Communication in Italy During the Pandemic

This chapter illustrates how, during the pandemic crisis, communication became the central element, in many ways following the course of the disease. Every media space has been inundated with information relating to the virus, while the Coronavirus itself has profoundly changed our daily life, “bypassing” all other issues within the media system. A sort of “communication chaos” developed, which highlighted the fragility of direct communication to the public and which also prevented the statements of the institutional actors from clarifying what was happening (especially in the initial spring of 2020). The consolidation of a “two-faced” form of communication, based (theoretically) on the “knowledge” of science and on the “doing” of politics, has also led to the birth of new “hybrid” strategies: on the one hand, medicine is “politicized“; on the other, politics has become “medicalized” through the use of health-related slogans. In so doing, this sort of “short circuit” has reopened the question of the role of “experts” in the communication system.