Mediatized Politics
An Analytical Study of The Interrelationship Between Media and Youth in Italy
An Analytical Study of The Interrelationship Between Media and Youth in Italy
Prof. Emiliana De Blasio Prof. Michele Sorice
April 2006
Member of
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“Political Tribune”
• For the Administrative Elections of 1960,
Italian Television transmits “Electoral
Tribune” (Tribuna elettorale) in which
the political actors were able to contact
“directly” the people
• April 26th 1961: The first “Tribuna
Politica” was transmitted
– The Rai decides to institute a permanent
space for the political communication
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The Research
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The Background
The Permanent Campaign (1/2)
• The \"permanent campaign\" constitutes a new
type of relationship between
parties/candidates and citizens and consensus
building. For many western democracies this
phenomenon is not at all new, having been
experienced in the United States, for example,
back in the 1980s when it was theorized by
Blumenthal (1982). In Italy, this trend is new
being experienced just in the previous electoral
competition of 2001.
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The Background
The Permanent Campaign (2/2)
• The concept of permanent campaingn refers to the
extension of electoral-type communication
dynamics to the ordinary phases of political life,
creating a situation in which there is no longer any
clear distinction between the political cycle and the
electoral cycle. Rather than focusing on programs to
build consensus, political behaviour is becoming
relatively subordinate to the logic of relations with
public opinion and to the needs of a political
communication which is more and more conditioned
by the marketing and news management.
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Outline (1/2)
• Media and politics have always been depending on one
another (particularly in Italy), but today their
relationship is reaching unprecedented degrees of
intimacy and complexity
– The politicians’ private life and external appearance is just one of
today’s dominant media perspectives
– Permanent Campaign
• We have tried to map out the territory that emerges
out of the contemporary complicity between media and
politics
– And particularly the young citizens perception of the political
discourse
• We have tried to use different disciplines: from media
sociology to discourse analysis
– The research is still in course: we would to deliver state cutting edge
knowledge and insight into the rapid and deep transformations of
contemporary politics (and media use) in Italy
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Outline (2/2)
• Using discourse analysis as the social research
(surveys, focus groups), the study focuses on
the ways in which youth talk about their use of
the media and the ways in which both the
media and young citizens talk about politics.
And also the ways in which young citizens
percept political communication
• One of the startingpoint is that, in a mediatised
society such as Italy, what we understand as
“politics” is partly “the product of a complex
interplay between the ways in which the media
and citizens talk about politics”
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Theoretical dimensions
and methodological tools
A similar scheme in a
Youths’ Use and Danish research, directed
by Kim Christian Schröder
Experience of Media
Surveys
Focus groups
Media Discourses Youths’ Discourses
about Politics about Politics
Discourse Analysis Focus groups
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Theoretical
Background (1/2)
• Youths possess extensive knowledge repertoires
• Youths have elaborated aesthetic repertoires
• We have defined “Youth” all the people in the
age 18-30
– 9.5 millions people: 19.9% of the italian electors
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Theoretical
Background (2/2)
• Critical Discourse Analysis
– Fairclough (1992, 1995, 1998)
– An approach language based, social constructionist and
holistic:
• Discourse is simultaneously constituted by social reality and
constitutive of social reality
• Media and Social Changes
– Sparks (1994, 1997)
• Social Semiotics
– Jensen (1987), Schrøder (1994)
• Audience theories
– coming from the British approach to media audiences
– Morley (1982), Hobson (1982), Livingstone & Lunt (1994),
Scannell (1992, 1998), Abercrombie & Longhurst (1998),
Couldry (2005), Sorice (2005)
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Three steps
• 1,526 questionnaires
– With interviewers
– Respondents: citizens aged between 18 and
30
• 8 focus groups
– People aged between 18 and 30
• Media construction of politics
– Discourse analysis of media discourses: tv
infotainment and free press
– (still in development)
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The Quantitative Research
The Questionnaires
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (1/16)
M F Totale
I don’t watch tv 2.5% 1.3% 1.9%
Less than 1 hour/day 18.8% 12.0% 15.4%
From 1 to 2 hours/day 38.6% 26.2% 34.4%
From 2 to 3 hours/day 25.0% 34.4% 27.7%
From 3 to 4 hours/day 9.9% 16.9% 13.4%
More than 4 hours/day 5.2% 9.2% 7.2%
Consumption time of television programs
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (2/16)
Gender TOTAL
Male Female
Working 6.0 2.4 4,3
Studying 30,0 30,8 30,4
Reading 8.3 13,8 11,2
Eating 76,9 94,0 85,1
Working at pc 9.1 10,4 9,9
Surfing on internet 4,7 11,5 8,1
When I watch tv (more answers possible)
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (3/16)
Total
I never watch political tv programmes 11,4%
If I look at politicians I turn channel 9.8%
I watch sometimes political tv programmes 35.1%
I watch regularly political tv programmes 31.7%
I watch prevailingly political tv programmes 12.0%
Political Tv Programmes Fruition
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (4/16)
Total
I watch the Political Tribunes 4.3%
I watch infotainment programmes 10.4%
I watch Tv News 36.4%
I listen Radio Programmes and News 14.7%
I surf on Internet 19.0%
I read the Newspapers 10.0%
All above 5.2%
Ways to inform about politics
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (5/16)
• Only 19% of our sample use Internet to
inform about politics
But
• According to “Eurisko” the 45,3% of
Italian People between 18 and 30 are
daily surfers
– And only 28% of Italian People has used
Internet for once time at least
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (6/16)
Tg4
Studio Aperto
Tg2
Tg La7
Tg5
Tg1
Tg3
Sky Tg24
0 20 40 60 80 100
Credibility of the main Italian Tv News (Weight)
Respondents: only who had answered to use tv news to inform about politics (41.6% of whole sample)
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (7/16)
Some remarks
• Tg1, Tg2 and Tg3 are Tv News of RAI (public
broadcasting)
– Tg1 and Tg2 are considered in “government area”
– Tg3 is considered close to “Unione” (opposition)
• Tg4, Tg5 and Studio Aperto are Tv News of
Mediaset (Berlusconi’s channels)
• Sky Tg24 is the Tv News of Sky News Italy
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (8/16)
Politicians have not to partecipate at entertainment 54%
programmes
Politicians have to partecipate at entertainment programmes 46%
so we can understand their true faces
Have the politicians to partecipate at entertainment?
Politics not only in institutional spaces
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (9/16)
2004 2006
Increased 65% 61.4%
Lowered 13% 10.3%
The same 20% 21.6%
No answer 2% 6.7%
Increase of interest onto politics
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (10/16)
2004 2006
Everytime/Often 30% 31.3%
Sometimes 19% 22.6%
Rarely 21% 17.4%
Never 28% 26.0%
No answer 2% 2.7%
Participation to manifestations or protests
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (11/16)
2004 2006
Positive 7% 6.3 %
Negative 69% 74.7 %
Not positive nor negative 17% 10.2 %
No answer 7% 8.8 %
Opinions about Italian Politics
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (12/16)
Prodi
Boselli
Fassino
Aggregated Bertinotti
score Casini
Fini
Berlusconi
Politicians perceived as more present in tv programmes
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (13/16) Aggregated
Prodi
Boselli
Fassino
Bertinotti
score Casini
APRIL 2006 Fini
Berlusconi
• Silvio Berlusconi is the Prime Minister and Leader of Forza Italia
• Gianfranco Fini is Foreign Minister and Leader of Alleanza Nazionale
• Pierferdinando Casini is the President of the Parliament and Leader
of Conservative Christian Democratic Party
• Fausto Bertinotti is the Leader of Rifondazione Comunista (post-
communist party)
• Piero Fassino is the Leader of Left Democratic Party (Labour Party)
• Enrico Boselli is the Leader of Liberal-Radicals Party
• Romani Prodi is the Leader of Unione (the coalition of oppositions)
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (14/16)
• The situation is different if we consider
only the people who watch television less
than 2 hours/day
• People (18-30) who have a weak tv
fruition remember the Leader of
opposition better than the other people
– Is there an “effect” of television cultivation?
Or what else?
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (15/16)
Fassino
Bertinotti
Prodi
Aggregated
Score Casini
Fini
Berlusconi
Politicians perceived as more present in tv programmes
Respondents: people who watch tv less than 2 hours/day
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The first step: the questionnaires
Findings (16/16)
2004 2006
Romano Prodi 50% 41 %
Silvio Berlusconi 27% 14 %
Others 23% 45 %
Intentions of voting
Remarks: The electoral system is now different comparing
with 2004: from majority vote to proportional vote
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The qualitative research
The Focus Groups
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The second step: the focus groups
Patterns
• 8 focus groups
– Explorative Approach
• 68 people
• Aged between 18 and 30
• 32 men
– 15 workers, 17 students
• 36 women
– 14 workers, 22 students
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The second step: the focus groups
Recruiting: 2 different ways
• 4 focus groups
– Snowball technique
– Validation questionnaire
– Exit questionnaire
• 4 focus groups
– Recruiting questionnaire
– Exit questionnaire
In this way we have tried to reduce the distortion coming
from the recruiting systems
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The second step: the focus groups
Aims
• To investigate the citizens' daily life with the
media as people report this in focus groups
conversations
• To avoid causal generalizations about agenda
setting and definitional power
• To map the interrelated territories of
contemporary politics and to discuss possible
linkages between media discourses and citizens'
discourse
– (Fiske & Hartley's theory of bardic media)
• To go beyond the simplistic notions of media
power
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The second step: the focus groups
Findings
• Confidence
– How and in what way the focus groups participants
trust in television and particularly in tv political
communication
• Representation
– Interpretation of mediatized politics
• Action
– Strategies and tactics of the people to contrast what
they consider manipulation
– Use of the media (or alternative media) to find
information about politics
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The second step: the focus groups
Findings. Three trends
• Constructive No-Confidence
– All the participants have not confidence in politics
but less than two years ago
• Mediation (and Remediation)
– Different approaches according to their participation
or not to the sphere of “subpolitics”
– Use of forms of subpolitics such as a “remediation”
with the social participation
• Subpolitics: Social and Volunteer Associations, (“Third
sector”), Engagements for the Peace, Equo-solidal trade
• Lack of knowledge: two sub-trends
– 1) Less no-confidence in front of the political life
– 2) Suspect for the politicians invasion of TV field
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The second step: the focus groups
Findings. Critics to the media system
• In the focus groups we have discovered
four oppositional couples, described by
the participants, all focusing about the
main opposition:
– What the media do vs What the
media would have to do
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The second step: the focus groups
Findings. Critics to the media system
• Spectacle vs. Information
– TV is charged to dedicate too many time to spectacular contents
while they ask more attention to the non-mainstream news
• Sensationalism vs. Simplicity
– Media (particularly TV) are charged with using sensationalism to
tell stories concerning weak people (we had similar findings in a
research about the audience of alternative media)
• Superficiality vs. Deepening
– Tv is perceived as a space of superficiality in which also political
discourse become superficial; the TV-scheduling is considered
too much linked to economical rules. They consider Internet a
better instrument to find critical news
• Manipulation vs. Independence
– TV is charged to be an instrument of the “ideological control”;
on the opposite side, the Radio and the Internet are considered
spaces of freedom
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Thank You!
emiliana.deblasio@crisc-cmcs.eu michele.sorice@crisc-cmcs.eu
www.crisc-cmcs.eu
info@crisc-cmcs.eu
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