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Books by michela ardizzoni

This book documents and analyzes how the contemporary Mediterranean city manages and negotiates i... more This book documents and analyzes how the contemporary Mediterranean city manages and negotiates its identity as a result of recent reconfigurations in its cultural, religious, and social landscape. The events of Sept. 11, 2001 have recast difference as a central trope of identification in urban borderland settings, unleashing heated debates about cultural convergences and animating anxieties about an arguable clash of civilizations in modern cities. These emerging uncertainties have also grown stronger as the homogenizing forces of globalization unsettle essential principles of the nation-state and nationhood and render fixed perceptions of distinctive and singular people and cultures more tenuous. Recent scholarship and public discourse have accordingly framed discussions of these encounters around concerns of geo-political security and international policy. Unfortunately, framed within these terms, our understanding of how various groups within the Mediterranean metropolis deal with the intensification of difference as a lived experience has remained regrettably thin. This volume transcends this limitation and explores new, interdisciplinary research paradigms that will help us gain a comprehensive perspective on how complex macro and micro tensions, contradictions and similarities are negotiated in building urban identities in the Mediterranean basin.

The intersection of virtual and physical spaces at the heart of contemporary political protests i... more The intersection of virtual and physical spaces at the heart of contemporary political protests is a pivotal element in new practices of activism. In this new and global ecology of dissent and activism, different forces, stakeholders, and spaces, once defiantly discordant, come together to define the increasingly malleable nature and terms of participatory politics and the performance of democracy. This book explores the emerging sites, aesthetics and politics of contemporary dissent as a critical attempt to foreground their mediation and negotiation in an era of neoliberal globalization. Contemporary forms of media activism occupy deeply ambivalent spaces, which Ardizzoni analyzes using the lens of what she calls "matrix activism." Rather than confining the analysis to a single platform, a single technology, or a single social actor, matrix activism allows us to explain the hybrid nature of new forms of dissent and resistance, as they are located at the intersection of alternative and mainstream, non-profit and corporate, individual and social, production and consumption, online and offline.

Articles by michela ardizzoni

International Journal of Communication

Using the case of the Rome-based media group ZaLab, this article examines the articulations that ... more Using the case of the Rome-based media group ZaLab, this article examines the articulations that shape and define the multiple dynamics of connected activism in contemporary societies. The first section engages the existing literature on convergence, commodity activism, and connectivity as theoretical frameworks of my analysis of ZaLab. The second section provides some context on the Italian mainstream and activist mediascapes, both of which shape ZaLab’s media practices. The last section examines a few specific examples of ZaLab’s productions and the activist campaign created to promote them. I conclude with some reflections on the nature of contemporary media practices as part of what I call “matrix activism.”

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies

Journalism

This article focuses on two main questions that frame the status of contemporary Italian media: W... more This article focuses on two main questions that frame the status of contemporary Italian media: What happens when the democratic potential of the media is smothered by the cemented ties between television and politics? And how do alternative media initiatives in Italy engage this rapprochement of media and citizenship in the 21st century? This article addresses these issues by examining the origins and ramifications of one such initiative known as Telestreet project. The first part of the analysis traces the history and objectives of Telestreet as a bottom-up approach to broadcasting; in the second section, I focus on a Neapolitan street TV project, Insu^Tv, as a successful case in point of this activist approach to local media making; the last section of the article focuses on in-depth interviews with the activists behind Insu^Tv and their efforts to create independent communication tools and reclaim an active and activist role in the Italian media flows.

A New Italian Political Cinema? Emerging Themes

Gli eventi dell"11 settembre 2001 hanno rinforzato la posizione della differenza (etnica, cultura... more Gli eventi dell"11 settembre 2001 hanno rinforzato la posizione della differenza (etnica, culturale, religiosa) al centro dei processi identificatori sia in ambienti rurali che in quelli urbani, riuscendo così a fomentare ampi dibattiti sull"incompatibilità culturale e animando ansie, già pre-esistenti nella società italiana, sul potenziale scontro di civilta` discusso da Samuel Huntington all"inizio degli anni novanta . La tesi portata avanti da Huntington negli ultimi tre decenni sostiene che le differenze fra le varie civiltà, e in particolar modo fra le civiltà nord-occidentali e quelle sud-orientali, sono talmente intrinseche nella natura di ogni società da impedire qualsiasi forma di fusione, mescolanza, o anche solo armonizzazione delle diverse culture. Nell"era della globalizzazione la presa di posizione di Huntington ha riscontrato un notevole successo nelle ideologie neo-conservative, allo stesso tempo generando numerosi ed importanti interventi da parte di intellettuali che hanno, più volte respinto la visione omogeneizzante di questa tesi, offrendo invece alternative socio-culturali più idonee a rappresentare la società globale del ventunesimo secolo (Amartya Sen e Edward Saïd, fra gli altri).

Interface

iii communication? Audiovisual technologies as aids to communication in the Olga Benário MST sett... more iii communication? Audiovisual technologies as aids to communication in the Olga Benário MST settlement] (action note, pp. 225 -234) Iyad Burnat, The Bil'in model of wall resistance (action note, pp. 235 -240) Labour communications special Peter Waterman, Alternative labour communication by computer after two decades (pp 241 -269) Interviews on international labour communication: Eric Lee of LabourStart (pp. 270 -272) David Hollis of Netzwerk IT (pp. 273 -275) Key document Что делать? / What is to be done? Декларация о политике, знании и искусстве / A declaration on politics, knowledge, and art (pp. 276 -281) Debate from issue 2/1 Peter Waterman Colin Barker's assumptions about Solidarnosc: not so much controversial as ahistorical? (pp. 282 -284) Colin Barker Response to Peter Waterman (pp. 285 -287) Interface: a journal for and about social movements Contents Volume 2 (2) : i -v (November 2010) iv Advance piece for issue 3/1 (repression and social movements)

Beyond Monopoly: Globalization and Contemporary Italian Media

Journals and periodicals by michela ardizzoni

Overview of the relationship between social movements and alternative media.

Papers by michela ardizzoni

Communication, Culture and Critique

Music, media and the arts in general have become a prime site of deep cultural contestation and p... more Music, media and the arts in general have become a prime site of deep cultural contestation and polarization in Italy, generating unprecedented fractures in how Italian identity is conceived and lived. This article examines how the borders of Italian identity have been gradually stretched and challenged in the music of contemporary artists such as Mahmood, Ghali, and Amir Issaa. Through their beats, their lyrics, and, in the case of Issaa, his writing, these artists have given voice to a facet of Italianness that is rarely spotlighted in the media. In this sense, these cultural productions complicate the Italian collective memory by adding a layered understanding of contemporary identities, rooted in different cultures, speaking different languages, and embracing a way of being Italian that is looking to the future through the lens of the country’s colonial past.

Journal of Communication Inquiry, 1998

Michela Ardizzoni Feminist Contributions to Communication Studies: Past and Present 1 he relevanc... more Michela Ardizzoni Feminist Contributions to Communication Studies: Past and Present 1 he relevance of media and communication in the shaping of society and in the characterization of societal relations has been extensively recognized by a multiplicity of outlooks pertaining to ...

Commercial Nationalism, 2016

On a typical weekday, Italian (and Italian-speaking) television viewers outside of Italy are pres... more On a typical weekday, Italian (and Italian-speaking) television viewers outside of Italy are presented with a series of programs mostly selected from the Italian public broadcaster RAI's national schedule. In the morning, the schedule features "Unomattina", a daily talk show created in 1986 and compounding a bizarre collection of celebrity news, beauty tips, shopping suggestions, news, sports updates, and weather forecasts. Lasting approximately three hours, "Unomattina" was created as a localized version of the U.S. show "Good morning America" and has been a staple program at RAI for the past 30 years. At noon, RAI marks the traditional Italian lunchtime, which used to be spent at home sharing a meal with family, with the popular cooking show "La prova del cuoco". Based on the BBC format "Ready, Steady, Cook", this show was launched in 2000 as a co-production of RAI and the Dutch multiplatform entertainment company Endemol. This live program features a competition between two teams who are tasked with the preparation of a three-course meal in 90 minutes. In recent years, the team competition has expanded to include elements of the traditional rivalry among Italian regions in a section called "La sfida del campanile" ("The bell tower/hometown contest"), which pits chefs from different regions against one another as advocates of their respective local culinary traditions. On weekends, instead, Italian viewers abroad can observe the Catholic Sunday mass with a live broadcast of the papal celebration at the Vatican along with the program "Cristianità". As one of the few programs produced specifically for international audiences, in the past 15 years RAI's "Cristianità" has been hosted by a Catholic nun, who comments on the Pope's weekly homily and interviews numerous cardinals, theologians, and missionaries. This program also features Skype conversations with Italians living outside of Italy, who call in to share their faith and their spiritual experiences in their local communities. This feature of the program is described on its website as "images of religious celebrations organized by Italians abroad. These come to us from Brazil, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras and many other countries characterized by a hard-working italianità, committed to their motherland and, above all, to their Christian identity".