In the first part of the course, classic theoretical approaches will be analyzed, with particular reference to the mainstream capacity to weaken or strengthen the perception of public safety. The sociology of media will be connected to the theory of communication action, aimed at investigating the interactional practices of everyday life. The aim is to stimulate and share a culture of comprehension influencing communicative strategies of complex society. In this sense, the process of individualization marking digital modernity highlights the lack of attractiveness of traditional symbolic universes: this scenario can be described by the overlapping of national situations and community institutions, without neglecting the management of public safety/insecurity.
The second part of the course focuses on the new digital devices for reading. The diffusion of e-books leads us to understand how reading techniques change in the era of social networks and in absentia interactions. Narrative acts have become more and more innovative and, sometimes, indecipherable, also because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The book can be considered as a repository and arsenal of words, capable of generating patterns of specialized forms of knowledge. In this account, books can be analyzed as simulacra of ancient and future civilizations, as they are framed within shared environments that connected society can neither remove nor set aside. Books do not give way to e-books, whose diffusion – especially in Italy – is still low but increasing. The data processed by the Italian institute of statistics (Istat), the Center for books and reading (Cepell) and the Italian Association of publishers (Aie) show a surprising trend from many point of view which emphasize a growing interaction between paper and digital supports. Readers still prefer paper books. This evidence enables us to investigate the phenomenon of reading from an interpretative perspective intermingling empirical and theoretical research, thus providing evidence on the functional innovations imposed by lockdowns and domestic confinement.