RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

Media and Generations in Italian Society

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di URBINO "Carlo BO" - Comunicazione e spettacolo - ()

Research Unit Leader

Giovanni Boccia Artieri

Description

The research project aims to investigate the relations occurring between media and generations in Italian rural area with a specific attention toward a double issue:

1) to identify a generational semantic toward media able to point out the complex set of meanings that lead different people to feel themselves as one generation.
2) To analyse the relation that occurs between a single person and a specific set of media-products. This relation is not only due to the specific products that people consume but it is a far more complex schema that implies also the way in which these products are consumed. This relation will be assumed as the point where a more wider generational semantic get fixed in relation to the personal history.

As a first step the research is going to describe some specific generational semantic trying to understand the way in which the specific shared meanings of a semantic cloud are linked together at their own inside and with the outside. Later the research project will test the semantic clouds outlined on the “field” that, in this specific object, is represented by the people that feel themselves depicted in those specific clouds. In order to investigate this double aspect that would like to keep together both the emergent reality of generational semantic and the single life experience and media products the research team thought to define an innovative research methodology articulated in two main phases:

a) first, the emergent semantic will be investigated trough the analysis of online communications. Starting from a list of generational relevant words the research team will scan online communication in order to define how these theme of communication are linked to each other. At the end of this process the research team will be able to draw conceptual map of various semantic divided by different generation.
b) On a second time the research team will investigate how personal life experiences and identity-construction processes are related with media products. In this analysis the research will use non-standard tools provided by the sociological research methodology such as semi-structured interview and focus group.
The focus groups will be structured following two main criteria: the generational cluster (born between 1940 and 1952 that nowadays are from 65 to 53 years old; people born between 1953 and 1965 – baby boomers – that are nowadays 52-40 years old; people born between 1966 and 1978 that are nowadays 39-17 years old and people born between 1979 and 1985 that have nowadays 26-20 years old) and the shared media experience between the group.

The research will follow these main steps:
1. Starting from the bibliographical background highlighted from the research unit I the research team will define some preliminary semantic set.
2. Identification of an emergent semantic set from the analysis of online communication able to link the specific generation to a precise media product.
3. The research team will present first results to an international workshop that will be hold in Milan to focus further research issues.
4. Joint development of research tools and of the field inquiry target with units I and V.
5. Testing of the research tools.
6. Sharing and comparison of the findings with units I and V.
7. Research period on 12 natural groups.
8. Sharing and comparison of the findings with units II and III
9. Research units shall then gather to outline individual interviews on the ground of the corpus of texts analyzed by units III and IV.
10. Testing phase of the new research tools
11. Comparisons of test phase results with units I and V.
12. 16 individual interviews (4 for each generational cohort) in non metropolitan are of Italy.
13. Inter-unit comparison and sharing of the results.
14. Methodology presentation and diffusion of the results through an international symposium, which the present unit, as central unit, shall be responsible of in terms of promotion and organization.

In addition to the proceedings of the international workshop,this research unit will publish the research findings in a volume. Results spreading shall be further guaranteed by the online accessibility, during the research operative phase, of both the project and in-progresses through a web link located on the webpage of the research centre related to this it research (as well as on the webpages of Unit I and Unit V).

With respect of the inter-unit coordination, in addition to meetings and workshops, internet-based voice-over-ip conference calls and videoconferences are to be employed, thus reducing transportation costs but ensuring uninterrupted cooperation between researchers.