in Laura Peja, Nico Carpentier, Fausto Colombo, Maria Francesca Murru, Simone Tosoni, Richard Kilborn, Leif Kramp, Risto Kunelius, Anthony McNicholas, Hannu Nieminen, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (eds.), Current Perspectives on Communication and Media Research, Bremen: edition lumière, 2018
Drawing on the preliminary findings of an ongoing case study of female solo travelling in Italy, ... more Drawing on the preliminary findings of an ongoing case study of female solo travelling in Italy, the present chapter intends to propose some methodological considerations about addressing media activities in social practices. In this way, it intends to contribute to the attempt to decentre media studies advocated by authors like David Morley, Shaun Moores or Nick Couldry. With this aim, it focuses in particular on the practice's 'media territories' and on the temporality of media activities that participate in articulation of the practice. An analysis of what Theodore Schatzki defines as 'objective' and 'subjective' time reveals how solo travelling in Italy contrasts with the ongoing tendencies of transformation related to the pervasive mediation of tourism.
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that distinction would underplay how practices reshape the materiality and structure of space though time; how space is in turn designed to host, promote and organize specific activities (and discourage others); and how, in a forcedly shared public space, each practice would open (or close) possibilities for other practices. As a way to circumvent these limitations, the proposal put forward is to extend the phenomenological conceptualization of space into a fully fledged relational one, that sees space as continuously constituted by a complex interaction between heterogeneous elements: material, symbolic and performative.
The mediation of the camera allows students to engage with the field and to experiment with the ‘denaturalizing’ vision that generally characterizes ethnographic approaches to media use and consumption. This relexive stance is further fostered by a classroom discussion on the practice of observation and on the materials produced. In this way, the exercise aims at an acceptable compromise between the reduced time available for teaching and the advantages of allowing students to personally experience the practicalities of method.
La sfida è però più radicale e profonda e ha a che fare con gli approcci metodologici che rendono possibile osservare e interpretare la realtà che scorre tra vita sociale e Rete. Dal contributo delle scienze sociali computazionali e degli Internet Studies a quello della sociologia visuale applicata ai Social Network, gli autori mostrano come sia possibile oggi innovare la ricerca sociale e tentare di dischiudere gli effetti sociali del web.
Rivolto a chi voglia capire la trasformazione in atto nel mondo della ricerca e della formazione, il volume è un valido strumento anche per quei professionisti che lavorano nella realtà televisiva e dei media audiovisivi così come nell’ambito dei consumi.
that distinction would underplay how practices reshape the materiality and structure of space though time; how space is in turn designed to host, promote and organize specific activities (and discourage others); and how, in a forcedly shared public space, each practice would open (or close) possibilities for other practices. As a way to circumvent these limitations, the proposal put forward is to extend the phenomenological conceptualization of space into a fully fledged relational one, that sees space as continuously constituted by a complex interaction between heterogeneous elements: material, symbolic and performative.
The mediation of the camera allows students to engage with the field and to experiment with the ‘denaturalizing’ vision that generally characterizes ethnographic approaches to media use and consumption. This relexive stance is further fostered by a classroom discussion on the practice of observation and on the materials produced. In this way, the exercise aims at an acceptable compromise between the reduced time available for teaching and the advantages of allowing students to personally experience the practicalities of method.
La sfida è però più radicale e profonda e ha a che fare con gli approcci metodologici che rendono possibile osservare e interpretare la realtà che scorre tra vita sociale e Rete. Dal contributo delle scienze sociali computazionali e degli Internet Studies a quello della sociologia visuale applicata ai Social Network, gli autori mostrano come sia possibile oggi innovare la ricerca sociale e tentare di dischiudere gli effetti sociali del web.
Rivolto a chi voglia capire la trasformazione in atto nel mondo della ricerca e della formazione, il volume è un valido strumento anche per quei professionisti che lavorano nella realtà televisiva e dei media audiovisivi così come nell’ambito dei consumi.
The European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School brings together a group of highly qualified doctoral students as well as senior researchers and professors from a diversity of European and non-European countries. The main target of the fourteen-day summer school is to organize an innovative learning process at doctoral level, focusing primarily on enhancing the quality of individual dissertation projects through an intercultural and interdisciplinary exchange and networking programme. It is not merely based on traditional post-graduate teaching approaches like lectures and workshops. The summer school also integrates many group-centred and individual approaches, especially an individualized discussion of doctoral projects, peer-to-peer feedback, and a joint book production.
Contributors are: Aida Martori Muntsant, Alvaro Oleart, Annamaria Pulga, Bart Cammaerts, Binakuromo Ogbebor, Erika Theissen Walukiewicz, Fausto Colombo, François Heinderyckx, Hannu Nieminen, Ignacio Bergillos, Kristian Jeff Cortez Agustin, Laura Peja, Leif Kramp, Lorleen Farrugia, Maria Francesca Murru, Michael Skey, Nico Carpentier, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Reinhard Anton Handler, Simone Tosoni, Simone Tosoni, Valentina Turrini, Victor Navarro-Remesal and Zsofia Nagy. The book additionally contains abstracts of 42 doctoral projects that were discussed at the 2017 European Media Communication Doctoral Summer School.
This, and other Summer School books are also available to download at http://www.researchingcommunication.eu/
Pinch was there at the creation—as coauthor of the groundbreaking 1984 article that launched SCOT—and has remained active through subsequent developments. Engaging and conversational, Pinch charts SCOT’s important milestones. The book describes how Pinch and Wiebe Bijker adapted the “empirical program of relativism,” developed by the Bath School to study the social construction of scientific facts, to apply to the social construction of artifacts. Entanglements addresses five issues in depth: relevant social groups, and SCOT’s focus on groups of users; the intertwining of social representation and practices; the importance of tacit knowledge in SCOT’s approach to the nonrepresentational; the controversy over nonhuman agency; and the political implications of SCOT.
Endorsements
“Pinch, skillfully interviewed by Simone Tosoni, tells us the inside story of how the sociologies of science and technology came to be the cutting edge fields they are now. Pinch was there, knows how it happened, and tells it like it was and is. Bravo!”
—Howard S. Becker, author of Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance and Art Worlds
“Entanglements provides a splendid introduction to the bewildering complexity of the social construction of technology (SCOT) and its larger science and technology studies (STS) history. Pinch’s recollections of ‘eureka!’ moments and his often amusing anecdotes reveal the important roles of mentorships, friendships, the influences of students, chance encounters, and intellectual disputes with other significant figures in generating his own innovative and influential projects. Simone Tosoni’s contributions as a highly informed, intellectually involved, and vigorously curious interviewer are significant. This is an illuminating and enjoyable read for students new to these fields as well as for seasoned researchers and scholars from the many other fields that are increasingly interacting with SCOT and STS.”
—Sandra Harding, Distinguished Research Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
“With Entanglements you are there! This is a book of a conversation between Simone Tosoni, a media theorist, and Trevor Pinch. It is a time-zoom through the birth of SSK, the sociology of scientific knowledge, SCOT, the social construction of technology, through the science wars and the Golem books on into sound studies. Trevor Pinch was a principal in all these contemporary movements and his descriptions bring you right into the fray of the times—you feel you are there. It is a romp: the stories include tales about other giants like Harry Collins, Bruno Latour, John Law, and many others. And beyond the social, the networks, one gets the personal. All of us interested in science and technology studies need this deep perspective.”
—Don Ihde, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Stony Brook University
“In the 1960s and ‘70s there was an academic revolution in our understanding of the nature of science. Here, Tosoni, working through the eyes of Trevor Pinch, recaptures the feeling of those times—uncanny! Pinch was in at the beginning of the ‘sociology of scientific knowledge’ and then cofounded the ‘social construction of technology.’ Fascinating stuff.”
—Harry Collins, Distinguished Research Professor, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University
Creature simili racconta e analizza, per la prima volta in Italia, la più folkloristicamente nota – e meno seriamente compresa – tra le subculture urbane degli anni ottanta. Dialoga con i protagonisti di quella stagione, interpellando testimoni privilegiati come musicisti (l’ex Bluvertigo Andy, i 2+2=5, Garbo), Dj (Pino Carafa dell’Hysterika, Roy del Rainbow) e animatori culturali (Angela Valcavi, fondatrice della prima fanzine dark “Amen”, ed Emanuela Zini di “Batty’s Tears”).
Dal Leoncavallo alle discoteche come l’Hysterika e il Viridis, dalle periferie ai ritrovi come la Fiera di Sinigaglia, dagli scontri con paninari e skin alle trasferte verso i Funeral Party, le loro parole regalano panoramiche sulla Milano schizofrenica degli anni ottanta. E rivelano quanto il dark di allora abbia influito sul contemporaneo.
Cities are central to the media landscapes and communication practices of our times, ranging from the wide appeal of urban popular cultures and the global resonance of protests in squares to the ubiquity of public screens and locative media in urban space. Over the past decade, scholars have become increasingly interested in cities because a close look at urban life may offer answers to important questions about contemporary media and communication: How do individuals and communities interact through the media or face-to-face in urban settings? How does the urban built environment shape and constrain the everyday lives of city dwellers? How do dominant narratives about cities promote particular forms of civic engagement and social change?
The networks, proximities, creativities, and inequalities that animate cities are at the heart of some of the major debates that sustain the discipline.
Urban communication scholarship is concerned with the ways in which people connect (or don’t connect) with others and with their urban environment via symbolic, technological and/or material means. This Special Section on methods and methodologies for urban communication research breaks new
ground. For the first time, a group of established scholars reflect systematically on how research on urban communication is done, why particular questions matter, and how they and others have examined specific aspects of the urban/communication nexus.
Guest-edited by Giorgia Aiello and Simone Tosoni, this Special Section features seven original articles that cover different disciplinary points of view, including documentary (Daniel Makagon, Mary Rachel Gould), audiencing (Simone Tosoni, Seija Ridell), material (Greg Dickinson, Giorgia Aiello), visual (Luc Pauwels), mixed-method (Matthew D. Matsaganis), ecological (Stephen Coleman, Nancy Thumim, Giles Moss), and applied (Susan Drucker, Gary Gumpert) perspectives on urban communication.
The Special Section works as a springboard for a timely and much-needed conversation on the key methodological principles, processes and practices that underlie urban communication as an area of inquiry in its own right. Taken together, the articles highlight the multifaceted nature of this body of work and invite scholars to keep reflecting on how media and communication research can produce groundbreaking empirical knowledge on cities. Even more, these articles show that research in and on cities may fundamentally change current outlooks on media and communication as a whole.
Italian youth subcultures in the ‘80s are uncharted waters for Italian academia: yet, as local appropriations of symbolic resources circulating at a transnational level, they present specificities that would be worth a definitely more sustained attention. The proposed contribution draws on the case of an harsh protest against the Italian post-punk band CCCP-Fedeli alla Linea, happened in February 1984 at the punk squat Virus in Milan, to explore the main points of contact and divergence between two local enactments of punk and postpunk subcultures (in particular: Goth).
The event was in fact a revealing episode of an increasing discrepancy (in terms of lifestyle models, musical and fashion styles and reference points in art, literature and cinema) occurring between punk and post-punk sensibilities gathered around Virus: a discrepancy that eventually led the post-punk collective “Creature Simili” (“Kindred Creatures”) to leave the squat and look for those autonomous spaces that will become reference point for the Milanese Goth scene.
In particular, it will be addressed the relationship of CCCP with their audience, the role they assigned to the subjectivity and bodies of the performers, and the imaginaries evocated not only by the band’s musical genre or by their lyrics, but also by the theatrical performances that characterized their gigs.
These findings are based on a three year-long research project that addressed for the first time in a systematic way the Italian “dark” (as Goth is known in Italy) subculture of the ‘80s, with a peculiar focus on the North Italian scene.
Starting from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, media – both mainstream and independent - have devoted to British spectacular youth subcultures (Hebdige 1979) a sporadic but persistent attention, defining through representations sort of “subcultural canons” circulating at a transnational level, and appropriated and enacted at different times in different local contexts throughout Europe, and beyond. While the original formulations of spectacular and post-punk subcultures have been extensively studied within the tradition of the Cultural Studies (Hall – Jefferson 1976, Hebdige 1979, Spooner 2004, Hodkinson 2002), local appropriations (Brake 1985, Hodkinson – Deicke 2007, Brill 2008) remain by and large understudied, in particular in Italy. Yet, local enactments of transnational “subcultural canons” do not merely represent uninteresting and late replicas: in the process of local appropriation, the subculture’s canon and expressive codes are enriched and imbued with new and specific meanings that contribute to shape the actual experience of subcultural belonging. To be fully understood, local enactments must be interrogated in the light of their specific contexts: they indeed derive their distinctive character and meanings from the social, cultural and political conditions of their participants’ daily lives.
The proposed paper focuses on fashion and style in Italian Goth subculture of the ‘80s (in particular, Milan), trying to clarify the specificities in which they had been used to construct forms of communality between subculture’s members, and to mark a distinction with the out-group. Drawing on the research materials and on the main findings of a three year-long research project (Tosoni-Zuccalà 2013), fashion is addressed both as a symbolic resource and as a practice. As a symbolic resource, it is interrogated in the light of the political repression, and “new hedonism”, that characterized Italy – and in particular, the city of Milan – in the early 80s; within this context, a specific attention will be dedicated to the role of fashion and style in the negotiation of hegemonic gender identities. As a practice, it is interrogated both in terms of the specific ethic of dressing that disciplined the use of fashion codes in daily life, and of the specific stylistic and ethic relevance assumed by DYI practices within the subculture
80s’ Italian Goth subculture (known in Italy as “Dark”) represented the local appropriation, re-interpretation and enactment of an assemblage of symbolic resources (lifestyle models, music, fashion and style, art, literature, cinema) derived principally from the British underground scene, and intercepted mainly through mainstream and independent media.
In this process of local appropriation, the canon of the cultural background and basic expressive codes of the subculture were enriched and imbued of new and specific meanings that contributed to shape the actual experience of subcultural belonging. As a consequence, to be fully understood, belonging and participation must be interrogated in the light of their specific contexts: they derive their distinctive character and meanings from the social, cultural and political conditions of their participants’ daily lives. Yet, these are completely uncharted waters for Italian academic research.
The proposed paper represents a first attempt to describe the Italian “dark” community, and make sense of its specific ways of belonging. The paper draws on the research materials and on the main findings of a three year-long research project (Tosoni- Zuccalà 2013), addressing the Italian dark subculture in the ‘80s, and in particular the North Italian scene, revolving around the city of Milan .
For this effort, twenty-four life histories have been recorded in one or more sessions, with each interview lasting from two to six hours. Informants have been selected through typological variation, balancing gender, place of residence (within the city or in the neighboring districts), role in the scene (cultural animators like DJs and artists or simple participants), and “generations” (participants entering the scene in the first or in the second half of the ‘80s). Pictures and visual materials have been collected from informants to integrate the interview and to be used as visual stimuli in the interviews.
The experience of belonging to the Italian “dark” community in Milan has not emerged as univocal and undifferentiated: on the contrary, it has revealed specifies and differences depending on the particular scene that mediated the appropriation of the Goth subculture. Three interconnected, yet distinct scenes emerged as relevant: a first one, gravitating around the Creature Simili collective, active in an autonomous space within the squatted social center Leoncavallo, and directly deriving from the experience of militant punk squat “Virus”; the second one, gravitating around the alternative disco Hysterika and a stable circuit of alternative clubs spread all around North Italy (and Switzerland); and a third one, typical of the small towns around the city of Milan, represented by all those people that lived the experience of subcultural belonging in small, isolated, groups.
In particular, the paper addresses the participant’s forms of identity construction and sociality, and their relationships with political involvement, underlining their connections with the Milanese context, and clarifying the similitudes, and the specificities, of each of these scenes in the local enactment of the Goth subculture.