Archive for November 2014

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[ecrea] new book about semiotics of public interest campaigns

Tue Nov 25 15:18:17 GMT 2014


new book "Social guerrilla. Semiotica della comunicazione non convenzionale" (Luiss University Press, Rome 2014)


http://www.luissuniversitypress.it/site/it-IT/Scheda/default.html?SchedaID=14026




Camouflaged stickers on the sidewalk reproducing landmines on their backside, unpredictable performances of activists hidden between passersby, unusual objects placed within shopping malls and supermarkets: in the last years, social advertising emerged as a very interesting and stratified phenomenon aiming to re-define and re-negotiate the representation of dramatic issues. We are facing a transformation in the representation of social causes where the use of realistic images and explicit slogans are replaced by stratified texts aimed at soliciting the public opinion.

In this context, social guerrilla is an impressive yet ambiguous expression which refers to the planning of unpredictable and alternative strategies through which manifold subjects with different aims and means, such as NGO’s and non-profit associations, try to get the support of their audiences. The most innovative social advertising campaigns are more and more frequently based on a sort of “guerrilla” attitude, as they talk of “unconventional weapons” or “unavoidable ambushes”. But what do these military-derived metaphors really mean? Paradoxically, if on the one hand the constant increase in successful keywords such as guerrilla, viral, buzz, and so on, attests to creative dynamism, on the other the inaccurate use of such terms does not help to define the characteristics of a constantly changing scenery with any precision. In order to identify the intricate relation between means, strategies and aims, it might be useful to critically re-examine the nexus between such “labels” and concrete social communication practices, in an attempt to find an interesting array of analogies and differences. It is hence necessary to broaden the perspective by analyzing the entire pragmatics of social communication: in fact, unconventionality does not merely lie in the more-or-less radical oddness of a billboard or a TV spot, but in the complex series of strategies and tactics used to plan intermedial campaigns. The aim of this book is to analyze the most recent developments of social advertising campaigns . The work focuses on a large corpus of international social campaigns the effectiveness of which is based upon a deep reassessment of the interpretive competences and skills of receivers who become, in a literary sense, targets, “victims” of an ambush, an unavoidable attack/impact/assault.


____________________

Paolo Peverini

LUISS University
CMCS - Centre for Media and Communication Studies "Massimo Baldini"
Viale Romania, 32
00197 Rome RM - Italy
Tel. (CMCS) +39 06 85225 759

Academia.edu
Academic website



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