Italian Media Communication and Culture

Italian Media Communication and Culture

The country of Italy is located in South-Central Europe, where the south consists of the entire Italian Peninsula, Sicily, and Sardinia which are the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Italy has about 61 million people, and is the sixth largest country in Europe, and ranked 23rd in the world (Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions 1). With a population so large, Italy must maintain a strong communication system throughout the country; in order to understand Italian media one must understand Italian culture.

The Italian communications systems is owned by and supervised by the government, with a law providing freedom of speech and press, and the government is said to respect these rights (Media-Italy-System 1). Although, Italy enjoys a free press many of their main stream media sources that they are provided with are very opinionated and controlled by powerful families. The traditional source of information for Italy was from print media such as newspapers, magazines and journals. There are approximately 89 different daily newspapers published in Italy and only about 6 million are in circulation daily throughout Italy (www.NationMaster.com). The majority of Italian daily papers are published in Northern and Central Italy, and a considerable number of dailies are owned by the political parties, the Roman Catholic Church, and various economic groups (Media-Italy-System 1). Italian daily newspapers have five distinct characteristics that stand out when compared to other European countries first, they have historically low levels of readership; second a high proportion of Italians prefer regional over national papers; third there is a notable lack of independence of the press; fourth is the nonexistence of a popular press; and lastly the existence of a group of daily "news “papers that are devoted solely to either sports, religious news or other specialized topics (Bechtold 1).

The first characteristic is most likely the biggest problem for Italian print media, the lack of readership by Italians could be due to the fact that many of the papers are not aimed toward the reader. Many Italian daily newspapers are not made available to everyone in Italy because they are only sold through newsstands, and there is a problem with language differences; almost four fifths of the population speaks a local dialect and are not very familiar with Italian (Bechtold 1). Another problem is a high proportion of readers, especially women, felt very excluded from the main stream press this is mainly due to the fact that Italy is considered to be a masculine culture, and many of the articles found in the dailies appeal to mainly men (Hoftstede’s Cultural Dimensions 1). The fact that the majority of Italy prefers regional papers over national papers comes as no surprise when looking at their culture. Many Italian dailies are run and owned by powerful families or government