1,721,054 research outputs found
Chernobyl Calling. Narrative, Intermediality and Cultural Memory of a Docu-fiction
No full textThis research stems from a panel discussion that took place at Thessaloniki during the 15th World Semiotics Conference (IASS/AIS) in August-September 2022 (titled “Chernobyl calling. Fiction, Non-fiction, Lifeworld”) and briefly summarized for the Jenkins 2022 blog, whose interventions and discussions were reopened and reworked by the book’s authors for collective and extended reflection. In designing the book, we also wanted to open it up to other scholars and researchers interested in analyzing contemporary television seriality and its psychological, social, and semiotic implications and constructions. The Chernobyl TV series opens many possible issues, and in this book, we will address some that are part of our research topics. Like many contemporary TV series, Chernobyl is a case of what Mittell (2015) calls “complex TV.” Analyzing a TV series as an isolated and autonomous media product is no longer sufficient. Of course, it will be essential to understand the miniseries’ choice of discursive genre and format (see the chapter by Giorgio Grignaffini) and to examine the narrative structure of the script (see the chapter by Paolo Braga) and the construction of male (see the chapter by Andrea Bernardelli) and female characters (see the chapter by Charo Lacalle). An equally important task will be to analyze the collision or interplay in the series between its fictional capacity and its documentary aspirations (see the chapter by Nicola Dusi), as is also evident in the miniseries’ finale, where fictional images are replaced by those of iconographic and historical sources. While analyzing the TV series, we will talk about the Chernobyl disaster as a social and cultural trauma and the activation mechanisms of media archives (see the chapter by Antonella Mascio) and about the TV series and the elements of modern sacrifice (see the chapter by Alberto García), as well as about the representation of the Cold War and the manipulation of information (see the chapter by Federico Montanari). All this without forgetting ‘traditional’ viewers and their reactions, for example, in a particular local setting such as Greece (in Europe), verifying with qualitative sociological analysis (interviews) the reception and understanding of the TV series’ narrative (see the chapter by Ioanna Vovou).
As can be gathered from these first remarks, we decided to approach the Chernobyl miniseries from different theoretical and methodological perspectives to raise issues such as the relationship between fiction and nonfiction, realism constructed through intermedial and transmedia relations, the writing of narrative arcs and the construction of characters in a multi-strand series, with several parallel stories (see the chapter on Héctor Pérez). According to Gambarato and Heuman (2022), exceptionally high-quality audiovisual productions with extensive outreach are most likely to remain in the collective cultural memory as a truthful reference to historical events despite the more accurate historical texts. In our book, we have asked Renira Rampazzo Gambarato and Johannes Heuman to resume their research on the miniseries Chernobyl, focusing on memory and media oblivion. Still, their chapter also discusses the role of ethics and aesthetics based on Peirce’s semiotics
Introduction. Dance research and transmedia practices
No full textContemporary dance is a field full of interpretative possibilities for a Semiotics interested in dynamic and performance open texts connected to theatre practice and/or multimedia. If dance manifests itself as a choreographic discourse/text formed through a creative process then, in order to investigate expression and contents in their narrative or plastic nature, it will be appropriate to take into consideration a series of issues related to the dimension of the senses, but also the figurative and the interpretative dimensions, from the point of view of dance main semiotic actors (dancer, choreographer, audience). Dance as a process, dance as discourse, text analysis, notation, technology, translation, arts, body, are therefore only some of the key words used in this monographic issue, together with the notions of performance - intended both as discourse and process - in the multiple semantic possibilities of a word in which spectacular conceptions and more semiotic ones, although overlapping, are all predominantly considered in virtue of live execution
History, Drama, Retelling: Intermedial Realism in Chernobyl
No full textDespite the fictional reconstruction of the set, the persuasive effectiveness of the miniseries Chernobyl (HBO, 2019) comes from its documentary approach (Odin 2013; Ricoeur 1983). It is not just about historical accuracy in representing places and people, furnishings, clothing, technology, etc. The "figures" of the invisible radiation death are achieved through a sound design (by Hildur Guðnadóttir) that remixes Geiger counters; the scenes of the contaminated urban spaces and forests are based on iconographic sources from photo reports at the disaster site (by Igor Kostin or by Robert Polidori); characters and narrative situations (e.g., the death of the young firefighter) are created using investigative literature (by Svetlana Aleksievič 2005) of interviews with survivors and their families as source texts. After the fictional finale, Chernobyl opens to a long documentary sequence with photos and archive footage that is a political commentary on the nuclear disaster and its management. It is an intermedial extension and a cinematic and meta-discursive sequence, that strengthens the credibility of the TV series production and of the artistic operation, building an ethical relationship with the viewer
Introduction. Cultural Memory and the Transmedia Semiosphere
No full textThe miniseries Chernobyl (HBO-SKY, 2019), about the nuclear disaster that occurred at the nuclear power plant of the same name in 1986, took the viewer back to the horror generated by the largest catastrophe in history caused by the human species to date. Created and written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck, Chernobyl is a fictionalized account of the causes and consequences of the catastrophe. TV seriality, as Chernobyl teaches us, thrives on the intermedial and transmedia relations that are created through the paratexts, the commentaries, the reinterpretations and interpretations that circulate on the web, in the transmedia storytelling of the Western semiosphere (to limit ourselves to this part of the world).
We could argue in terms of a broad and dynamic, extended and time-varying “media ecosystem” (Innocenti, Pescatore and Rosati 2015): a universe containing texts and paratexts, fictional and nonfictional, and media products of different types, from the critical to the more ludic. Concerning the Chernobyl miniseries, one should consider not only promotional, paratextual, and commentary texts but every fictional or non-fictional media product, for example, all films dedicated to the Chernobyl tragedy and documentary media products, journalistic reportage, and so on. Speaking of documentary media products related to the Chernobyl disaster, an ecosystem should include, for example, direct visual and audiovisual sources such as photographs or film footage from the time of the disaster or other footage, including television reportage shows and later interviews with direct witnesses, journalistic or investigative literature, or indirect sources such as later scientific articles and historical or more popular books.
A miniseries like Chernobyl also teaches us something about the “forms of cultural memory” (Assmann 2011 [1999]), involving the relationship between “storage memory” and “functional memory.
Longitudinal imaging studies in schizophrenia: the relationship between brain morphology and outcome measures.
No full textImaging studies have tried to identify morphological outcome measures of schizophrenia in the last two decades. In particular, longitudinal studies have reported a correlation between larger ventricles, decreased prefrontal volumes and worse outcome. This would potentially allow to isolate subtypes of schizophrenia patients with a worse prognosis and more evident biological impairments, ultimately helping in designing specific rehabilitation interventions
Parody, pastiche, and remix in film and TV series
No full textIn the first part we will focus on the intersemiotic and intermedia relations analyzing some cases of Italian and North American movies and their parodic remakes, considering the genettian differences between “imitation” and “transformation” (Genette 1982). We will claim for a graduality between the “pastiche” considered as a playful rewriting of the style (Fabbri 2020), the “parody” considered as a rewriting of the style with a sort of degradation of the subject and the “travestissment” (Genette 1982). In the second part we will focus on the differences among textual modes like the “satiric”, “ludic” and “serious” ones (Genette 1982) and we will open to transmedia relations of interpretation (Eco 2000; Jenkins 2006) and translation (Saldre, Torop 2012; Dusi 2019). In this part we will analyze some cases of Italian and North American TV series that have engaged web prosumers and fandom through the production of various kinds of parodic remixes and webseries
Seraching for psychosocial endophenotypes in schizophrenia: the innovative role of brain imaging
No full textSchizophrenia is a disease with heterogeneous features and often a disabling longitudinal outcome. In order to achieve a better understanding of the disease, a detailed characterization and definition of symptomatology, social functioning and cognitive performance of patients is required. Imaging techniques may allow to identify measurable markers of different subgroups of patients, who share common clinical course and, probably, a similar hereditary pathway. The review offers a description of cross-sectional, predictive and longitudinal studies on the relationship between biological, clinical and psychosocial features of patients with schizophrenia. Patients with a more severe and disabling course of illness present larger ventricles, smaller prefrontal, temporal and occipital cortices and smaller subcortical regions such as basal ganglia, the thalamus and limbic areas. These alterations are predictive of a worse prognosis, as observed in predictive and longitudinal studies, both on chronic and first episode patients. The detection of more homogenous groups of patients with schizophrenia will help neurobiological research progress in this field. Furthermore, patients with similar clinical and biological features could undergo more tailored therapeutic and rehabilitative strategies
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
- …
