A media-anthropological glance at audiovisual media in today's digital age

Abstract

A media-anthropological perspective must be able to establish a social and cultural analysis of the interactions between media and audiences, but, at the same time, it must frame the social quality of the media (in particular, the audiovisual media) in an extremely convincing way, from a theoretical point of view, and in a precise way, from an empirical point of view. This quality must be captured and situated in the long-time span (between the end of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 21st century) in which the media have significantly changed the forms of social life, marking various characteristic features of the modern, post-modern and, also, the current digital era.

This text, elaborated as a legacy to the scientific community by the internationally renowned Professor Frezza, provides the contours of a theoretical perspective aimed at understanding the cultural sociality of the media and, at the same time, at providing a coherent explanation of how this, over time, has reached its current stage. Accordingly, it also provides an analysis of the new status of digital media, synchronous with how the changes are taking place, while stressing that such an analysis cannot be separated from the processes and directions that have prepared and predisposed it. This text also argues for the need to clarify the role that the media have played in shaping the shared imaginary in the different epochs in which media, consumption and prefigurations of lived time account for social identities and the demand for the future.