Most importantly, the course will focus on the definition of cultural journalism, so as to understand how it has developed until the advent of the internet and cross-mediality in relationship to the strategies of cultural and musem communication (Mazzoli).
Specifically, the course will further investigate the main features of cultural journalism, probing the origins and development of the Italian cultural press, starting from the first literary gazettes to diffusion of iPads. The course also covers the current hypertrophy of sources, nourished by the dominion of TV and internet and the entertainment industry.
In fact, the evolution of newspapers is connected to a dynamic interaction between cultural, social, economic and political processes and technological innovations.
The purpose is to shed a light on how languages, formats, audiences, marketing strategies changed in the era of the digitalized communities (Zanchini).
In the second phase, the course will deal with the role played by Guido Piovene in the development of the Italian cultural journalism soon after the conclusion of World War II. He was the author of travel reportage inspired by the experience of report as cognitive and social medium. Furthermore, he conceived the travel report as a way to recollect the civil identity of a country undergoing deep transformations. This is a journalistic experience triggered by relevant cultural and sociological impulses. The experience of writing implies specific communicative needs, peculiar to the intellectual who tries to build a reliable and durable socio-cultural identity despite the fast transformation imposed by the society of the spectacle.
During his three-year journey, Piovene described the regions, cities, towns, squares, people of our country, dwelling on the most known and the forgotten ones as well. He carried out a unparalleled endeavor, which inspired an uncanny book, still fundamental to understanding modern Italian history.