Università Roma Tre

The course of Sociology of Media 2019/20 aims to provide students with the critical and theoretical tools to orient themselves in the modern society of communication and to understand the interaction between historical and technological components on the one hand and cultural and social on the other.
The course is divided into two parts: a theoretical-general and a monographic part.
The first part is devoted to the analysis of the main theories and the most important interpretative models developed within the research on mass communications with particular regard to the sociological field. Particular attention will be devoted to the modern "network society", to its theories and its impact on society and social relations.
In the final part of the course, we analyze the impact of television on Italian society and culture from the 50s to the present day. This part of the course, on the one hand, deepens the knowledge of Italian television in the different phases and seasons of the country. On the other hand, it analyses the effects of television on the individual and collective Italian identity, trough the analysis of some of the most famous Italian political talk-shows.

Exam program:
– L. Paccagnella, Sociologia della comunicazione, Bologna, Il Mulino Edizione 2012, solo i capitoli 3, 4.
– E. Novelli, La democrazia del talk-show. Storia di un genere cha ha cambiato, la televisione, la politica, l’Italia, Roma, Carocci 2016.
– A. Miconi, Teoria e pratica del Web, Bologna, Il Mulino 2018, (Nuova Edizione)

For Erasmus students the program replaces the volume "The Democracy of the Talk-Show" with the part related to the Italian history from 1945 to the present of a high school manual. We recommend: Valerio Castronovo, "A World in the plural, volume 3 from 1945 to today", La Nuova Italia, chapters 24, 29, 35.