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Labeling the Crisis: Left and Right Wings Discourses about the Crisis and the Role of the Mediated Public Sphere in Italy
Labeling the Crisis: Left and Right Wings Discourses about the Crisis and the Role of the Mediated Public Sphere in Italy
Wednesday, 13 July 2016: 11:15
Location: Seminarraum 5C G (Neues Institutsgebäude (NIG))
Oral Presentation
This paper discusses the economic crisis process in Italy, the left and right wings discourses about the crisis, the practices of dissent and the role of the mediatized public sphere in preventing and opposing the social consequences of the crisis. In particular this study focuses on the phenomenon of the suicides due to recession and considered as a social problem. It analyzes the left and right wings discourses on the crisis and on the economic suicides by workers, employees and entrepreneurs during the period 2008-2013 in the national press. The analysis is guided by a methodological approach based on a flexible form of Grounded Theory and the use of sensitizing concepts like anomie, désaffiliation, sense of vulnerability that stem from the seminal work of Durkheim, Boudon, Castel and others. The study identifies the dimensions of sense proposed by the left and right wings to interpret the economic suicides phenomenon, the practices of dissent of the right and left wings towards the reaction of the State to this phenomenon, and the active proposals to cope with the phenomenon in order to prevent it and to help the victims of the crisis and their relatives.
Furthermore, through the theory of the mediated public sphere, this paper discusses the importance of studying the contemporary dynamics of construction of the public discourse, and highlights the opportunities offered by the reactive public spheres in order to cope with the crisis effects, to oppose désaffiliation and to reconstruct ethic and responsibility.