rd instar larval, early pupal, late pupal, and newly-emerged adult). Contrary to the cascade model of misexpression, we find that there is considerable stage-specific autonomy of regulatory breakdown in hybrids, with the larval and adult stages showing significantly more hybrid misexpression as compared to the pupal stage. However, comparisons between pure species indicate that genes expressed during earlier stages of development tend to be more conserved in terms of their level of expression than those expressed during later stages, suggesting that while Von Baer's famous law applies at both the level of nucleotide sequence and expression, it may not apply necessarily to the underlying overall regulatory network, which appears to diverge over the course of ontogeny and which can only be ascertained by combining divergent genomes in species hybrids.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results suggest that complex integration of regulatory circuits during morphogenesis may lead to it being more refractory to divergence of underlying gene regulatory mechanisms - more than that suggested by the conservation of gene expression levels between species during earlier stages. This provides support for a 'developmental hourglass' model of divergence of gene expression in <it>Drosophila </it>resulting in a highly conserved pupal stage.</p