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
A New Italian Political Cinema? Emerging Themes
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
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Books by michela ardizzoni
Articles by michela ardizzoni
Journals and periodicals by michela ardizzoni
Papers by michela ardizzoni