Dal partito dei media alla corporation multimediale
The “do media matter?” research agenda needs to be refocused upon two distinct - although by all means complementary - levels. One level is the behavioral impact of political messages vehicled through the media at large. The second level is the organizational revolution that media technologies and i...
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| Publicat a: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/qds, |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Italien |
| Publicat: |
Quaderni di Sociologia
2024
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| Accés en línia: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sumari: | The “do media matter?” research agenda needs to be refocused upon two distinct - although by all means complementary - levels. One level is the behavioral impact of political messages vehicled through the media at large. The second level is the organizational revolution that media technologies and ideology have imposed upon pre-existing agencies of electoral mobilization.The first part of my article will deal with the transformations in the media environment which took place in Italy in coincidence with - and partly as a consequence of - the anti-party referenda of 1991-93. My thesis is that media increased their political role mainly through the anti-party campaign waged by all major national newspapers during the three years it took Italy to change its electoral law. Yet, the power of media in the Italian crisis did not limit itself to strongly contributing to the demise of the old parties. Media also proved determinant to the rise of a new party, Forza Italia, which quickly filled the vacuum opened by the breakdown of the First Republic’s party system by winning the March 1994 elections.In the second part I shall analyze the most innovative traits of Forza Italia, for which I shall propose the classification of media party as most of its message and power structure is media based and related. The media party is at the present time a prerogative of the Italian party system but it might quickly be exported abroad.In the final section, I shall place the Italian case in a broader perspective, both on comparative and theoretical grounds. Commonalties between Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Ross Perot’s United We Stand America are considerable and the similarity is all the more striking given the brief time span elapsed between Perot’s ground setting enterprise and Berlusconi’s victorious clone. However, theoretical considerations are not necessarily dependent on the successful proliferation of media parties. While Berlusconi and Perot may not be easily replicated, they have posited questions that democratic theory cannot ignore. |
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