Audiovisivi e Social Networks: il testo e i modi dell'esperienza 2007-2010

The doctoral research project "Audiovisuals and Social Networks: Text and Experiences 2007-2010" is mainly based on the analysis of the international audiovisuals landscape and of the promotional strategies of these products in Social Networks environment. The aim is to understand what kind of changes we can find about the concept of "text", users and marketing. The thesis is focused not just on Social Network marketing but also on new media development, such as Social TV and mobile.

Reti socievoli: l’impatto dei social networks nella costruzione dello spazio pubblico

La tesi si è consolidata nell’analisi dell’impatto dei social networks nella costruzione dello spazio pubblico, nella sfera di osservazione che è la rete e il web2.0. Osservando che il paradigma della società civile si sia modificato. Ridefinendo immagini e immaginari e forme di autorappresentazione sui new media (Castells, 2010). Nel presupposto che lo spazio pubblico “non è mai una realtà precostituita” (Innerarity, 2008) ma si muove all’interno di reti che generano e garantiscono socievolezza. Nell’obiettivo di capire cosa è spazio pubblico. Civic engagement che si rafforza in spazi simbolici (Sassen, 2008), nodi d’incontro significativi. Ivi cittadini-consumatori avanzano corresponsabilmente le proprie istanze per la debacle nei governi.. Cultura partecipativa che prende mossa da un nuovo senso civico mediato che si esprime nelle “virtù” del consumo critico. Portando la politica sul mercato. Cultura civica autoattualizzata alla ricerca di soluzioni alle crisi degli ultimi anni. Potere di una comunicazione che riduce il mondo ad un “villaggio globale” e mettono in relazione i pubblici connessi in spazi e tempi differenti, dando origine ad azioni collettive come nel caso degli Indignados, di Occupy Wall Street o di Rai per una notte. Emerge un (ri)pensare la citizenship secondo due paradigmi (Bennett,2008): l’uno orientato al governo attraverso i partiti, modello “Dutiful Citizenship”; l’altro, modello “Self Actualizing Citizenship” per cui i pubblici attivi seguono news ed eventi, percepiscono un minor obbligo nel governo, il voto è meno significativo per (s)fiducia nei media e nei politici. Mercato e società civile si muovono per il bene comune e una nuova “felicità”. La partecipazione si costituisce in consumerismo politico all’interno di reti in cui si sviluppano azioni individuali attraverso il social networking e scelte di consumo responsabile. Partendo dall’etnografia digitale, si è definito il modello “4 C”: Conoscenza > Coadesione > Co-partecipazione > Corresposabilità (azioni collettive) > Cultura-bility.

Networking: the "making of" social networks. A closer look at the process and antecedents of some resourcing-oriented behaviors in organizations.

Social networks are one of the “hot” themes in people’s life and contemporary social research. Considering our “embeddedness” in a thick web of social relations is a study perspective that could unveil a number of explanations of how people may manage their personal and social resources. Looking at people’s behaviors of building and managing their social networks, seems to be an effective way to find some possible rationalization about how to help people getting the best from their resources . The main aim of this dissertation is to give a closer look at the role of networking behaviors. Antecedents, motivations, different steps and measures about networking behaviors and outcomes are analyzed and discussed. Results seem to confirm, in a different setting and time perspective, that networking behaviors include different types and goals that change over time. Effects of networking behaviors seem to find empirical confirmation through social network analysis methods. Both personality and situational self-efficacy seem to predict networking behaviors. Different types of motivational drivers seem to be related to diverse networking behaviors.

Essays on social networks, altruism and information diffusion

This dissertation consists of three standalone articles that contribute to the economics literature concerning technology adoption, information diffusion, and network economics in one way or another, using a couple of primary data sources from Ethiopia. The first empirical paper identifies the main behavioral factors affecting the adoption of brand new (radical) and upgraded (incremental) bioenergy innovations in Ethiopia. The results highlight the importance of targeting different instruments to increase the adoption rate of the two types of innovations. The second and the third empirical papers of this thesis, use primary data collected from 3,693 high school students in Ethiopia, and shed light on how we should select informants to effectively and equitably disseminate new information, mainly concerning environmental issues. There are different well-recognized standard centrality measures that are used to select informants. These standard centrality measures, however, are based on the network topology---shaped only by the number of connections---and fail to incorporate the intrinsic motivations of the informants. This thesis introduces an augmented centrality measure (ACM) by modifying the eigenvector centrality measure through weighting the adjacency matrix with the altruism levels of connected nodes. The results from the two papers suggest that targeting informants based on network position and behavioral attributes ensures more effective and equitable (gender perspective) transmission of information in social networks than selecting informants on network centrality measures alone. Notably, when the information is concerned with environmental issues.

Peer and group relationships in preschoolers: the role of social and linguistic skills

Being able to positively interact and build relationships with playmates in preschool years is crucial to achieve positive adjustment. An update review and two studies on such topics were provided. Study 1 is observational; it investigates the type of social experience in groups (N = 443) of children (N = 120) at preschool age in child-led vs. teacher-led contexts. The results revealed that in child-led contexts children were more likely to be alone, in dyads, and in small peer groups; groups were mostly characterized by same-gender playmates who engaged in joint interactions, with few social interactions with teachers. In teacher-led contexts, on the other hand, children were more likely to be involved in small, medium and large groups; groups were mostly characterized by other-gender playmates, involved in parallel interactions, with teachers playing a more active role. The purpose of Study 2 was to describe the development of socio-emotional competence, temperamental traits and linguistic skill. It examined the role of children’s reciprocated nominations (=RNs) with peers, assessed via sociometric interview, in relation to socio-emotional competence, temperamental traits and linguistic skill. Finally, the similarity-homophily tendency was investigated. Socio-emotional competence and temperamental traits were assessed via teacher ratings, linguistic skill via test administration. Eighty-four preschool children (M age = 62.53) were recruited within 4 preschool settings. Those children were quite representative of preschool population. The results revealed that children with higher RNs showed higher social competence (tendency), social orientation, positive emotionality, motor activity and linguistic skill. They exhibited lower anxiety-withdrawal. The results also showed that children prefer playmates with similar features: social competence, anger-aggression (tendency), social orientation, positive emotionality, inhibition to innovation, attention, motor activity (tendency) and linguistic skill. Implications for future research were suggested.

Multidimensional analysis of complex networks

Complex Networks analysis turn out to be a very promising field of research, testified by many research projects and works that span different fields. Those analysis have been usually focused on characterize a single aspect of the system and a study that considers many informative axes along with a network evolve is lacking. We propose a new multidimensional analysis that is able to inspect networks in the two most important dimensions, space and time. To achieve this goal, we studied them singularly and investigated how the variation of the constituting parameters drives changes to the network as a whole. By focusing on space dimension, we characterized spatial alteration in terms of abstraction levels. We proposed a novel algorithm that, by applying a fuzziness function, can reconstruct networks under different level of details. We verified that statistical indicators depend strongly on the granularity with which a system is described and on the class of networks. We keep fixed the space axes and we isolated the dynamics behind networks evolution process. We detected new instincts that trigger social networks utilization and spread the adoption of novel communities. We formalized this enhanced social network evolution by adopting special nodes (called sirens) that, thanks to their ability to attract new links, were able to construct efficient connection patterns. We simulated the dynamics of the system by considering three well-known growth models. Applying this framework to real and synthetic networks, we showed that the sirens, even when used for a limited time span, effectively shrink the time needed to get a network in mature state. In order to provide a concrete context of our findings, we formalized the cost of setting up such enhancement and provided the best combinations of system's parameters, such as number of sirens, time span of utilization and attractiveness.

Normalizzazione del bordello senza muri. L'oscenità virale tra arte, moda e social network

Il progetto di tesi nasce dalla volontà di far luce sul rapporto tra il medium fotografico e la nozione di nuova oscenità, teorizzata e disseminata nei suoi scritti da Jean Baudrillard. Nozione che – se intesa nell’accezione proposta dal filosofo francese, ovvero l’oscenità del visibile, del troppo visibile, del più visibile del visibile – ben si adatta a dettagliare i concetti di trasparenza e di visibilità peculiari della società attuale, costantemente impegnata nel mettere a nudo se stessa attraverso i social media in nome della cosiddetta ideologia della post-privacy. Incoraggiando una continua violazione della sfera del segreto, tale ideologia favorirebbe, infatti, la progressiva diminuzione dello scarto tra ciò che può essere reso di dominio pubblico e ciò che invece, tradizionalmente, sarebbe dovuto appartenere all’ambito del privato. Un andamento generale della cultura, quello appena delineato, che si è imposto capillarmente a cavallo di millennio, accelerato dalla nascita del World Wide Web, del quale la fotografia riesce a farsi promotrice oltre che sommo interprete, contribuendo – anche in virtù di un’innovata condizione tecnologica– al compimento della visibilità e della trasparenza totale. Nel corso della trattazione, la nozione “aggiornata” di osceno sarà, dunque, assurta a strumento euristico utile a tracciare gli svolgimenti paralleli della pratica fotografica nei campi delle arti visive, della moda e dei social media, in un arco temporale che va dall’inizio degli anni Novanta a oggi. Uno strumento attraverso cui connettere autori di riferimento, rileggerne alcuni e candidarne di nuovi tra quanti, allargando il “campo del fotografabile” teorizzato da Pierre Bourdieu, profanano la soglia del privato e portano alla ribalta i risvolti banali e ordinari della quotidianità, fino a quelli intimi, tragici, inquietanti, perturbanti o addirittura nefandi, favorendo così la concretizzazione di quel “bordello senza muri” che secondo Marshall McLuhan è il mondo nell’età fotografica.