Immaginari in trasformazione tra memorie, narrazioni e piattaforme = Transforming imaginaries between memories, narratives and platforms

Abstract

The paper aims to reflect on the crisis of the capacity of media and cultural industries to participate in the construction of a shared memory, which is constituted as the basis of a collective imaginary capable of activating a common cultural identity. The reflection starts from the observation that the radical evolutions of an increasingly hybrid media system, in the direction of convergence, transmedia and platformization, have contributed to erode, to the point of erasing in some traits, the construction of a shared imaginary that can act as a bridge not only between individuals and communities belonging to different generational intervals, but also to those belonging to the same generation. Starting from Alberto Abruzzese's reflection on the relationship between art, society and the cultural industry in the light of the evolution of technology, the paper aims to analyse the impact of the evolution of media and the crisis of educational agencies on the ability to activate cultural innovations, merely representing them. The paper then proposes the results of the first phases of a research aimed at understanding the approach of new generations to cultural consumption from the perspectives of access to and selection of media content; practices of sharing, enjoyment and participation with respect to such content; and finally knowledge and consumption/non-consumption. As a result, a model of approaching cultural objects, products and consumption seems to be taking shape that is increasingly disconnected from the roots of narratives and, as a paradoxical consequence, increasingly linked to their representations, deprived of meaning. A mass imaginary that evolves in a mass of imaginaries, linked together in a "long tail" of volatile consumption, which makes it improbable to reaffirm a shared memory that can give rise to a shared imagination capable of delineating a new model of intellectual and social formation.