Federico Montanari

The First World War, even on the occasion of its centenary, has always been the subject of reflection regarding the memoirs, diaries, literature and cinema. That event, as repeatedly pointed out, represented a starting point (of the "Short Century") in breaking the timing of modernity, of disillusionment (narrated and renarrated) for that generation, and, at the same time, subject for myths (fascism and the myth of the trenches) or removal and opposition (for next generation, the generation of resistance). First World War has been a social laboratory, for science, mentality and culture (cf., "Il laboratorio della guerra", to quote Gibelli, Fussell, Leed), about literacy innovation, diaries and perception (from Celine to Cendrars, to Musil), with the link between art, technology and war. The purpose of this paper is, taking account of that vast horizon of experiences, to work on a specific case: the hypothesis of the link between war / and possible revoution, as proposed by Curzio Malaparte in his Viva Caporetto! The revolt of the damned saints. Working on the complex and contradictory path of Malaparte (participation to fascism until its criticism and rejection, because of his anarchist vision), and the approaching to the communist party and leftist ideas after the second world war. In any case, I will try to show how discursive devices, values  and metaphors work in the text of Malaparte. This text is also interesting for a comparison with other texts and authors: both in terms of thematic organizations, of point of views, in the forms of utterance; as well as organizations narrative, exposing not only the story of the defeat of Caporetto, but, more generally, the "time when men decide to stop fighting" and, perhaps, to transform this moment into something else.

Il saggio, all'interno del volume "info cult" pubblicato da FrancoAngeli, a cura di Mazzoli e Zanchini, 2014, si propone a partire da una serie di interviste qualitative ad una trentina di utenti di social media e del web, e a partire da alcune ipotesi proposte dalla letteratura in materia, di analizzare gli stili e le pratiche degli utenti, oggi co-distributori di informazione, nel loro cercare e, appunto, ridistribuire informazioni riguardo soprattutto la cultura e gli eventi culturali. A partire da questa analisi ci si propone poi di elaborare alcune ipotesi di "tipi sociali" di uilizzatori e fruitori/produttori di informazione.

Digital media, attitudes and opinions of Italians on a changing
news media system.
Based on telephone interviews with a representative sample of the Italian adult population (18 +), the survey NEWS-ITALY has investigated – since 2011 – the views and preferences of Italian news consumers. The article presents the results of a research that, drawing on the data of NEWS-ITALY 2014 survey (N = 1,013), has focused on the relationship between different ways of consuming news in digital format and the opinions and attitudes of respondents regarding their search and consumption of information. More specifically, through a comparison between different regression models, we were able to assess the role played by the use of internet, smartphone/tablet and social networking sites for getting information, in influencing Italians’ opinions regarding their experience with news. The analysis shows a significant effect of the use of the internet for getting news on respondents’ opinions regarding their experience of information overload, their encounter with news as a result of relatives and friends’ suggestions and their preference for getting news form sources contradicting their own opinions and views.

Keywords: news, internet, information overload, mobile, sns

The aim of this article is to compare the concept of Immanence, or rather, the definition of “plane of Immanence” as described and invented by Deleuze (and Deleuze & Guattari) with the concept of Individuation (in Simondon, but also within a long philosophical tradition from medieval philosophy to Leibniz, as discussed also by Deleuze, as it is well known).

The purpose of this paper is to sketch some cultural definitions of "contagion", starting from sociology, anthropology and cognitive science, and proposing a reading of this concept from semiotic and socio-semiotic point of view: thinking contagion as a semantic and discursive configuration. Is this category useful today for explaining the diffusive capacity of some social phenomena?

The aim of this paper is to indicate some basic elements concerning recent forms of war and terrorism (just before the ISIS emergence). It deals not only with asymmetric characters but also with new forms of symmetry in space and time, and other sociosemiotic elements such as its discursive and narrative deployment.

This papers is about the link between a semiotic theory of translation and the definition of metaphor. There is a long tradition in theory of metaphor (concerning also the use of metaphor in scientific language). Is a definition of translation useful for approaching cognitive and semiotic mechanism inside mataphor?

This paper is about a comparative semiotic analysis of the design (also with some quotations to Latour perspective) of old, archaeological mobile phones, before the smartphones era, but anticipating it. What values, shapes, narratives are involved in those technological objects?

With this paper I try to explore possible links between the definition of "new" forms of war and semiotic-narrative structures and organizations in our cultures. And, more specifically, this link seems to have to do with the re-shaping of post-conflict situations.

This paper would like to explore the return of a new “culturalist approach” to language, particularly in relation to visual representation and the spatial dimension. First, we will present the concepts of vision and space as recently described by cognitive linguistics (eg Lakoff, Johnson, with the idea of “embodiment”, or Talmy). Secondly, we will investigate the links between this cognitive linguistic trend and the “culturalist” point of view, especially in its recent versions (for example, Palmer). Comparisons have been proposed with some models that come from the neuro-mathematics of perception and visual cognition (these investigations are linked to a return to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology; an influence that is also relevant inside cognitive linguistics). Finally we will try to highlight some possible convergence points of these studies.

The objective of this article is to outline some conceptual links between the post-structuralism ("radical" structuralism or dynamical structuralism) with philosophers such as Deleuze, Guattari but also
Foucault, and semiotic research. Certainly this theme is not new, well known and analysed. Our aim, however, is to work on certain concepts that seem to bounce between philosophical theory and semiotic analysis. In direction of a possible revision of structuralism, we would like to look at the critical, radical and sometimes "heretical" reinterpretation of the concept of immanence. This concept is closely linked, especially in Deleuze, to the concept of "expression": from Spinoza's political-philosophical theory all the way to Hjelmslev. We would like to show how this philosophical research could be further utilized as an innovative push for semiotics. We would also like to emphasize the fact that this theory has produced (and still could produce) a semio-critical approach, particularly, and possibily, for socio-semiotics and semiotics of cultures.

The aim of this article is to discuss the question of conflict and
war from a semio-cultural point of view. Starting from a tentative
definition of war and conflict as the“borders” of a culture (even
if in a paradoxical way), I shall discuss the specific links between
war, conflict and narrative models. Secondly, the paper discusses
diverse positions on the “polemogenic” mechanisms operating
within cultures, along with their conflictual processes, such as the
escalades. Starting from the work of Lotman, and intertwining
his thought with concepts deriving from social systems theories,
I shall discuss some hypothesis about “symmetry” and “asymmetry”
inside cultures, and related questions concerning the growing
of conflictual identities as perceived by the involved actors. This
last point is tackled through case-studies from recent wars (such
as civil and ethnic wars in former Yugoslavia) and the examination
of their discursive devices.

In recent decades there has been a new wave of studies in sociology and anthropology of economy and markets. The Actor Network Theory (ANT) is one of the primary new approaches. The intention of this paper is to review some of the main aspects of this line of research. In addition we wish to highlight links between ANT and semiotics, stressing the role played by semiotics in the development of ANT, as well as indicating new developments. We will examine these developments particularly in relation to economy and markets studies regarding financial markets.

This contributed volume aims to reconsider the concept of individuation, clarifying its articulation with respect to contemporary problems in perceptual, neural, developmental, semiotic and social morphogenesis. The authors approach the ontogenetical issue by taking into account the morphogenetic process, involving the concept of individuation proposed by Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze. The target audience primarily comprises experts in the field but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students. The challenge of the genesis and constitution of “units” has always been at the center of philosophical and scientific research. This ontogenetical issue is common to every discipline but it is articulated in different ways: in phenomenology of perception the constitution of perceptual units is at the base of gestalt field theories, in theoretical neuroscience synchronized neural assemblies are considered as correlates of conscious processes, in developmental embryogenesis the constitution of organs is the principle outcome of morphodynamic evolution while in social morphogenesis the constitution of coherent units is common to segmentary, gerarchic and functional differentiation.