[ecrea] new book about semiotics of public interest campaigns

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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