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Bertolotti, M., Pirovano, A. e Catellani, P. (2025). Media, populismo e comunicazione scientifica. In Aroldi, P., Mascheroni, G., Pasquali, F. e Scifo, B. (a cura di). “…E quanto più sapore possibile”. Comunicazione, media, industria culturale. Vita e Pensiero, pp. 459-468.
Fausto Colombo, who died prematurely in early 2025, had a profound impact on communication studies in Italy: for more than forty years, he investigated the media system, its history, its forms of production and consumption, its texts, and its influence on the cultural, social, and political life of our country. This volume of “Studies in Honor” brings together essays by some sixty authors linked to the sociologist from the Catholic University by a relationship of friendship and collaboration, with the aim of restoring “as much flavor as possible” of his intellectual work, as evidenced by the extensive scientific production chronologically reconstructed in the book's bibliography.
Each essay addresses a theme, an object, or a phenomenon, or adopts a research method among those frequently used by Fausto Colombo, entering into dialogue with his intellectual legacy. The seven sections that make up the volume retrace his main research interests: the history and criticism of the Italian cultural industry, its protagonists, and the various sectors of the media system and the theater scene; the hypertrophy of digital memory, culture, and algorithmic imaginaries, the power of social platforms and artificial intelligence; new communication technologies and the processes of digitization of the media and society; the generational approach to media audiences and the digitization of the older cohort of the Italian population. Furthermore, reflection on the power and fascination of images and the pain of others that they represent; the ecological approach to the media system and the critical and ethical analysis of digital communication as a shared social space, a common good to be protected and a condition of civil coexistence; the relationship between truth, democracy, and public discourse and the responsibility of the various sectors of the media system. What emerges is not only a mapping of the various strands along which Fausto Colombo's fruitful research has been structured, but also a possible cartography of areas yet to be explored, of boundaries to be pushed a little further, of new territories to be ventured into.
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