Landscapes of Immorality: Scandals in the Italian Press (1998 – 2006)

Abstract

Italian politicians are growing ever less popular with the public. Mistrust of government, the political system and public services is growing, as is hostility towards the ‘political class’ – seen as a ‘caste’ that is barricading itself in its ‘ivory tower’ and strenuously defending its privileges. Once again, then, the risk is growing that we shall witness the onset of a new cycle of the kinds of anti-political sentiments that manifested themselves at the time of Tangentopoli (Bribesville). But how do people construct their negative perceptions of politics, politicians and public administrators? It is clear that there is a close link between these perceptions, on the one hand, and media representations, on the other. So this paper analyses the image of politics and politicians in the Italian press: In particular, this is a study of the coverage of scandals from a medium- to long-term sociological perspective. The final aim of the author is to reconstruct the ‘landscape of immorality’ of Italian politics. The following aspects have been considered: The frequency of scandal events in the weekly press; the cyclical nature of the coverage of scandals in daily and weekly papers; the ‘fields’ of the most significant scandals; the kinds of deviant behaviour that underlie scandals in the ‘political field’.

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