Tiziano Bonini

A cultural history of the hipster

Chi è l'Hipster? Perché è tanto odiato? È una sottocultura o rappresenta il mainstream? Un'archeologia del termine “Hipster”, un viaggio a ritroso nel tempo per capire cosa significava alle origini, perché è così importante e perché non è solo un epiteto dispregiativo per definire giovani bianchi barbuti.

(dalla presentazione di Doppiozero)
"Chi è l'Hipster? Perché è tanto odiato? È una sottocultura o rappresenta il mainstream?

Questo libro compie un'archeologia del termine “Hipster”, un viaggio a ritroso nel tempo per capire da dove viene questa parola, cosa significava alle origini, perché è così importante e perché non è solo un epiteto dispregiativo per definire giovani bianchi barbuti, dotati di baffi alla Cecco Beppe e montature di occhiali spesse che pedalano su bici a scatto fisso mentre ascoltano musica con cuffie giganti. Facile liquidare il fenomeno Hipster come una semplice manifestazione di elitismo, frivolezza e finto savoir faire; era facile anche trent’anni fa liquidare il punk e il reggae come nonsense o distrazioni irrilevanti. Eppure, come il punk e il reggae esplosi nell'Inghilterra proletaria degli anni '70 raccontavano qualcosa della crisi sociale della società tatcheriana, così il revival dell'Hipster degli anni duemila ci dice qualcosa sulla crisi della generazione di giovani cresciuti tra il WTO di Seattle del 1999 e la grande crisi economica iniziata nel 2008.

Tiziano Bonini ricostruisce in modo brillantissimo, documentato, ironico e partecipe insieme la loro storia: da Charlie Parker, passando per Don Draper e i Vampire Weekend, ne delinea le nascite e resurrezioni; ne prefigura la fine e quasi impossibili ritorni (ma non si sa mai)."

Chi ascolta la radio? Come è cambiato il suo pubblico? Perché tutte le emittenti trasmettono Adele? Che cosa significa fare la radio ai tempi di Facebook? Nel rispondere a queste domande, il volume disegna una mappa del paesaggio radiofonico italiano nell’epoca della società in rete, avvalendosi di 1.146 ore di radio analizzate nel dettaglio, dai formati dell’informazione a quelli dell’intrattenimento musicale pop e classico. Viene così offerta una panoramica del presente e del futuro prossimo della radiofonia italiana che prende in esame i generi attuali, lo stato di salute del mercato pubblico e privato, la radiofonia comunitaria e quella delle università, il cambiamento del valore dell’audience, l’incrocio con i social media, le nuove tecnologie digitali all’orizzonte, il futuro degli archivi sonori storici, i nuovi servizi di distribuzione della musica che stanno scalzando il primato della radio come medium musicale. Gli autori, studiosi e professionisti della radio, ci restituiscono l’immagine di un mezzo nel guado tra l’epoca del broadcasting e quella del networking

La fisica dimostra che il calabrone non potrebbe volare: è così pesante e goffo, con le ali troppo piccole. Nel panorama dell'informazione e della politica italiane, lo sviluppo di Radio Popolare equivale al volo del calabrone: perché è un'emittente libera e «contro », perché è finanziata in buona parte dagli ascoltatori, perché ha inventato diversi format di successo, perché nei suoi studi sono passate generazioni di giornalisti e uomini di spettacolo, da Gad Lerner alla Gialappa's, da Michele Cucuzza a Ninì Briglia, da Gino e Michele a Biagio Longo, da Pino Corrias ad Alessandro Robecchi, solo per citarne alcuni.
Nel 2006 Radio Popolare compie trent'anni: provocati, inseguiti, stuzzicati da Sergio Ferrentino (con Luca Gattuso e Tiziano Bonini) gli artefici della storia dell'emittente milanese (dai direttori ai redattori, dai tecnici agli ascoltatori più o meno eccellenti) raccontano questa avventura in forma di enciclopedia. Non mancano gli scoop (l'intervista in diretta a Renato Vallanzasca latitante) e gli episodi drammatici (gli anni del terrorismo, l'omicidio di Fausto e Iaio), le curiosità e i retroscena.
Perché Radiopop è stata un modo diverso di fare informazione, cultura, politica, pubblicità, comunicazione. Così sono molti i fili da seguire, lungo questi trent'anni sempre in diretta sulla strada e sulla fabbrica, sulla scuola e sul carcere: le vicissitudini della sinistra (con i suoi vizi e le sue virtù) ma anche l'evoluzione dei gusti musicali, l'onda lunga degli anni Sessanta e Settanta (il rapporto con il sindacato, la voce delle donne, le prime trasmissioni gay…) e l'impatto dell'immigrazione. Vedi alla voce Radio Popolare sono decine e decine di percorsi individuali che si raccontano, con le loro individualità, passioni e ingenuità. Nel loro insieme narrano un grande sogno collettivo che per una volta è diventato realtà.

"La maggior parte di chi viaggia, viaggia per tornare indietro", ha scritto Michael de Montaigne. Anche chi scappa, chi fugge deliberatamente, chi se ne va in cerca di una nuova vita, porta con sé il calore della casa che lo ha cresciuto, dei luoghi, degli oggetti, degli odori, dei suoni familiari. Ricominciare in un altro luogo richiede un lungo processo di "colonizzazione" dello spazio ospite, di addomesticamento del nuovo. Una volta abbandonato il proprio spazio domestico, però, è facile sentirsi stranieri, fuori posto, senza casa. Quando siamo in cammino, dispersi dalle guerre, dalla politica o dal desiderio di una vita migliore, come facciamo a sentirci "a casa"? Possiamo, attraverso i media, ricreare almeno un po' del calore di casa: la radiolina, il telefono, il giornale, la videocassetta, il dvd, l'ipod, l'antenna satellitare, Internet.
Questo libro prova a definire il nuovo concetto di "casa" (intesa come home/heimat) prodotto dal mix di globalizzazione e nuovi media e indaga gli usi, le tattiche, le storie di coloro (migranti, turisti, rifugiati) che per qualche motivo - temporaneamente o per sempre - sono costretti a vivere lontano dal proprio paese, dalla propria famiglia, dal proprio universo culturale e fanno di tutto per tornare a casa con ogni mezzo (di comunicazione) possibile.

This paper aims to understand the practices and meanings associated with the creation and use of private chat groups on instant messaging services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger and WeChat that are accessible only to platform workers of online food delivery services. We draw on participant observation in five countries (Italy, Spain, Mexico, China, and India), in-depth interviews with 68 food delivery couriers and digital ethnography ( Pink et al., 2015 ) within dozens of online private chat groups of food delivery workers. Our fieldwork shows that private chat groups are extremely relevant in the daily work of delivery workers and are appropriated to restore forms of mutualism not afforded by the food delivery apps. Following Costa (2018) and her concept of affordances- in-practice, we describe how the practice of online private chat groups created by platform workers affords: (1) the emergence of communities of practice; (2) resistance and contempt; (3) mutualism and solida...

While scholars of activism have begun to unfold the dynamics of the 'contentious politics of data', less explored are the forms of appropriation of algorithms to pursue political objectives by social movements. This article fills this gap by offering a novel theoretical framework, a conceptual vocabulary, and a typology to foreground and articulate algorithmic activism as a subset of algorithmic politics. It starts discussing why an excessive focus on the power of platforms risks disregarding the exploration of agency and provides the definitions of algorithmic agency and politics. Subsequently, it centres on algorithmic activism and demonstrates that algorithms have become the latest addition to the contention repertoire of social movements. Drawing on a heterogeneous set of examples and case studies (including our own research and a database of 250 articles), we propose and examine a typology of three dynamics of algorithmic activism, i.e., algorithmic amplification, evasion, and hijacking. We show that the struggle for visibility (either to achieve it or deny it) lies at the centre of all these 2 types of activism. In the conclusions, we reflect on the key takeaways of our work, clarifying that algorithmic activism (1) exceeds the notion of 'hashtag activism' (2) constitutes an agnostic concept (3) is part of an incessant political struggle between algorithmic strategies and tactics.

This paper aims to understand the practices and meanings associated with the creation and use of private chat groups on instant messaging services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger and WeChat that are accessible only to platform workers of online food delivery services. We draw on participant observation in five countries (Italy, Spain, Mexico, China, and India), in-depth interviews with 68 food delivery couriers and digital ethnography (Pink et al., 2015) within dozens of online private chat groups of food delivery workers. Our fieldwork shows that private chat groups are extremely relevant in the daily work of delivery workers and are appropriated to restore forms of mutualism not afforded by the food delivery apps. Following Costa (2018) and her concept of affordances-in-practice, we describe how the practice of online private chat groups created by platform workers affords: (1) the emergence of communities of practice; (2) resistance and contempt; (3) mutualism and solidarity. We argue that these workers ‘enact’ the affordances of instant messaging apps, to supplement – from below – the affordances of food delivery apps that were denied or ignored by food delivery companies. We argue that these affordances constitute cooperative affordances. This concept captures the cooperative nature of peer-to-peer communication that occurs within the informal online chat groups created by the workers themselves. Finally, this article contributes to affordance theory by highlighting how affordances are not immanent properties of artifacts, or ‘invariants’, as argued by Gibson (1979), but can be ‘enacted’ by specific users, like food delivery workers, within specific social and cultural contexts.

Sulla scia dei recenti studi sulla consapevolezza algoritmica (Eslami et al. 2015; Gran et al., 2021), l'articolo propone un focus sul livello di questa consapevolezza (Gran et al. 2021) degli host di Airbnb. Lo studio si avvale di una etnografia digitale (Pink et al. 2016) che include un periodo di 4 mesi di osservazione non partecipante dei gruppi Facebook chiusi costituiti da host di Airbnb, dal 1° marzo al 30 giugno 2021, e 15 interviste semi strutturate con host di Airbnb residenti in Toscana e Sardegna. Dall'etnografia emerge che la consapevolezza algoritmica varia in base al livello di professionalizzazione degli host. L'opacità della governance algoritmica di Airbnb favorisce quindi un divario crescente tra host professionisti e host amatoriali, che si traduce in una distribuzione diseguale della visibilità degli annunci e dei benefici economici che gli host possono trarre da questa piattaforma.

Abstract (English)
In the wake of recent studies on «algorithmic awareness» (Eslami et al. 2015; Gran et al. 2020), this article proposes a focus on the level of this awareness (Gran et al. 2020) among Airbnb hosts.
The study uses a digital ethnography (Pink et al. 2016) that includes a 4-month period of non-participant observation of closed Facebook groups formed by Airbnb hosts, from March 1 to June 30, 2021, and 15 semi-structured interviews with Airbnb hosts residing in Tuscany and Sardinia.
The ethnography shows that algorithmic awareness varies with the level of professionalization of hosts. The opacity of Airbnb’s algorithmic governance thus fosters a widening gap between professional and amateur hosts, which results in an unequal distribution of visibility and economic benefits that hosts can derive from this platform.

While scholars of activism have begun to unfold the dynamics of the 'contentious politics of data', less explored are the forms of appropriation of algorithms to pursue political objectives by social movements. This article fills this gap by offering a novel theoretical framework, a conceptual vocabulary, and a typology to foreground and articulate algorithmic activism as a subset of algorithmic politics. It starts discussing why an excessive focus on the power of platforms risks disregarding the exploration of agency and provides the definitions of algorithmic agency and politics. Subsequently, it centres on algorithmic activism and demonstrates that algorithms have become the latest addition to the contention repertoire of social movements. Drawing on a heterogeneous set of examples and case studies (including our own research and a database of 250 articles), we propose and examine a typology of three dynamics of algorithmic activism, i.e., algorithmic amplification, evasion, and hijacking. We show that the struggle for visibility (either to achieve it or deny it) lies at the centre of all these 2 types of activism. In the conclusions, we reflect on the key takeaways of our work, clarifying that algorithmic activism (1) exceeds the notion of 'hashtag activism' (2) constitutes an agnostic concept (3) is part of an incessant political struggle between algorithmic strategies and tactics.

In this article, we show the complexity of the relationship existing between the power of platforms and the agency of users through the case study of engagement groups (pods) on Instagram, on which we carried out an eight-month digital ethnography (October 2019-May 2020) to understand the processes of meaning-making that take place within them. Through the discussion of the ethnographic material generated during the fieldwork. we illustrate that this relationship is neither monolithic nor deterministic as many scholars have recently portrayed it. Although users of the platforms are bound to them by highly asymmetrical power relations, there still seems to be a space for the exercise of individual agency, which, in the case that we studied, takes the form of the creation of a collective network of users who support each other and question the discursive rhetoric typical of Instagram, replacing it with an alternative moral code. We propose to frame the activity of these groups as a form, albeit fragile, of «everyday» resistance to the power and moral code of online platforms. Instagram pods are unable to subvert the power exerted by platforms, but they represent the first step, among many necessary ones, towards the construction of more structured forms of resistance in the field of emerging «platformised» cultural industries.

This study explores how Chinese riders game the algorithm-mediated governing system of food delivery service platforms and how they mobilize WeChat to build solidarity networks to assist each other and better cope with the platform economy. We rely on 12 interviews with Chinese riders from 4 platforms (Meituan, Eleme, SF Express and Flash EX) in 5 cities, and draw on a 4-month online observation of 7 private WeChat groups. The article provides a detailed account of the gamification ranking and competition techniques employed by delivery platforms to drive the riders to achieve efficiency and productivity gains. Then, it critically explores how Chinese riders adapt and react to the algorithmic systems that govern their work by setting up private WeChat groups and developing everyday practices of resilience and resistance. This study demonstrates that Chinese riders working for food delivery platforms incessantly create a complex repertoire of tactics and develop hidden transcripts to...

This article addresses the need to find alternative ways to envision, develop and govern public service media’s (PSM) online services and data-driven systems. By critically discussing both opportunities and shortcomings of how European PSM organisations developed their online services and personalisation systems, we argue that in their own platformisation processes, PSM have partially lost their distinctiveness and have not been able to provide viable alternatives to the dominant audiovisual media platforms. Thus, building on Mouffe’s agonistic theory and Illich’s conviviality theory, this article proposes a theoretical framework to radically rethink the guiding principles and rationales driving public service platforms, in order to develop viable alternatives to the currently dominant models. By doing so, we envision the development of such services as convivial tools that are based on three principles, namely, symmetry of power (intended as hackability, openness and algorithmic co...

Resum En aquest article es tractarà d’analitzar la història del podcàsting com una pràctica cultural de la producció i consum de contingut de so digital. Després d’una revisió d’estudis anteriors que van examinar aquesta tecnologia, es plantejarà que el podcàsting ha entrat en una nova fase de la seva evolució, una en què es comença a generar un mercat que ja no és simplement complementari a la ràdio, sinó una alternativa; un mercat que s’està movent cap a la professionalització de la producció i la normalització del consum. Aquesta fase, que anomenaré “la segona edat de podcàsting”, es distingeix per la transformació cap a una pràctica productiva comercial i un mitjà per al consum massiu, i es va iniciar als Estats Units el 2012, amb el llançament dels primers models de negoci que van ser capaços de donar suport a la producció independent i al consum de continguts de so distribuït per mitjà del podcàsting.

In questo capitolo cercherò di dimostrare come il libro di Lazarsfeld, nonostante una serie di debolezze e di critiche in parte meritate, possa oggi tornare molto utile alla comunità di studiosi dei media per una serie di ragioni che provo qui a sintetizzare: 1) fornire una lezione contro il perenne ritorno del determinismo tecnologico; 2) comprendere meglio le recenti tendenze degli studi di valorizzazione del pubblico dei media, ridando centralità allo studio del pubblico e del suo comportamento, per una critica “riformista” dell’attuale economia politica dei media; 3) comprendere la complessità delle relazioni intermediali e dei possibili benefici, non solo dei rischi, che ogni nuovo medium porta con sé. A partire dalle relazioni stampa-radio e libro-radio investigate da Lazarsfeld, proverò ad allargare il quadro al dibattito contemporaneo su quanto Internet sia un pericolo per i giornali o la lettura dei libri e quanto questi dibattiti, visti alla luce di Lazarsfeld, siano poco fertili e quanto sia più importante concentrarci sulle relazioni sociali che le persone instaurano a partire dall’uso che fanno dei media.

Our research addresses the issues of the cross-media diffusion and the participatory circulation of pop music in Italy and tries to answer the following questions: Are the music industry and radio companies still endowed with the power to create consensus around an early released musical product or such power has been taken over by social media and digital platforms of music streaming? Which actors contribute the most in making a song popular? In order to answer such questions, we have adopted an empirical perspective: we have followed the diffusion patterns of three Italian pop music songs on 1000 national and local radio stations and on platforms like Spotify, YouTube, Shazam and Twitter, from the day of their market release to the following 5 months (154 days). We show how music streaming platforms are taking up an increasingly important position in the processes of taste formation and the construction of musical audiences. We conclude by proposing a critical reflection on the hybrid role of radio and music streaming platforms in setting the listening agenda of music consumption

This article aims to provide a detailed rendering of the struggles we experienced while undertaking ethnographic research for the study of music curators working at online music streaming platforms. Based on the field notes generated during a multi-sited ethnography, the article will critically discuss the “black boxing” strategies employed by these platforms in order to protect themselves from public scrutiny, and how media scholars can counteract in order to (partially) circumvent the restrictions posed by them. In light of this discussion, we propose five tactics that we argue can be employed in order to perform ethnographic research in the age of platforms. We conclude with a reflection on what we can learn from “failures in the field” and why it is important to advance ethnographic studies of the new places of cultural production.

This article investigates the logics that underpin music curation, and particularly the work of music curators, working at digital music streaming platforms. Based on ethnographic research that combines participant observation and a set of interviews with key informants, the article questions the relationship between algorithmic and human curation and the specific workings of music curation as a form of platform gatekeeping. We argue that music streaming platforms in combining proprietary algorithms and human curators constitute the “new gatekeepers” in an industry previously dominated by human intermediaries such as radio programmers, journalists, and other experts. The paper suggests understanding this gatekeeping activity as a form of “algo-torial power”, that has the ability to set the ‘listening agendas’ of global music consumers.

This article presents an investigation into the everyday lives of freelance radio producers in the Italian radio industry from a perspective that applies the sociology of work to the study of media production. The study adopted an ethnographic approach to explore working conditions and experiences of insecurity, uncertainty, socialising, networking and isolation. The authors identified four features of the radio producers' work, which go well beyond the fact that passion functions as a cover for unfair working conditions. The work of these radio producers is invisible, passionate, unbranded and solidaristic. These features interconnect with the conventional ethos of freelance and precarious workers in the creative industries, where professional identity becomes subsumed by the dominant logic of the industry. If we adopt a Marxist perspective, we could argue that this freelance ‘reserve army’ experiences a specific kind of ‘subsumption’ with roots in the workers' teenage fand...

ABSTRACT Radio audiences are today a mix of traditional radio broadcasting audiences and networked publics (boyd, d. [2007]. Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life. In D. Buckingha (Ed.), MacArthur foundation series on digital learning–youth, identity, and digital media volume (pp. 119–142). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Ito, M. [2008]. Introduction. In K. Varnelis (Ed.), Networked publics (pp. 1–14). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Varnelis, K. (Ed.). [2008]. Networked publics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Varnelis, K. (Ed.). [2008]. Networked publics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; boyd, d. [2011]. Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A networked self identity, community, and culture on social network sites (pp. 39–58). London: Routledge). This not only means that new media is changing the nature of listeners/viewers, transforming them into interactive users, but also that radio publics, once organized into networks, may have different properties, different behaviours and different values. In this paper, we have employed Digital Methods (DM) (Rogers, R. [2009]. The end of the virtual. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press) and social network analysis to understand the Twitter activity and the communicative dynamics of the audiences of two Italian national radio stations: Radio3 Rai (public service station) and Radio Deejay (private commercial station). This work also aims to respond to a question asked by Rogers when defining DM: ‘Could the information contained in profiles on social networking sites provide different insights into the composition and characteristics of publics?’ (Rogers, R. [2009]. The end of the virtual. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press). Based on the results that have emerged from this study, we believe that the answer can be affirmative: the analysis of the social connections and the interaction models of the networked listeners highlights new features of these audiences, and allows us to reevaluate and understand them from new points of view. This work shows that the digital audiences related to the two radio stations clearly distinguish themselves for their distinctive online behaviour and a different display of social networks, cultural capital and affect. We therefore hypothesize the presence of three different types of capital within the two different audiences analysed: social, cultural and affective capital.

A culture of co–creation is emerging in art, design, architecture (Armstrong and Stojmirovic, 2011), music, video, literature and other productive fields like manufacturing, urban agriculture and biotech. Many of the tools of production and distribution used by professionals are available to the broader public. Publics are becoming more and more productive (Jenkins, 1992; Arvidsson, 2011). The rise of these phenomena suggests that a new modality of value creation is affirming itself in the information economy (Arvidsson and Colleoni, 2012). This emerging co–creation culture and a new theory of value also affect the radiophonic medium. The combination between radio and social networks sites (SNS) brought to completion a long historical process by virtue of which the distance with the public decreases, as Walter Benjamin already understood in his work on the relation between radio and society. In this paper I will focus on the changes that the publics of radio have undergone in the la...

This article examines radio information in Italy. A quantitative content analysis was performed of the news editions of the main national broadcasters that transmit mainly informational content (RTL 102.5, Radio24, RAI Radio1, Radio Capital), as well as a regional broadcaster with a strong focus on information (Radio Popolare) and a national network whose informational spaces are minimal due to target and format (Radio 105). The study sampled one week of broadcasting from these radio stations, for a total of 1008 hours, from 23 to 29 January 2012. Results show how information in Italy is highly focused on internal politics and news stories, pushing news from abroad to the fringes and confirming the image of a nation that is little interested in what occurs outside its borders.

This article addresses the need to find alternative ways to envision, develop and govern public service media's (PSM) online services and data-driven systems. By critically discussing both opportunities and shortcomings of how European PSM organisations developed their online services and personalisation systems, we argue that in their own platformisation processes, PSM have partially lost their distinctiveness and have not been able to provide viable alternatives to the dominant audiovisual media platforms. Thus, building on Mouffe's agonistic theory and Illich's conviviality theory, this article proposes a theoretical framework to radically rethink the guiding principles and rationales driving public service platforms, in order to develop viable alternatives to the currently dominant models. By doing so, we envision the development of such services as convivial tools that are based on three principles, namely, symmetry of power (intended as hackability, openness and algorithmic conviviality), independence and environmental sustainability.

Podcasting has thrived since its popularization in 2004 as a bastion for amateur media production. Over the past ten years, however, entrepreneurs and legacy media companies have rapidly expanded their interests in podcasting, bringing with them professional standards and the logics of capital. Breakout hits such as 2014’s Serial (with nearly 40 million downloads) and This American Life have demonstrated to both programmers and advertisers the potential for podcasting to emerge as a commercially viable media industry (O’Connell, 2015). According to a recent nationwide survey by Edison Research (2019), an estimated 90 million listeners reported having listened to a podcast in the previous month. Despite the medium’s homespun, DIY roots, this dramatic expansion of the podcast audience and interest from legacy media has begun to transform it “from a do-it-yourself, amateur niche medium into a commercial mass medium” (Bonini, 2015, p. 27). This proposed panel aims to explore the transit...

Esta contribución reflexiona sobre el estado del arte de los procesos de digitalización de los archivos de radio, examinando las diversas formas de digitalización de los archivos de radio existentes en Europa. Analizamos los modelos holandés, español y británico, los casos de los archivos informales y, por último, prestamos especial atención al caso italiano, en el que en 2010 la Rai inauguró una webradio dedicada a la restauración, digitalización y transmisión de material de sus archivos históricos. El caso de la Rai representa una iniciativa única en la escena europea y un modelo de apertura al público que también podría ser reproducido por otras empresas de servicio público.

Twitter seems to be, among the other social media, one of the best new media for drawing back the audience from internet to radio and to improve the engagement with listeners. This paper analyses the practices of public radio in Social Media focusing on the use of Twitter by two European public broadcasters: RAI (Italy) and RNE (Spain). PSM role in society is being questioned and asked to extend its service to include a new media strategy. The study aims to understand how public service operators adapt themselves to the new multi platform scenario which should drive them to change the relationship with their listeners

This article aims to provide a detailed rendering of the struggles we experienced while undertaking ethnographic research for the study of music curators working at online music streaming platforms. Based on the field notes generated during a multi-sited ethnography, the article will critically discuss the “black boxing” strategies employed by these platforms in order to protect themselves from public scrutiny, and how media scholars can counteract in order to (partially) circumvent the restrictions posed by them. In light of this discussion, we propose five tactics that we argue can be employed in order to perform ethnographic research in the age of platforms. We conclude with a reflection on what we can learn from “failures in the field” and why it is important to advance ethnographic studies of the new places of cultural production.

This article investigates the logics that underpin music curation, and particularly the work of music curators, working at digital music streaming platforms. Based on ethnographic research that combines participant observation and a set of interviews with key informants, the article questions the relationship between algorithmic and human curation and the specific workings of music curation as a form of platform gatekeeping. We argue that music streaming platforms in combining proprietary algorithms and human curators constitute the “new gatekeepers” in an industry previously dominated by human intermediaries such as radio programmers, journalists, and other experts. The article suggests understanding this gatekeeping activity as a form of “algo-torial power” that has the ability to set the “listening agendas” of global music consumers. While the power of traditional gatekeepers was mainly of an editorial nature, albeit data had some relevance in orienting their choices, the power of platform gatekepeers is an editorial power “augmented” and enhanced by algorithms and big data. Platform gatekeepers have more data, more tools to manage and to make sense of these data, and thus more power than their predecessors. Platformization of music curation then consists of a data-intense gatekeeping activity, based on different mixes of algo-torial logics, that produces new regimes of visibility. This makes the platform capitalistic model potentially more efficient than industrial capitalism in transforming audience attention into data and data into commodities.

Our research addresses the issues of the cross-media diffusion and the participatory circulation of pop music in Italy and tries to answer the following questions: Are the music industry and radio companies still endowed with the power to create consensus around an early released musical product or such power has been taken over by social media and digital platforms of music streaming? Which actors contribute the most in making a song popular? In order to answer such questions, we have adopted an empirical perspective: we have followed the diffusion patterns of three Italian pop music songs on 1000 national and local radio stations and on platforms like Spotify, YouTube, Shazam and Twitter, from the day of their market release to the following 5 months (154 days). We show how music streaming platforms are taking up an increasingly important position in the processes of taste formation and the construction of musical audiences. We conclude by proposing a critical reflection on the hybrid role of radio and music streaming platforms in setting the listening agenda of music consumption.

This article investigates the logics that underpin music curation, and particularly the work of music curators, working at digital music streaming platforms. Based on ethnographic research that combines participant observation and a set of interviews with key informants, the article questions the relationship between algorithmic and human curation and the specific workings of music curation as a form of platform gatekeeping. We argue that music streaming platforms in combining proprietary algorithms and human curators constitute the "new gatekeepers" in an industry previously dominated by human intermediaries such as radio programmers, journalists, and other experts. The paper suggests understanding this gatekeeping activity as a form of "algo-torial power", that has the ability to set the 'listening agendas' of global music consumers.

This paper aims to focus on the tactile aspects of radio listening, which until now have been underestimated by radio scholars, and to describe how 'haptically-mediated radio listening' has evolved, from the beginning of broadcasting to the arrival of digital media. This paper will first perform an overview of the studies that have dealt with the haptic dimension of media, then focus on what we call 'haptically-mediated' radio listening, a specific form of radio listening made possible by the interaction with radio content through mobile digital devices, and conclude with a critical depiction of the implications of haptically-mediated listening for audience commodification.

Radio has been employed as a communication tool during all the social movements and protests of the last decades of the past century, from the student movements of May 1968 in Paris and Mexico City to the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, while the political protests and uprisings at the beginning of the twenty-first century have mostly been supported by social media (Howard and Hussain, 2013). Is Twitter the radio of the twenty-first century? Another, more complex, reality lies beyond the surface of the representation of the protests shaped by the mainstream media: the mediascape in which political movements such as Occupy, the Arab Spring and the Indignados have emerged is a mixed one, a mediascape where old and new, mainstream and underground media co-exist, interact and shape each other. In this paper, we will focus on the case of Açık Radyo, the only independent and listener-supported radio station based in Istanbul, and the role it played in the Gezi Park protests of June 2013. This study is based on an ethnographic investigation undertaken between December 2014 and January 2015 that used a mix of participant observation (Spradley, 1980) and in-depth interviews (Patton, 2001) with 15 Açık Radyo workers and volunteers and 10 Açık Radyo listeners. We will show how radio has not lost the value that it gained as a tool for political and social change during the twentieth century, but how it has only repositioned itself within the changing digital mediascape of the twenty-first century, mixing itself with social media in order to continue amplifying radical political discourses and networking protesters together.

The current article analyzes the difficulties faced by public service media in the current political, economic and multimedia context. It proceeds with an examination of the main financing methods used by public service media and of the most recent reforms at the European level. The last part of this article describes a potential " scenario " of reforming public service media license fee model through the dynamics of civic crowdfunding, allowing citizens to decide in which programs they may invest a (20%) quota. The scenario we have built is framed in the direction of a " digitally enabled collaborative economy " (Kostakis and Bauwens, 2014), where citizens can experiment with a form of participation in media that is no longer " content-related " but " structural " (Carpentier, 2011). In order to prove the value of this hypothesis, the model has been tested on 649 Italian citizens. This test demonstrated that, although 83% of the survey sample believe the current cost of the Italian license fee is too high, 70% of them would be willing to pay even more if they could be in control of a part of the license fee and decide where to invest it. Therefore, we have shown that our sample of Italian citizens and Internet users is favorably disposed toward forms of more structural participation in the decision-making processes of public service media and in the co-management of public service media budgets. The aim of the current article is to demonstrate the potential value of audience' structural participation in reshaping the role of public service media in contemporary digital cultures and networked societies.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the experiences and emotional responses of interviewees to their working conditions in the Italian radio industry. It is based on an ethnographic investigation – a mix of in-depth interviews and participant observation - of work practices within the radio production industry, undertaken over an extended period of time (between November 2013 and May 2014) and it explores working conditions and experiences with insecurity, uncertainty, socializing, networking and isolation.

Are there any differences between precarious and freelance workers in the public service and those contracted with a private station? What kinds of roles do they have in the daily production flows of the two radio stations? What happens when someone is made redundant? Is the precarious status of their work affecting their everyday life?

This study will try to answer these questions, grounding itself within critical approaches of creative and cultural industries.

This ethnography illustrates four characteristics (invisible, passionate, unbranded, solidary) of the radio producers’ work, which go well beyond the fact that passion functions as a cover for unfair working condition. On the contrary, these features seem to be connected together to depict the conventional ethos of freelance and precarious workers in the creative industry, whose professional identity gets completely subsumed by the dominant logic of the industry. If we adopt a Marxist perspective we could argue that this freelance ‘reserve army’ experiences a specific kind of ‘subsumption’ which finds roots in their teenage subcultural milieu, and into popular culture to a large extent.

Abstract

This paper aims to critically discuss the role of commercial recommendation systems based on algorithms in contemporary cultural consumption practices and why it matters for media studies. The first part analyses the historical evolution of the concept of gatekeeping, and attempts to show that this concept can now also be extended to algorithms. The second part hypothesises the existence of a public built by algorithms: as a form of networked public driven and generated by algorithms, we call it the “algorithmic public”, and we distinguish it as a step that follows the formation of networked publics. Subsequently, the affordances of this new form of public are hypothesised and described.
The paper will conclude by attempting to delineate possible future directions for the research and criticism of algorithms, building from the concept of conviviality developed by Ivan Illich in 1973 and advocating the design of what we call “convivial algorithms”.

Key words: Algorithms; gatekeeping; networked publics; Ivan Illich

Working paper under review. Interested in receiving feedbacks and references' suggestions.

In questo capitolo cercherò di dimostrare come il libro di Lazarsfeld, nonostante una serie di debolezze e di critiche in parte meritate, possa oggi tornare molto utile alla comunità di studiosi dei media per una serie di ragioni che provo qui a sintetizzare: 1) fornire una lezione contro il perenne ritorno del determinismo tecnologico; 2) comprendere meglio le recenti tendenze degli studi di valorizzazione del pubblico dei media, ridando centralità allo studio del pubblico e del suo comportamento, per una critica “riformista” dell’attuale economia politica dei media; 3) comprendere la complessità delle relazioni intermediali e dei possibili benefici, non solo dei rischi, che ogni nuovo medium porta con sé. A partire dalle relazioni stampa-radio e libro-radio investigate da Lazarsfeld, proverò ad allargare il quadro al dibattito contemporaneo su quanto Internet sia un pericolo per i giornali o la lettura dei libri e quanto questi dibattiti, visti alla luce di Lazarsfeld, siano poco fertili e quanto sia più importante concentrarci sulle relazioni sociali che le persone instaurano a partire dall’uso che fanno dei media.

This article will attempt to analyze the history of podcasting as a cultural practice of producing and consuming digital sound content. After a review of previous studies examining this technology, the case will be made that podcasting has entered a new phase of its evolution, one where it is beginning to generate a market that is no longer simply complementary to radio, but an alternative; one that is moving towards the professionalisation of production and the normalisation of consumption. This phase, which I will call “the second age of podcasting”, is distinguished by the transformation of podcasting into a commercial productive practice and a medium for mass consumption, and began in the United States in 2012, with the launch of the first business models that were able to support the independent production and consumption of sound content distributed through podcasting.

Audience research is undergoing substantial transformation. The old ‘eyeballs’ paradigm has been losing adequacy since, at least, the 1980s. At the same time, social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook provide data that allow a far deeper and more intrusive view into the everyday life of media consumers. As a result, many companies are now developing systems based on social media data in order to represent, measure and value audience dynamics in new ways. This transformation of audience research has been paralleled by the rise of concepts like influence, clout or passion as a way of conceiving of audience value. But how are such affective values created? And how can the new semantics of value as passion be critiqued?
In this article, we will address that question by thinking through two theoretical models of audience value. Dallas Smythe’s theory of the audience commodity and Gabriel Tarde’s theory of public value. We will suggest that present developments in the media economy make Tarde’s model more relevant for understanding the value of contemporary audience activity. We suggest that this might lead to a redirection of critical theories of audience value toward a focus on constructing the kinds of devices that are able to represent audience value in ways that take a broader range of interests into consideration

Introduction
This book is divided into two macro-sections: Interactive Publics and Productive Publics. These two sections do not represent two different worlds of practices but, conversely, describe two different moments of the same process: audience participation mediated by radio. We conceive of audience participation in radio as a process that is articulated along a continuum, moving from interaction (with a low level of activity) to co-creation (Banks and Deuze 2009) and co-production (with a high level of participation). Here we will show and analyse different innovative practices of interaction and participation.
In this body of work, interactivity is intended in both its minimal technical meaning, as a sequence of action and reaction, as well as in the wider sense of a social-communicative relationship (listeners that reply to a call by a radio host by either phone, smartphone messaging systems, email or Facebook/Twitter texts; listeners that react to a call by a radio host by doing something, such as downloading content or liking/commenting/sharing social media posts; radio hosts and authors that reply to questions and content coming from listeners).
The boundary between interactive and productive publics is traced according to the ideal model of audience participation (AIP model – Access; Interaction; Participation – see Carpentier (2007), where: “this difference between participation on the one hand, and access and interaction on the other, is located within the key role that is attributed to power, and to equal(ised) power relations in decision-making processes.” (Carpentier 2011, 29). According to the AIP model, in the first section, contributors will analyse processes of participation that allow listeners to produce content (SMS, phone calls, social media messages, etc.) but do not let them take part in the co-creation of radio programmes in any way.
The first section of this work will analyse contemporary forms of interaction between radio and its listeners, using specific case studies to examine all the technological means that are currently involved in these processes: the telephone, short text messages, social network sites.
The second section will focus on examples in which the radio public not only reacts to the producers’ requests using the technology at hand, but consciously participates in the production of radio content and has some voice in deciding the content being produced. Some examples in this section will look at the collective production of a playlist used by music programmes: a number of programmes have been built upon listeners requests and music choices, by different means.
Further examples of co-creation refer to other genres, such as the documentary. In Sweden, Germany, Italy and Latin America, some radio producers seek to involve the public in one or more steps of the productive process of a radio documentary, by means of crowdfunding as well.
The title of the book Radio Audiences and Participation in the Age of Network Society highlights the paradigm shift that is transforming the nature of mass media audiences and publics. The rise of the network society (van Dijck 1991; Castells 1996; Wellman 2001), due to the diffusion of ICTs, is also restructuring the topology, the properties and the very nature of media audiences, which are no more understandable only as diffused in time and space (Abercrombie and Longhust 1998). Audiences and publics attracted to media such as radio are no longer invisible, silent and disconnected. Listening habits are changing and listeners are increasingly more used to both listening to radio and leaving comments on social media, where their feelings and opinions are public, searchable, accessible and measurable, as Lacey claims: “Listeners are able to represent their listening to their social networks and track others’ online listening in real or archived time. On the one hand, this means that listening is a practise that is increasingly surveilled and increasingly open to measurement and commodification. On the other hand, it is also a sign of persistent desire to create and partake in forms of collective listenings to mediated music, sound and speech, albeit in virtual space.” (2013, 155).
Radio audiences are a mix of traditional radio broadcasting audiences and networked publics (Varnelis 2008; Boyd 2011). This not only means that new media are changing the nature of listeners/viewers, transforming them into interactive users (Livingstone 2003), but also that radio publics, once organized into networks, now have different properties, different behaviours and different affordances. Networked publics are made up of listeners that are not only able to produce written and audio content for radio and co-create along with the radio producers (even definitively bypassing the central hub of the radio station), but that also produce social data, calling for an alternative rating system, which is less focused on attention and more on other sources, such as engagement, sentiment, affection, reputation, and influence. What are the economic and political consequences of this paradigm shift (see chapter 6 and 14)? How are radio audiences perceived by radio producers in this new radioscape (see chapter 1, 2, 4 and 7)? What’s the true value of radio audiences in this new frame (see chapter 6 and 14)? How do radio audiences take part in the radio flow in this age (see chapters 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 and 13)? Are audiences’ interactions and co-creations overrated or underrated (see chapter 2) by radio producers? What’s the role of community radio in this new context (see chapter 11, 12 and 13)? These are some of the many issues that this present book aims to explore.

Arguments over the status of podcasting have engaged both radio studies and emerging podcasting studies in recent years without resolution. Radio scholars find in podcasting a remediation of radio, while those who approach podcasting from other disciplines or from digital media studies tend to emphasize the disruptive aspects of podcasting as a new medium. These two different positions are difficult to reconcile, but, what if they were both true?
In this chapter, I propose a way out of this debate, a third way which draws upon the cultural history of broadcasting, the political economy of communication, Social shaping of Technology, Social Construction of Technology studies (SCOT), Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Cultural Studies to explore the very nature of podcasting as a medium. Comparing the early years of broadcasting with the early stage of podcasting, I will try to show that podcasting has re-mediated some aspects of radio, but it also represents something completely different.

This paper discusses the current condition of public service media (PSM) as the network society and the emerging digital culture are changing the values traditionally embedded in the concept of PSM and the nature of media audiences. In doing so, the study takes the holistic view on several challenges that contemporary PSM have to face. Since its establishment, PSM have never been under as much pressure as with today's ongoing financial, economic and political crises, as well as other global socioeconomic challenges. The paper argues that in order to understand the current necessary shifts in PSM one needs to take into account current PSM funding models, discussing both their advantages and weaknesses under the light of the changing media ecosystems. Finally, it addresses a need for participatory turn that advocates for a change in the way PSM have framed the audience's participation: from user-generated content to more structural participation.

questo è il programma di Sociologia della Comunicazione per il corso di laurea magistrale in Strategie e Tecniche della Comunicazione dell'Università di Siena. Avendo studenti che provengono da differenti corsi di laurea, tra cui molti da triennali di Scienze della Comunicazione che hanno già affrontato le principali teorie sociologiche sui media, ho preferito demandare al manuale di Scannell la sintesi di queste teorie e concentrare le mie lezioni su un approfondimento del rapporto tra media digitali e società