Mass-Media Research in Italy: Culture and Politics

Abstract

This article examines the impact of cultural, ideological and scientific factors on Italian mass communication research from its origins in the 1960s to the present. Relatively constant influences have included (a) a strong tendency among scholars to social involvement, facilitating normative approaches, (b) a debate over general theoretical issues, and (c) long-standing funding support from RAI (the Italian broadcasting company), concerned to evaluate its public service objectives. Shifts over time from critical theory to more pragmatic perspectives and from reliance on content analysis techniques to a distinctively Italian semiotic approach to media texts are traced. More recent influences have included the unregulated explosion of private commercial television and a keen interest in studying audience reception.