Mediatization and Platformization of Cycling Cultures: Actors, Practices, Processes

This introduction aims to describe the main issues of mediatization and platformization of cycling cultures in contemporary society. Starting with the concept of cycling culture, as opposed to the car-centric paradigm, the goal is to show the set of social actors, sociocultural processes, and cultural practices that structure the media-cycling field

Redacted. Indagine socioculturale sulla spettatorialità (post)cinematografica nell’era digitale

2014 - 2015The notion of “postcinema” refers to the process of radical transformation of the 19th century cinematographic medium. Digital media have undermined his photographic status, on the one hand, and his nature of collective show, on the other. This process has three main effects: 1) total digization of the moviemaking; 2) the migration of the “cinematic” from filmic spaces to polymorphic screens (videoart, spot, clip, medical imaging, machinima, live performance, vj-set...); 3) the rise of transmedia storytelling. In this perspective, the historic transition from film to postcinema will act on the debate on the medium's death, in its form of twentieth-century culture industry with fundamental apparatus of production, distribution and consumption. The objective of this thesis, as a result of a three-year period of research in the PhD in Communication Studies at the University of Salerno, is to outline a phenomenology of postcinematographic. Particularly, I analyzed the ways in which digital media have radically changed the postcinematographic spectatorship. The complexity of the phenomena requires a multidisciplinary approach - sociology of digital culture , Visual Studies , analytic philosophy , Audience Studies , remix theory , media archeology . Digitization of processes and contents, convergence of cultures and technologies and remediation of identities and relationships in online communities have radically altered the communal and individual practices of relationship with the cinema and, in a co-dependent circuit, the socio-cultural processes of construction of collective imagery . The original contribution that we will try to offer compared to the literature used will consist of a two-fold task: on the one hand , systematize diverse contributions in a unifying sociological theory of postcinematographic spectatorship ; on the other, using a mixed -methods approach , we intended to return the wealth of online identity construction practices. [edited by author]XIV n.s

Il re nascosto digitale. I media tra costruzione mediata del reale e mediazione radicale

The Digital Hidden King. Media Among Mediatized Construction of Reality and Radical Mediation. The paper intends to explore Georg Simmel’s concept of “hidden king”, as central concept of a given era. Therefore, we analyze the concepts of “mediated construction of reality” (Couldry, Hepp 2016) and “radical mediation” (Grusin 2017), which, in our opinion, can be conceived as the “hidden king” of contemporary digital society. The massive digitization of contemporary society and culture has led to deep mediatization (Hepp, Hasebrink 2018). Therefore, digital media have helped to redefine the forms of knowledge, time and spaces of social life. In this context, Couldry and Hepp rethought the constructionism of Berger and Luckmann and the figurative sociology of Norbert Elias, in a new theoretical framework based on the centrality of the media in the construction of social symbols and collective interactions. Starting from similar bases, Richard Grusin (2015) elaborates the concept of radical mediation. Overcoming the separation between subject and object, Grusin defines mediation “as the process, action, or event that generates or provides the conditions for the emergence of subjects and objects, for the individuation of entities within the world”. Furthermore, mediation operates not by neutrally reproducing meaning or information, but “by actively transforming human and nonhuman actants, as well as their conceptual and affective states”. Mediation is thus conceived as the constitutive dimension of every relationship or contact between human and non-human actants, objects and subjects, technical media and forms of biological life. In the last part of the paper, we try to highlight the vitality of Simmel’s sociology, able to dialogue with the mediological theories of Grusin and Couldry and Hepp

La bocca del male. Cannibalismo, estetizzazione e performatività nell'ecosistema narrativo di Hannibal Lecter

The Mouth of Evil. Cannibalism, Aestheticization and Performativity in the Narrative Ecosystem of Hannibal Lecter. The paper explores from a socio-cultural perspective how the theme of cannibalism is used in the narrative ecosystem focused on Hannibal Lecter (four novels by Thomas Harris, five films, a television series). The imaginary related to food in this transmedial ecosystem illustrates the path that goes from procuring to preparation until consumption. In this key, the paper analyses the ways moral norms of a given era identify some relationships with food as normatively acceptable, while classifying others as "abnormal", referring to cannibal cultures (Kilgour 1990). Novels, films, and ABC series are analyzed according to two functions associated with the cannibalistic gesture (Arens 2001): the symbolic function associated with eating human flesh and the aestheticizing function. Finally, the paper debates the figure of the cannibalistic killer in ABC tv show, as a paradigmatic example of the transition from the classical hero to the postclassic hero (Cano-Gomez 2012) and the representation of evil in terms of identity performance, in the wider context of the post-seriality television (Brancato 2011)

Il re nascosto digitale. I media tra costruzione mediata del reale e mediazione radicale

The Digital Hidden King. Media Among Mediatized Construction of Reality and Radical Mediation. The paper intends to explore Georg Simmel’s concept of “hidden king”, as central concept of a given era. Therefore, we analyze the concepts of “mediated construction of reality” (Couldry, Hepp 2016) and “radical mediation” (Grusin 2017), which, in our opinion, can be conceived as the “hidden king” of contemporary digital society. The massive digitization of contemporary society and culture has led to deep mediatization (Hepp, Hasebrink 2018). Therefore, digital media have helped to redefine the forms of knowledge, time and spaces of social life. In this context, Couldry and Hepp rethought the constructionism of Berger and Luckmann and the figurative sociology of Norbert Elias, in a new theoretical framework based on the centrality of the media in the construction of social symbols and collective interactions. Starting from similar bases, Richard Grusin (2015) elaborates the concept of radical mediation. Overcoming the separation between subject and object, Grusin defines mediation “as the process, action, or event that generates or provides the conditions for the emergence of subjects and objects, for the individuation of entities within the world”. Furthermore, mediation operates not by neutrally reproducing meaning or information, but “by actively transforming human and nonhuman actants, as well as their conceptual and affective states”. Mediation is thus conceived as the constitutive dimension of every relationship or contact between human and non-human actants, objects and subjects, technical media and forms of biological life. In the last part of the paper, we try to highlight the vitality of Simmel’s sociology, able to dialogue with the mediological theories of Grusin and Couldry and Hepp

Il visibile e l’immaginabile: cultura visuale, media e immaginario

Visual Culture Studies represent an innovative approach to the study of visual culture, connecting Media Studies, sociology, aesthetics, history of art, iconography. The evolution of this field of study, thanks to authors such as W.J.T. Mitchell, M. Bal, J. Elkins and others, raises some relevant issues. Starting from the book Epidemia visuale (edited by Fabio La Rocca), this paper explores how visual culture can contribute to the evolution of media theories. Moreover, the vision is conceived as a social and cultural construction. In this perspective, different observation techniques produce new ways of knowing. The aim of the discipline is thus no longer the study of visual content, but the study of the connection between vision practices and forms of knowledge. A third set of questions addressed by the authors of this book deals with the evolution of visual culture within the conflicting and effervescent dynamics of contemporary digital social imaginaries

Once upon a time the Self: cinema and online identity playground tales

ABSTRACT More than any other medium, Cinema can express the ‘spirit’ of modern industrial civilization (Abruzzese, 2006; 2008; Casetti, 2008), by telling about other media (Frezza, 1996; 2014) through the post-modern phase up to the present Post-Media age (Krauss, 2004) even foreshadowing the mediascape evolution (Young, 2006). Over the last decade Cinema has told about social media as complex contests where identity building or re-configuration take place. Identity’s building is an on-going and almost infinite process, well expressed by the concept of identization (Melucci, 1991). This process grounds on the reflexive project of the self (Giddens, 1992), and on individuals’ abilities to assume each other’s perspective in order to be self-reflective (Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934; Schutz, 1962); it spreads from the internal conversation (Archer 2003) and the narrative process (Bruner, 1990; Ricoeur, 1991; Pecchinenda, 2008). Social media make these perspectives cutting-edge since they allow subjectivization practices and offer the opportunity for identity textualization (Salzano, 2008), enhancing the dialectic between the embodied self and the desired self (Salzano, 2014). For instance, Memorable moi (2013) is a short film which tells the obsession regarding the identity acknowledgment. Some scholars claim a sort of disconnection between online and offline: late modernity identity — by means of digital media — is uninhibited and non-conforming (Reid 1991), or fluid and fragmented (Turkle, 1984; 1995) — because of the disembodiment — or alone despite always connected (Turkle, 2011). This kind of disconnection is told by several cinematic storytelling (Catfish, 2010, Acht Blumen, 2012). According to other scholars, the digital Self is stable and sustained (Baym 1998), though disseminated along multiple relationships and conversations: it is rather enriched thanks to the connected reflexivity (Ito, 2008; Baym and boyd, 2012; Boccia Artieri, 2012) and anchored to the body presence — even though in a mediated form. Two movies, among others, tell about the body as an ‘identity stake’ through the digital interactions: Me, You and Everyone We Know (2005) and Her (2013). In particular, social media platforms work as identity playground during Adolescence (boyd, 2008; 2014; Buckingham, 2008): young people’s identity-in-action (Weber and Mitchell, 2008) builds up between on line and offline interactions (Hine, 2000; 2013). Many movies tell about these identity performance, ranging over the sexual identity building (InCONTACT, 2012) or the political one (The Real Social Network, 2012, #chicagoGirl: The Social Network Takes on A Dictator, 2013); others focus on the reputation management of the online identity (Chef, 2014), or on the offline augmentation of mediated relations (Face 2 Face, 2012). Cinema also describes the other side of the coin. Many movies about young people and media — which can be analyzed by means of an anthropo-mediologic approach (Frezza, 2014 ) — tell about the risks regarding the online identity building: the cyberbullying (Disconnect, 2014), the problems in the identification processes (Adoration, 2008, Chatroom, 2011), the good judgment (Hard Candy, 2005) and the mourning (UnFRIEND, 2014). Matrix (1999) is the founder of those movies which tell about the online dark side where, following Foucault (1988) the Self fluidity is intended as a consequence and expression of Power. As for this point of view, social media are interpreted as cultural device that trigger — by means of technical constraints (Couldry, 2010) and individuals’ control — a sociable power (Colombo, 2013) which imposes to conform the imagined audience and the social stereotypes. Documentaries like We Live in Public (2009), Generation Social (2012), Online Now (2012), InRealLife (2013), Terms And Conditions May Apply (2013) and the short movie Look Up (2014) describe the complaint of social media power and effect in the individuals’ daily life. Once upon a time the Self: cinema and online identity playground tales (PDF Download Available). Available from: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/280224702_Once_upon_a_time_the_Self_cinema_and_online_identity_playground_tales [accessed Nov 22, 2015]

The Sports Hero in the Social Imaginary. Identity, Community, Ritual and Myth

This paper aims to introduce the sociological processes and mechanisms defining the social imaginary of sports hero, who is a sportsperson acquiring a special status by virtues of his/her extraordinary and exemplary skills, achievements and biography. The sports hero inspires long-term identification and he is symbol of a community, of its values, ideas and collective meanings, while his body incorporates socially appreciated and celebrated qualities. In the dramaturgical and ritual dimension of sport, an athlete can become a collective symbol, and, over time, an hero with mythical features. However, it is only through media narratives that a sportsperson can be heroic and mythical. Thus, the social imaginary in the narrative construction of the sports hero as a central role. The stories revitalise myths, archetypes and beliefs displaying human passions, ambitions, contradictions, conflicts and so on

Filosofia, narrazioni, media

The issue of narration occupies a prominent place in the philosophical discourse, since its inception: as recalls in its reconstruction of the origins of Greek thought Jean-Pierre Vernant, narration must be understood, for the philosophical thought of the beginnings, above all as the adversary par excellence: it is the myth, in fact, that is properly narrative; that is to say the maximum expression of that system of beliefs and images, of supra-human and supra-rational explanations of the world to which we began to oppose, for the first time in the West, the claim of rationality that I thought philosophical he claimed for himselfLa questione della narrazione occupa nel discorso filosofico, fin dai suoi esordi, un posto di spicco: come ricorda nella sua ricostruzione delle origini del pensiero greco Jean-Pierre Vernant, la narrazione va intesa, per il pensiero filosofico dei primordi, innanzitutto come l’avversario per eccellenza: è il mito, infatti, ad essere propriamente narrativo; vale a dire la massima espressione di quel sistema di credenze e di immagini, di superstizioni e spiegazioni sovra-umane e sovra-razionali del mondo a cui si incominciava a contrapporre, per la prima vola in Occidente, la pretesa di razionalità che pensiero filosofico rivendicava per s