Antonio Ciaglia

Politics in the media and the media in politics: A comparative study of the relationship between the media and political systems in three European countries

The link between mass media systems and politics is widely acknowledged and has been confirmed by a significant amount of research. However, the degree of this tie and the forms that it can take vary significantly according to different national contexts. By conducting a comparative analysis that is centred on three cases in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, this study addresses the overlap between media and politics from a dual perspective: the politicization of public service broadcasting and the permeability of the political system for media-related personalities or practitioners. The data show that the natural connection between political and media systems is never completely absent, although profound differences can be detected in the extent and in the implications that these connections can have for the entire system.

Democratising public service broadcasting: The South African Broadcasting Corporation – between politicisation and commercialisation

ABSTRACT Despite improvements in technology and the proliferation of broadcasting possibilities, public service broadcasting remains one of the pivotal pillars upon which today’s media systems are built and rely. Nevertheless, it continues to face heavy pressure from political, governmental and economic actors. This study will attain two objectives by discussing the results of a content analysis of South African civil society organisations’ online archives, a documentary analysis of South African media legislation, and three semi-structured interviews with South Africa’s civil society representatives. First, the study will provide and discuss an analytical framework for studying PSB politicisation that considers not only who holds power but also how power is exerted. Second, the study will highlight different ways in which the relationships between regulation and political actors, and between the state and the market, develop within public service broadcasting. More specifically, this study maintains that the state and the market are not always and not necessarily two colliding powers, particularly when attention is paid to the public media system. In fact, under certain circumstances, the state and market can successfully coexist and fruitfully cooperate by emptying the public broadcaster of its true and distinctive value compared to other broadcasters: its publicness.

Political intimization as a key to bypassing traditional leadership selection procedures: The case of Matteo Renzi

Italy’s Partito Democratico has for a long time been characterized by rigid mechanisms of leadership selection. Prior to Renzi’s ascent to leadership, no leader had managed to rise to power without being backed up by the party’s key figures. By undertaking a content analysis of Italy’s most important entertainment magazine, Chi, and by comparing Matteo Renzi’s coverage with the coverage received by another three Partito Democratico leading figures, Pier Luigi Bersani, Massimo D’Alema and Enrico Letta, this article argues that when demand for political innovation is particularly high, political intimization can represent an alternative and fruitful way to party leadership.

How Italian politics goes popular: Evidence from an empirical analysis of gossip magazines and TV shows

It is widely acknowledged that present-day politicians are becoming celebrities. This causes significant effects on the way printed and audiovisual media outlets have started covering them. In fact, political leaders’ private lives are increasingly scanned by gossip magazines and entertainment TV programmes, whose coverage contributes to feed people’s interest over political leaders’ personal sphere. However, as is shown in this case study, in Italy this phenomenon seems to develop in a peculiar way. First, in spite of the fact that both media share the same goal, which is to entertain their public, gossip magazines and TV shows seem to follow very different coverage strategies. Second, and more importantly, only those politicians who belong to the centre-right political area receive a considerable coverage. In the authors’ view, this is due to a greater openness to the use of unconventional political communication forms, as well as a more marked inclination to being affected by political scandals.

Pop-politics in times of crisis: The Italian tabloid press during Mario Monti’s government

Modern politicians need to diversify their communication strategies to reach a wide range of citizens/electors. Communication of political programmes must be associated with the effective communication of the private sphere. However, does this rule apply to a scenario in which the political stage is not ruled by politicians? By presenting the results of a content analysis of four Italian tabloids and by relying on an interview with the communication officer of Italian former premier, this study shows how political popularization develops in the era of the technocrat. The authors claim that the search for ‘mediated intimacy’ with the citizens/electors does not exclusively represent a concern for professional politicians. The need to personify political action is not only dependent on the necessity to maximize the electoral turnout, but it also depends on the acknowledgement of the fact that any public officer cannot avoid opening the doors of his or her own private sphere.

Explaining public service broadcasting entrenched politicization: The case of South Africa’s SABC

Public service broadcasting is the terrain par excellence within today’s media systems on which political power and media logic interact and overlap. This study will argue that public service broadcasting politicization arising in certain democratic regimes cannot be effectively explained if attention is uncritically paid to the same theoretical grounds upon which media scholars rely to study the corresponding phenomenon in the West. By relying on content and legal analysis of the proceedings concerning five terrestrial channels by the Broadcasting Complaint Commission of South Africa between 1994 and 2014, and on three interviews with civil society representatives, the article will discuss the concept of entrenched politicization as a more proper analytical tool to assess subtler forms of media politicization.

The politicization of entertainment media: A study of the Italian tabloid Chi during the 2013 electoral campaign:

The concept of political parallelism identifies the different forms in which the media and politics can interact. However, media partisanship has always been almost exclusively limited to news media. This study shows that the Italian media system is at the center of a significant change, in regard to the way in which mass media political parallelism works and develops. Due to structural reasons, Italy’s political parallelism crosses the threshold of the news media and seems to fully apply to popular media as well. The politicization of popular media has been investigated through a content analysis of the Berlusconi-owned Chi (the most read magazine in Italy with 3.5 million readers on average). By proposing four models of coverage, the authors will show that the coverage strategies put in place by Chi convey the extent to which the covered subjects are politically and personally close to the undisputed leader, Berlusconi.

An incomplete transition? How Italian politicians manage the celebritisation of politics

The celebritisation of politics is a process that depends on both the mass media’s need to find new stories to cover and new stars to build, and the politicians’ need for new forms of visibility to reach their constituency. This article aims to provide an overview of the forms through which the celebratisation of politics has occurred and developed in Italy. By referring to a variety of qualitative data, some of the specificities which characterise the Italian transition towards celebritised politics will be highlighted and analysed. In fact, whereas the members of one of the two main party coalitions – the centre-right coalition – appear to have fully assimilated the new rules of political advertising and promotion, their opponents still experience clear difficulties in managing the new tools of political communication. We argue that these difficulties are due to a still-existent ideological bias that prevents centre-left politicians from adapting their political action to the celebrity codes that are enforced in the political battlefield. The differing approaches of these parties testify to an ongoing transition within Italian politics that appears far from over, despite Berlusconi’s recent withdrawal from the political scene.

François Hollande e il Partito socialista francese, by Marino De Luca, Roma, Carocci, 2015, 104 pp., €12.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-884-307-4594

the formation of government(s) and, if necessary, sustaining them; (b) deciding whether or not to dissolve Parliament. From both points of view, Scalfaro and Napolitano were very strong presidents, especially so when resisting the pressures of the centre-right as well as the centre-left to sanction early, highly partisan, dissolutions of Parliament. Ciampi lived through quieter times because Berlusconi’s governmental majorities (2001–2006) were on the whole rather stable. However, Ciampi was obliged to enact several objectionable pieces of legislation passed by Berlusconi’s government (most of them, such as the electoral law and the law on medically assisted procreation, dismantled by the Constitutional Court), thus giving sound additional evidence that, in a confrontation between the President and a cohesive parliamentary majority, the President is bound to lose. In practice, no president can rely on (political, social or cultural) ‘armies’ of his own. Nor can he count on public opinion, which is volatile and is influenced and shaped by mass media of dubious informative quality and reliability. Plebiscitarianism does not (yet) live in Italy. Following Napolitano’s unprecedented re-election, which proved that in the aftermath of the February 2013 general election the parties had not recovered at all, a new situation arose. Unfortunately, Gervasoni is not especially interested in evaluating Napolitano’s strong, but necessarily also quite controversial, presidency. The author’s conclusion is that, apart from the personality winning office, ‘the Quirinale will be likely in the future to retain the central political and decision-making role that it has acquired through time’ (168). My own forecast is rather different and can be supported by the political dynamics that led to the election of Napolitano’s successor. I would first of all remark that the election of the new President, the Christian Democrat Sergio Mattarella (2015–2022), seems to have resurrected an old rule: a non-Christian Democrat at the Quirinale must be followed by a Christian Democrat. Second, the new Italian political situation is characterised by the existence of a large, almost dominant, though internally divided, party: the Partito Democratico whose leader wants to wield as much power as he can. Third, the Government is passing legislation some of which appears both badly drafted and politically controversial. Then, former Minister and former Constitutional Court judge Mattarella will be soon asked, in all likelihood against his wishes and his temperament, to play a rather active role in Italian politics; but he will clash with the Prime Minister and his numerically strong, though politically somewhat divided, party. The interpretive key of President Mattarella’s actions will not be how many armies he is capable of mobilising, but how much opposition to him the Italian parties are capable of mustering.

Berlusconi e Prodi : chi impone (o subisce) i frames? : uno studio della campagna del 2006

Berlusconi and Prodi: who assembles a better set of frames? ABSTRACT: and Antonio Ciaglia This article examines how the strong radicalization, stemmed from the new electoral system, has affected the mass media coverage on the last electoral campaign in Italy. The hypothesis is to demonstrate how the political personalization, represented by center-left incumbent Berlusconi and by center-right hopeful Prodi, has maneuvered the building of frames via newspaper coverage. The article begins with an overview of the principle theoretical problems followed by an in-depth analysis of possible connections among media agenda influence. It then continues to discuss the dynamics of the opinion climate and the electoral campaign. Finally, through the study of the content published by the major Italian newspapers a month before the Election Day (April 9, 2006), the relationship between frames and the two political coalitions is derived. In conclusion, the article yields a high level of insights as to which coalition has exerted more impact on the mass media coverage and on the voters’ perception.