Piermarco Aroldi

Nuevos mayores, viejas brechas: TIC, desigualdad y bienestar en la tercera edad en Italia

When compared to more digitized western countries, Italy seems to have suffered a delay of ten years, in both the use of ICTs by the elderly and the study of the relation between elderly people, ICTs and ageing. Considering this time lapse, it is now urgent that we question the factors that influence the adoption of ICTs by the elderly and whether ICTs can provide cultural and relational resources that could improve the quality of life of elderly in terms of health and social life. This article describes the main findings of a survey carried out as part of a larger national research project focused on active ageing, which involved 900 Italian people aged between 65 and 74 years of age. The research investigates socio-demographic characteristics of young elderly Italian Internet users and factors related to their use of ICTs. Results have shown that there is a strong digital divide between young elderly Italians, which is primarly influenced ‐in terms of classical dynamics‐ by differences in economic, social and cultural capital. With regard to the theme of active ageing, if it is true that highly digitalized young elders are generally characterized by good health, at the present stage of this research it is not possible to indicate whether the adoption of ICTs guarantees social inclusion and participation.

Stay Tuned: The Role of ICTs in Elderly Life

Ageing in western society has become a key issue in political and academic debate: politicians, sociologists, doctors, demographers, psychologists, economists are trying to understand how ageing will impact our future society. In this frame, media and communication technologies seem to be more and more relevant for the elderly, thanks to those services and devices helping people to grow old actively. Technologies, the Internet and ICTs could help the elderly to improve their quality of life, to be healthy and independent and to get better assistance. Our ongoing research investigates the relationship between the elderly and use of technologies, and explores the role played by media and ICTs in building a friendly and positive environment for the elderly, and in constructing and maintaining social relations and promoting healthy ageing. Specifically, the research will investigate the use of ICTs by the elderly by taking into account two different perspectives: a) Exchanges between generations: lengthening of life corresponds to a longer period of cohabitation between at least three generations (grandparents, children, grandchildren), and also of co-use of digital media. The research wants to investigate relations between two age groups (grandparents and grandchildren; young people and older people) to understand the dynamics of intergenerational mutuality in the use of technologies and ICTs. b) Media, ICTs, Health: the Western world is increasingly populated by elderly population. Technologies and ICTs can help elderly people to improve their quality of life, to be healthy and independent and to get better assistance. ICTs should encourage active ageing and, in the case of health technologies, new models of care. The project, lasting 1 year, is based on (1) a survey on young elderly (65-74 yrs) population in Italy, and (2) a field-work which consists of family interviews and ethnographical sections in natural contexts.

Conectando generaciones: investigación y aprendizaje en educación en medios y estudios de audiencia

A partir de orientaciones teoricas y metodologicas previas sobre medios de comunicacion y generaciones, este articulo presenta un proceso de investigacion y aprendizaje a partir de la supervision del trabajo de campo desempenado por estudiantes licenciados en el Seminario del Master en Medios de Comunicacion en la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Nueva de Lisboa. Los estudiantes implicados lograron construir conocimiento contextual sobre el uso de los medios en la generacion de sus abuelos y en la de sus padres en Portugal, actuando como facilitadores en los grupos de discusion, formados siempre por participantes de mayor edad, explorando las diferencias y similitudes intrageneracionales que emergen en grupos de diferente edad y llevando a cabo una reflexion critica sobre la experiencia en sus informes individuales. La eleccion de los grupos de discusion como herramienta para la investigacion y la eleccion del tema en el marco del Estudio de los Medios de Comunicacion resulto muy eficaz. Este articulo pretende defender la potencialidad de esta relacion intergeneracional entre los facilitadores y los miembros de los grupos de discusion como forma de activar la interaccion entre grupos, permitiendo, por ejemplo, que los participantes asuman una actitud explicativa para consigo mismos. Las notas finales que se presentan contemplan las ventajas de esta metodologia para la Educacion en Medios y para diferentes ramas del Estudio de los Medios, como la historia de los medios de comunicacion e historia social, el periodismo o la participacion politica.

Children’s rights and social media: Issues and prospects for adoptive families in Italy

The worldwide spread of social media is changing the forms and rules of social relations, the boundaries of private and public spheres, and the definition of privacy and its protection. In reflecting on children’s rights in a digital age, the online experiences of adopted children and their families foreground the tension between the right to privacy and protection and children’s right to know about their origins. This article explores the Italian case through a qualitative study of professionals working in private and public foster and adoptive services. It analyses the risks and opportunities presented by social media in the everyday life of adoptive families, with particular attention to children’s rights and recommendations for families and professionals.

Conectando generaciones: investigación y aprendizaje en educación en medios y estudios de audiencia Connecting Generations. A Research and Learning Approach for Media Education and Audience Studies

A partir de orientaciones teoricas y metodologicas previas sobre medios de comunicacion y generaciones, este articulo presenta un proceso de investigacion y aprendizaje a partir de la supervision del trabajo de campo desempenado por estudiantes licenciados en el Seminario del Master en Medios de Comunicacion en la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Nueva de Lisboa. Los estudiantes implicados lograron construir conocimiento contextual sobre el uso de los medios en la generacion de sus abuelos y en la de sus padres en Portugal, actuando como facilitadores en los grupos de discusion, formados siempre por participantes de mayor edad, explorando las diferencias y similitudes intrageneracionales que emergen en grupos de diferente edad y llevando a cabo una reflexion critica sobre la experiencia en sus informes individuales. La eleccion de los grupos de discusion como herramienta para la investigacion y la eleccion del tema en el marco del Estudio de los Medios de Comunicacion resulto muy eficaz. Este articulo pretende defender la potencialidad de esta relacion intergeneracional entre los facilitadores y los miembros de los grupos de discusion como forma de activar la interaccion entre grupos, permitiendo, por ejemplo, que los participantes asuman una actitud explicativa para consigo mismos. Las notas finales que se presentan contemplan las ventajas de esta metodologia para la Educacion en Medios y para diferentes ramas del Estudio de los Medios, como la historia de los medios de comunicacion e historia social, el periodismo o la participacion politica.

The Elderly, IT and the Public Discourse. Representations of Exclusion and Inclusion

The paper focuses on the political and institutional trends that foster digital literacy among seniors, and the forms it takes in both the public discourses and the concrete practices of teaching seniors how to use information technologies (IT). IT often recur as an essential element in the discourses that stress the importance of an active, healthy and independent aging, as well as the need for mechanisms that reduce potential isolation and exclusion of seniors. Nonetheless, the inconsistency of these different discourses makes it hard to represent the older people using IT in a clear, convincing and believable way.

L’arte della conversazione. per un approccio conversazionale ai social network

The paper proposes a conversational approach to Social Network Sites on the basis of a historical overview on the status of the conversation as a form of sociability. Following the sociological tradition, the conversation may be understood as a special case of act, event or genre of discourse characterized by the principle of cooperation, equal distribution of the right to speak in turns, spontaneity, informality and a non-utilitarian tone. At the same time, this form of sociability reveals to be a dispositif capable of expressing and/or generating a certain social order, closely related to the structure and the ideal representation of the society in which it is acted. The result is an approach to social networks as technological platforms that enable practices of conversation between users, in which interfaces and affordances contribute significantly to shaping such practices; while affirming a (relative) insignificance of the content of the conversation, there is clearly a strong relational dimension that helps to frame the Social Network Sites as practice of togetherness in form of conversation.

Adolescents of the 1960s and 1970s: An Italian-Portuguese comparison between two generations of audiences

This article explores how far the media technologies, contents and habits experienced in the years of youth contribute to the shaping of collective identities, which are shared by all the members of a generation. On the basis of two sets of empirical research developed in Italy and Portugal according to a life-story approach, it compares the self accounts and media memories of two generations of audiences living their youth in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970s. The relevance of national and international media systems as a part of the “structure of opportunity” that contributes to the forming of generational identities was identified as framed by other structural constraints on political, socioeconomic, educational and cultural levels. In each country, attitudes toward technological innovation and media domestication lived in their years of youth also affected the first contact of people belonging to these generations with ICTs and new media in the 1980s and 1990s.

Food Safety and Risk Communication: Cases History and Best Practices (in Avian Flu)

The paper discusses the role of institutional communication in the case of health risks and emergencies. The article is divided in three sections. The first section examines the most recent theories on risk and on its communicational aspect; the second analyses a recent state of emergency crisis, specifically the panic which stemmed from the perceived danger of an avian flu pandemic in Italy; and finally an example of best practice in the form of a food safety handbook designed and edited by the Italian Ministry of Rural Affairs, which was based on the skills and knowledge acquired during the avian flu emergency.