Relazioni promiscue. Appunti per una possibile ridefinizione dello spazio comunicativo = Promiscuous relationships. Notes for a possible redefinition of the communicative space

Abstract

The key and monopolistic role played by the pandemic issue in the last months is a lens through which we can observe how the digital environment is reshaping the entire communicative space. In fact, the latter is constantly becoming denser, thanks to the plurality and heterogeneity of players, as well as to the expansion of their communication modalities. Starting from Bourdieu's notion of "journalistic field", we come to a new situation where voices of journalists and public sector's communicators are side by side with those of many other actors with other specific skills, who build a polyphonic and multidimensional communicative space. This multifaceted communicative space pushes us to rethink the categories of orthodoxy and informational heresy introduced by the French sociologist, considering the fact that many actors are now more interested in building their public visibility, by managing their different communication resources. In so doing, they can obtain a peculiar role and position in the communicative space, where transparency and the "power of convocation" become always more important. Based on these premises, this paper aims at exploring empirically how 10 different main actors of the public debate managed their communication strategies during the first emergency phase of the Italian lockdown. In order to test the theoretical framework here proposed, the authors investigate 6 different kinds of communication resources: reputational, institutional, professional, argumentative, performative and relational ones. The analysis focus on the activities of the following Facebook accounts: Civil Protection, Higher Institute of Health, Prime Minister, Lombardy Region, Veneto Region, as well as the personal ones of Prime Minister Conte, of Presidents Fontana and Zaia, and of the two currently most followed journalists on social media (Andrea Scanzi and Nicola Porro).