Communication Studies

Melodrama is generally debated by academics as a powerful cinematographic mechanism capable to deal with forbidden themes by Hays Code in Fifties. The aim of the paper is to discuss how films which derive from theatrical plays like "Tea and Sympathy" and "Suddenly Last Summer" cope with homosexuality in a revolutionary perspective.

Nowadays cinema needs other media, such as video game, in order to reinvent itself. But, as Francesco Casetti says, the theatre conserves a social importance in the experience of movie watching: thus, the paper describes different ways of making Interactive cinema in a movie theatre, analysing its relationship with spectators.

Video games have come to play a significant role in the media habits of various generational cohorts, but particularly of the younger ones. Because of this, serious games have emerged in the past two decades as a viable way to sensitize to sociopolitical issues and today they're employed also for sensitizing about environmental issues. This research examines the "To The Last Tree Standing" ("Ostatnie drzewo") campaign carried out in 2017 by advertising agency Ogilvy Poland for Greenpeace to stop the deforestation of the Białowieża forest. To generate awareness among younger segments of the audience, the campaign leveraged the popularity of the sandbox video game Minecraft, within which a 1:1 digital copy of the forest was developed, and of famous Polish videogame "streamers" (i.e. people broadcasting their gameplay sessions). Methodologically, the research relied on interviews to executives and designers (n=4), as well as content analysis of the campaign and related discourses in Polish media (n=19). The findings suggest that a) sandbox games can generate innovative storytelling practices overcoming the political polarization of environmental communication; b) sandbox games as Minecraft, thanks to the high degree of manipulation of its worlds and the freedom of creation it allows, represent a salient framework for the meaning-making of ecological facts; c) streamers represent an "educational leverage" for the development of ecological attitudes. This evidence highlights new development trajectories for the study of environmental communication.

Movie-theaters have long been the first market and the main test for the film distribution policies. An analysis of the distribution strategies and their effectiveness cannot, therefore, be separated from the knowledge of the cinemas chain. It is all the more true in Italy, where, with few exceptions and even today, the exhibition is presented as a "non-integrated" segment of the film industry supply chain and where the cinemas circuits continue to be a residual share of the exhibition system as well. This essay starts from this premise to provide an overview of the Italian exhibition system, with a focus on the period from 1949 to 2003, delimited by two key legislative actions: the Andreotti’s Law (958/1949) and the Urbani’s Decree (Legislative Decree 128/2004).
The analysis will develop through three levels: at the stage of scenario, in order to define dimensions and axes of the cinemas chain; at the stage of the processes, in order to grasp some of the logics that govern the evolution of the exhibition system in Italy; and, at the last, at the stage of the cases, whit a focus on two exemplary epiphenomena of the Italian movie-theaters system and history.

This paper explores a group of YouTube channels dealing with narratology and creative writing in Italy. The first part presents the state of the art of Digital Humanities' analysis on YouTube, showing a dearth of material about the narratologists, thus leaving space for cutting-edge research on the matter. Then, we present the research methodology and the selected sample of channels, divided into three classes (masters, coaches and disseminators). Finally, we discuss the different modes and strategies of these three groups of content creators

Datafication of childhood and family life (Barassi, 2020; Mascheroni & Siibak, 2021) represents one of the main expressions of data colonialism (Couldry & Mejias, 2019). Indeed, data relations are pervading the practices and imaginaries of parenting and childhood to the point of being taken for granted. This poses significant epistemological and methodological challenges. This contribution sets out to advance some methodological proposals to study such phenomena through hybrid methods. Adopting a longitudinal mixed methods research design within a sample of 20 families with young children (0-8 y.o) which combines interviews, observational and visual data (Pink & Leder-Mackley, 2012) and drawing upon the concept of families as communicative figurations (Hepp et al., 2018) we argue that network methods and constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) appear suited as analytical tools to capture the interactions between data (generated by the media practices of each household’s membe...

Due to their internet connectivity and intensive data collection about users and their environments, smart speakers extend the datafication of the domestic environment, while contributing to the normalisation of data relations as an integral part of family everyday life. Our study extends the analysis of the domestication of smart speakers into the domestic context, family relations, practices and imaginaries. In particular, we provide theoretical and empirical insights into the study of datafication as a diverse, situated and embodied experience. In order to analyse the emergent and situated relationships (through and with smart speakers), agencies and power structures mobilised in the domestication of smart speakers, we conceptualise families as communicative figurations comprising actors (family members), culture (including technological and surveillance imaginaries), communication practices, and a specific digital media ensemble. Drawing on mixed-method data, our findings show t...