[ecrea] call for special issue Comunicazione Politica

The HyperReality of Italian Democracy

The Berlusconi Years: 1994-2014

(F. Amoretti ed.)





During the two decades since his entry into politics, after the collapse 
of the Italian consociational democracy, Berlusconi deeply changed not 
only the classical campaign strategies, such as the political rituals 
and practices, but the whole political landscape. Especially thanks to a 
symbolic representation centred on the mise-en-scene of bodies and on a 
narrative turn inspired by the rhetoric ‘of doing’, which actually 
replaces the practice of ‘doing’ with the habit of ‘announcing’, 
‘Berlusconism’ as ideology went beyond Berlusconi himself it transformed 
the Italian political culture and the whole society in a ‘hyper-reality’ 
show. Even if a heavy twenty-year long influence has transformed the 
general idea of democracy, nevertheless some major issues of 
institutional dynamics of political order have not been fully understood 
yet.



In a way, Italy has become an exceptional case study and a valuable 
workshop where to analyse political and institutional transformations 
within mediated democracies. Partly as a consequence of the Italian 
political turmoil of the last twenty years, three crucial topics have 
been brought to the fore of comparative political communication research:



a. Studies on personal parties (or personalized leadership), and on 
political marketing in order to understand the overcoming of traditional 
models of party organization, and the innovation of electoral campaign 
strategies and resources.

b. Studies on the popularization of politics, focusing on new media 
environments, particularly on emerging formats (infotainment and 
politainment), which have subverted the old distinction between 
political and media logic.

c. Finally, studies on populist discourses, and, more generally, on 
anti-political cultures that characterize new movements and their 
leaders: Forza Italia, Lega Nord and Movimento 5 Stelle.

The aim of this call is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to rekindle 
the discussion on such topics by linking them more closely to issues 
relating to political cultures and languages and to questions pertaining 
to the institutional transformations of democracy taking place in the 
last twenty year. On the other hand, it wishes to shed new light on 
themes that have barely been analysed by traditional empirical and 
theoretical research.

In light of this, we invite submissions on the following topics, from a 
theoretical as well as an empirical perspective:

* Contributions that analyse the mediatization of political 
decision-making and deliberation processes.
* Historical studies on the mediatization of the Italian government 
between 1994 and 2014.
* Studies on mediatized citizenship, movements and other forms of 
extra-parliamentary and identity politics.
* Works on the relationship between institutional powers – Prime 
Minister, Judiciary, Head of State – in a mediatized public arena.
* Contributions analysing the development of political languages.
* Studies on political cultures and the symbolic constructions of 
identities.
* Theoretical reflections on how to improve our understanding of the 
mediatization of politics. Is the so called audience democracy (Manin) a 
useful concept in understanding the Berlusconi era?

We encourage contributions from different theoretical and methodological 
approaches. Papers that tackle the above issues from a historical and/or 
a comparative perspective are also welcome.

Submission Details



Please send your abstracts (300-600 words) by 20th March 2014 to 
(compol.rivista /at/ gmail.com) and to Francesco Amoretti (amoretti /at/ unisa.it)

Notification of Outcome: 30th March 2014

Full papers submission (7,000 words maximum, including abstract and 
references, footnotes): 27 June 2014


Please ensure that author(s) names are removed from the text and from 
the supplementary files. Submissions must adhere to the formatting 
template provided.

--
Marinella Belluati
Dipartimento Culture, Politica e Società
Lungo Dora Siena,100 - 10153 Torino Italy
tel. +390116704157 fax +390116704114


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