000378L - COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL SAFETY

The course introduces students to the sociology of communication, considering the three dimensions of interpersonal, media and online communication and focusing on media communication of deviance and crime. The lessons are divided into four thematic sections.
The first section is dedicated to direct communication, covering its fundamental elements and the main functions and basic skills of interlocutors. Some of the most significant theoretical approaches are also examined: Shannon and Weaver's “informational” approach, Austin and Searle's “speech acts”, the Palo Alto School's “pragmatic” approach, and Habermas's “communicative” approach. Next, it looks at cases of miscommunication and the characteristics and contexts of problematic communication: communication pathologies, metacommunication such as framing, representations, failures and repairs.
The second section broadens the focus to mass media, print, radio, television and other media, which McLuhan differentiates into “hot” and “cool”. It then reconstructs the development of the main approaches to media research, examining: the hypodermic needle, the Payne Fund Studies, intervening variables, the two-step flow, the culture industry, cultural studies, agenda setting, the spiral of silence, cultivation and the public sphere.
The third section introduces the structure and dynamics of cyberspace and online communications, discussing the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 4.0 and from virtual communities to the platform society. From the positive concepts of “collective intelligence” and “convergence” that marked the first phase of studies on the new hybrid media ecosystem, more problematic perspectives are now emerging on digital inequalities in access and skills, on issues of transparency vs. commodification of big data, on the fragmentation of the public sphere into semi-private meso-spheres, on the creation of echo chambers, the polarisation of positions and the spread of hate speech, the growth of dis- and misinformation, fake news and “post-truth” phenomena, and the erosion of the gatekeeper model embodied by journalism.
The fourth and final section deals with the different definitions of order and normality, diversity and deviance, social and legal norms, forms of control, types of crime, sanctions and penalties, and stigmatisation. The main interpretative paradigms of deviant and criminal behaviour are examined in their historical context and in terms of their persistence and confrontation in the current debate. In addition, the course aims to promote understanding of the links between the interpretative models of the phenomena studied, their public representation and forms of media communication, from films and series to television and radio programmes on crime, the press and podcasts.