92 research outputs found
Coping with Iberian monopolies: Genoese trade networks and formal institutions in Spain and Portugal during the second half of the eighteenth century
No full textThis article explores Genoese trade interests in Cadiz and Lisbon, the two capitals of Iberian colonial trade at the end of the early-modern period. The author aims to explain the persisting intermediary role of a merchant community that has been largely overlooked by historians. The structure of the trade networks established in the two cities will be reconstructed by using the primary sources conserved in the archive of the Durazzos, a powerful aristocratic family of the Republic which has left a unique collection of private correspondence. This sizeable and largely unexplored documentation illuminates the different strategies used to access the Spanish and Portuguese monopolistic systems, the main actors who traded in both contexts, their relations with the local elite, and the nature of the business networks linking Genoese investors in the mother city with the expatriated agents. The author concludes with a comparative analysis of the institutional resources that Genoese used to maintain their interests, with particular attention paid to the religious institutions established by the 'nation' in the two port cities
Dal collasso dei contesti alle Trash Star: la serializzazione nella costruzione degli idoli ridicoli di YouTube Italia
No full textThe article explores the relationships between seriality and the ways in which YouTube contents are constructed and consumed, focusing in particular on how even the most trivial, ridiculous or “trash” part of the platform’s culture is influenced by the serial format. More specifically, the essay will examine the current trend of YouTube’s “Trash Star”, namely ordinary people who become famous online because of their being ridiculed by networked publics. This phenomenon will be analyzed along three main directions. In the first place, it will be noted a passage, in the YouTube landscape, from a kind of ridiculing based on a misalignment between performer and public, to an incremental tendency of the ridiculed to cure their performance in accordance to audiences expectations. Second, the reactions to the derisive exposure will be taken into account. Finally, the article will examine the modalities in which serialization enters into the organization of online presence, distinguishing between auto-serialization – when the YouTuber produces himself as a series to manage his presentation – hetero-serialization – when users reiterate the YouTuber’s image in parodies and remixes – and meta-serialization – when the flux of events in the YouTube community is organized as a unique interconnected and serialized narrative system
Zwischen Trash und Transzendenz. Zur kollektiven Produktion von lächerlichen Stars auf You Tube
No full textSpott gehört zu den Hauptantriebskräften für die digitale Zirkulation von Inhalten. Viele virale Phänomene sind auf die kollektive Verhöhnung ‹schlechter Performances› gewöhnlicher Personen zurückzuführen. In der italienischen YouTube-Landschaft trugen solche Praktiken ‹vernetzten Spotts› zum Aufstieg sogenannter trash stars bei, spezifischen Micro-Celebrities, die gleichzeitig als bizarre Freaks, lächerliche Narren und ehrwürdige Ikonen angesehen werden. Der Beitrag analysiert dieses Phänomen auf der Basis einer zweijährigen Digitalethnografie in der italienischen YouTube-Community. Gefragt wird nach der eigentümlichen Überkreuzung von Erhöhung und Verwerfung und nach den Prozessen, mittels derer vernetzte Öffentlichkeiten an der Konstruktion dieser Persönlichkeiten teilhaben
Recensioni - Whitney Phillips (2015), This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationships Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture, MIT Press, Cambridge.
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Where is the sacred in online celebrity? Praise, loath and physical interaction with Italian webstars
No full textThis paper aims to investigate how the online proximity between internet celebrities and their audiences is translated in physical settings, through a multi-sited ethnography that explores fan-star interaction in offline events where Italian webstars participate.Events wherefans meetcelebrities are among the most relevant mediarituals (Couldry,2003)where the celebrity status is reproduced, particularly through the definition of specificrules of interaction that mark the exceptionality of the famous person. However, in the social media landscape, the interaction with celebrities –especially with internet born stars –shifts from being relegated to rarity or para-sociality, to bea more frequent possibility of multisocial interaction (Hills,2015).This increased potential for interaction doesn’t necessarily correspond to an undermining of the symbolic distance between audiences and highly visible people. In the case of Italian webstars, for example, such passage from scarcity to abundance of presence have produced two very different scenarios: on the one hand we have socialmedia stars that cultivate a deep intimacy with their fans, and are therefore requested to perform friendship, closeness and equality; on the other hand we find “trash stars”, people famous because they are ridiculedor ironically praised by networked publics, who are demanded to perform a stylized “memetic” version of themselves.By examining twelveoccasions where Italian webstars participate in parties, book signing events and meet-and-greet events, this study will try to show 1) the existence of two distinct types of proximity with social media celebrities: one that is “fast”, bounded to the event and interested in preserving the idol’s exceptionality, and one that is “extended”, repeated in time and aimed at an emotional and physical intimacy, 2) how thisencounters can be regarded as instances of the “bio-economic sacred” (Mellor & Shilling,2014), which is affectively stronger in extended proximity but formally more present in fast proximity
Intimate Bridges: Towards A Participatory Model for Intercultural Dialogue Through Performing Arts - Monitoring the Project
No full textCan theatre and art be tools for well-being and social develop - ment? Can they help us somehow to better see the problems and minorities of European and non-European society from a different perspective? What role can they play in the com - plex relationship that has developed in recent years between local citizens and migrants and refugees 1 ? How can they make it better, more sensitive, more comfortable on both sides, over - coming often harmful western logics? Can they somehow an - ticipate this relationship in a more comfortable space, that of a participatory theatre workshop? More precisely, can partici - patory theatre offer an alternative language to that of bureau - cracy, political slogans and cultural stereotypes? Can it offer a glimpse of an alternative way of life that can subsequently modify that political and cultural language? These are just some of the questions the Creative Europe pro - ject Intimate Bridges aimed to answer
Youtube Freakshow: fama e derisione nei pubblici connessi
No full textThis research aims to contribute to the study of the networked lives of individuals by investigating relationships between fame and derision in the contemporary digital culture. More specifically, it explores the ways in which affectivities and attitudes such as irony, hostility, ridicule and disgust can be involved in the circulation of online content and in the accumulation of individuals’ attention capital. The ridiculing of others is an inseparable part of human social behaviour. It is caught in the tension between the “sociopositive” function of group aggregation among those who ridicule and the “socionegative” function of exclusion for the subject being ridiculed. In the current media environment, however, we find that the subject being ridiculed may acquire a peculiar social centrality, in which it becomes one of the most frequent points of convergence of networked publics’ attention: currently, the laughing stock and the star find numerous occasions of overlap. Therefore, the research question asked is: “how do networked publics reconfigure the social space of ridicule, when the mocking act online increases the ridiculed subject's media visibility?”. The research begins thus, by considering the figure of the laughing stock within the mass media, in order to observe how this figure change in accordance to new forms of visibility and circulation typical of digital platforms, particularly of YouTube. The case study used to observe such dynamics is YouTube Italia's “Trash Stars”, ordinary people who got famous by becoming objects of mockery within networked publics. The empirical analysis draws on a digital ethnography framework to trace the uses that the publics make of these characters. To this end, the research has carried out 1) a multi-site observation, 2) a content analysis of YouTube comments, and 3) interviews with users of such contents. The purpose of this empirical intervention was to investigate three main dimensions: the construction aspect – “how do networked publics represent the ridiculed subject?” - the fruition aspect – “what kind of pleasure do they derive from scorned subjects?” - and the relationship aspect – “what kind of relationships are established around the object of ridicule?”. In conclusion, it will be argued that the cases studied show the prominence of a "centrality of the marginal" dynamic in networked society, i.e. the tendency of the digital collectives to build a common ground around objects that have little relevance for the individuals
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