C8966 - INDUSTRIA CULTURALE E INFORMAZIONE GIORNALISTICA

Learning outcomes

The course aims to interpret the content and critical tools offered by products of the cultural industry (films, TV series, podcasts, documentaries, novels, and short stories) in order to examine the logic and trends characterizing journalism from the 1970s to the present day. Particular attention will be paid to investigative journalism and its relationship with *noir* literature and cinema, highlighting how and why the process of researching and understanding social and political reality sometimes draws upon the language of fiction and the structures of screenwriting. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand—from a historical and cultural perspective—the complex relationship between representation and social reality, specifically regarding the ability to critique the established order and to recognize the factors driving political conflict and traumatic events such as massacres, high-profile assassinations, and episodes of widespread violence. Within the course’s sociological framework, cultural industry products are viewed not merely as expressions of the logic of commodification, but also as objects to be interpreted in order to understand the changes that have taken place in society.

Course contents

The course will examine the capacity of cultural products to: (1) contribute to the construction of collective traumas; (2) analyze the field dynamics (political, journalistic, cultural) through which social conflict becomes the arena for assigning—or withholding—the status of "cultural trauma" to specific social events; (3) identify, in the role of certain cultural producers, a trajectory capable of converting knowledge about sensational events into symbolic capital; and (4) depict commemorative practices that straddle the line between memory and nostalgia. This capacity will be highlighted through a series of lectures dedicated to these specific themes:


1. Cultural industry and journalism: the emergence of investigative aesthetics and new avenues for investigative journalism (podcasts and docufiction).
2. Specifics of the Italian context as portrayed by cultural industry products: the "Strategy of Tension," political terrorism, and limited sovereignty. The various representations of the Moro affair.
3. Investigative journalism meets cinema—and vice versa: *Il Muro di Gomma* and *Atlantide*.
4. Marco Tullio Giordana: the Pasolini and Impastato murders, their representation in films and documentaries, and their status as cultural traumas.
5. What lies behind a postage stamp: partisan commemorations and the political field; fragments of culture, information, and the persistence of political division.
6. News reporting becomes the novel: Emmanuel Carrère and the narrative of international terrorism.
7. Reflections on private justice in cinema and documentary: *Gran Torino*, *Un giorno in Pretura*, and *Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion*.
8. Police culture, the police genre, and references to reality (news events and institutions): from *La polizia ringrazia* to *ACAB*.
9. How cultural objects reveal the construction of the scapegoat: from *Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina* to the graphic novel by Tuono Pettinato. 10. From prison diary to novel on the culture of bourgeois propriety: The Circeo massacre and the literature of Edoardo Albinati, from *Maggio selvaggio* to *La scuola cattolica*.
11. The crime novel and the novel of massacres. Digitization and the Bologna massacre. Documentaries, docudrama, and investigative journalism.
12. The literary field and the relationship with journalism: Pasolini and Calvino.
13. Memory, recollection, and nostalgia. Political implications.

Readings/Bibliography

MANDATORY TEXT:


Alexander, J.C. e Smith, P. (2003) A Strong Program in Cultural Sociology: Elements of Structural Hermeneutics, in Id. The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 11-23; Un programma forte in sociologia culturale: elementi di ermeneutica strutturale, in M. Santoro e R. Sassatelli (a cura di), Studiare la cultura. Nuove prospettive sociologiche, Bologna, il Mulino, 2009, pp. 289-307.


Bourdieu, P. (1996) Champ politique, champ des sciences sociales, champ journalistique, 5° Cahiers de recherche del GRS (Groupe de recherche sur la socialisation) de l’Université Lumière, Lyon 2; Sul concetto di campo in sociologia, trad. it. M. Cerulo, Roma, Armando, 2010.


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ONE TEXT AMONG THE FOLLOWING:


Goffman, E. (1963) Stigma. Notes on the Management of the Spoiled Identity, New York, Simon & Schuster; Stigma. L’identità negata, trad. it. R. Giammanco, Verona, Ombre corte, 2010.


Pasolini, P. (1974) Il romanzo delle Stragi, in «Il Corriere della Sera», 14 novembre, in Id. Scritti corsari, Milano, Garzanti, 1975, pp. 107-113.


Martignani, L. (2026) Nostalgia sovversiva, Bologna, Ombre corte (solo capitolo 3).

Teaching methods

Lectures and seminars (in-class exercises and discussions following the viewing of film clips and documentary excerpts).

Assessment methods

ATTENDING STUDENTS:

Oral exam + written essay (to be emailed to the professor five days before the exam date) + commentary on the execution of one of the exercises performed in class (student's choice).


NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS:

Oral exam + written essay (to be emailed to the professor five days before the exam date) + questions on the mandatory texts and the chosen elective text.

Teaching tools

PPT.

Office hours

See the website of Luca Martignani