L'Italia rappresentata: i difetti visivi dei mezzi di informazione

The essay by Guido Gili is a revised and ampler version of an intervention treated in a conference about the representation of Italy in the mass media. By using the metaphor of defects and diseases in the eye, the author reviews the main deformations and "mistakes" in the representations of the Italian reality in the mass media: the stereotyped vision of the citizens-institutions relationship; an image of the politic life in suspense between routine and personalization, which doesn’t help to adequately understand the political processes; a trend to xenomania, a negative representation of the family and intergenerational relationships which emphasises the relational pathologies, a preference for the principle of a psychological explanation for the phenomena, to the detriment of the social-cultural contest; the increasing autoreferentiality, when the media talk about themselves more and more, and tend to identify the social reality with the reality represented/built in/by media. Then the author wonders which are the origins of these defects in the eye, whether they are the results of ideological choices or the reflection of pragmatic needs in the production processes of information (or both). In the end Gili proposes an empiric research plan about the representation of Italy and Italians in the mass media, and about the influence of this representation on the image that Italians have about themselves and their country.

Guido Gili, L'Italia rappresentata: i difetti visivi dei mezzi di informazione in "SOCIOLOGIA DELLA COMUNICAZIONE " 32/2001, pp , DOI: