Mediating Italianess: Television, identity, and globalization.

摘要

Identity politics is a central concern of most studies on the role of media in transnational contexts and global economies. This dissertation analyzes how national identity has informed Italian television in the past decade, when the medium was at the crossroads of political, economic, and ideological junctures. I begin with an historical overview of the Italian television industry that provides the contextual framework for my textual analysis. The analytical chapters focus on the representation of nationalism, race, ethnicity and gender in contemporary television. Due to the unique intersection of forces that characterizes the Italian mediascape, an analysis of images of Italianness on television brings to light the tangled structural web that supports and promotes this vision. Three main trends, in particular, constitute the pillars of Italian television at present: first, the increasing similarity of public and private networks, with the inevitable convergence of public-service and commercial interests; second, the sub-national and supra-national levels of television programming, that push for the need to reassess the viability of the notion of nation-state in the analysis of Italian identity; third, the contradictory presence of globalization that gives vent to regionalism and transnationalism at the same time.