FYI, I was asked to write a short dispatch concerning media and youth in Italy. Here is a snip and link of what I wrote.
Ypulse Guest Post: A Dispatch From Rome On The State Of Italian Youth | Ypulse:
As a professor of media and communications at an American university, I teach to both semester abroad students and Italians– in English. When it comes to marketing and media, it gives me ample opportunities to compare and contrast cultural perspectives, although my small sample of Italian youth is not exactly typical since the Roman students I work with are there because they are disenchanted with their own university system.
Here is the unedited version:
Letter from Rome
Antonio Lopez
One thing that contemporary Romans can lay claim to is endurance. Thus, one piece of advice the Eternal City’s inhabitants can offer Americans regarding the coming financial storm is this: life goes on. It’s hard not to remind oneself of this prescient thought while navigating sites like the Coliseum, Forum or Piazza Venezia where Mussolini once orated. Empires have come and gone, while legacies like Renaissance art patronized by the Catholic Church compete for visuals along with contemporary advertising. A marketer in this environment can feel small.
As a professor of media and communications at an American university, I teach to both semester abroad students and Italians—in English. When it comes to marketing and media, it gives me ample opportunity to compare and contrast cultural perspectives. My small sample of Italian youth is anecdotal. The Roman students I work with are there because they are disenchanted with their university system. We take in mostly international business majors, and English being the lingua franca (even in homegrown advertising), our classes give them an edge in the global market for jobs. This is forward thinking on the students’ part, because Italy’s economy is famously stagnant and dysfunctional. Prospects for young professionals are few and far between. In the US you can change careers more easily; Italy’s trades are protected by unions (bloggers, for example, are constantly threatened with having to ìprofessionalizeî as journalists, but are not permitted to join journalist associations). Professional mobility is difficult.
US media are also more diverse. Italian youth are more dependent on TV, but choices are few: you can watch the three state-owned networks, pay high fees for Murdoch’s Sky TV, or watch Mediaset channels, the media monopoly owned by Italy’s controversial Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi (who also controls a monopoly on the country’s advertising). If there ever were a clear example of a propaganda environment, it would be Italy.
Though Italy is famous for its design and fashion—ample evidence of elegance is seen from teens to 80-year-old ladies on the bus—it also self-consciously considers itself a colony of US pop culture. A surprising number of TV shows and films are from the US (dubbed to maintain some semblance of national dignity), and the common ideal in TV ads is utopic Americana: abundantly filled big middle class homes in suburban-like communities. When polling my Italian students, none of their lives mimic that which is portrayed in the ads. It’s a strange disconnect considering that Italian culture offers many things that are surely lacking in ours. For example, despite economic uncertainty, many have strong family networks to fall back on. Indeed, these days if you are not married, you are likely to live at home, even if you are in your 30s (male and female). Italians are not as mobile as Americans, living fairly close to where they were born. They appreciate long lunches at home and with friends for late dinners. In contrast to the US, this is not a high-paced business culture. There is a more positive relationship with food, which is consistently fresh, seasonal and an important part of the social fabric. No chain-store tall cups of coffee to go here. Even Starbucks admits that Italy is off their future radar.
Oddly enough, despite monopolistic media, Italian youth are not hypermediated the way Americans are, except when it comes to cell phones. One of my favorite images of Rome is the sharply clad ragazza on her Vespa with a cell phone perfectly jammed in her helmet so she can chat while navigating and smoking simultaneously! When she disembarks, she remains impeccably dressed, with attitude to boot. Despite all the economic uncertainty, Italians remain sure of who they are. From behind bug-eyed shades, Romans are, to borrow a phrase from an ex-pat Website, eternally cool, a steady characteristic going back almost 3,000 years, and one that I assume will survive this unusual moment in history.
