The research path I am presenting here focuses on an analysis of the imagery of the Performance Society. This phrase is to be meant as the overall (re)-configuration of contemporary society. A new form of reality, in which the relationship between the individual and society is (re)-thought in market terms, according to a corporate management approach. A generative form of a new anthropology and of a new idea of subjectivity, of type. In this essay, the subject is investigated resorting to a phenomenological point of view; hence highlighting as having to be performative is, first and foremost, a norm (and a set of typified meanings) increasingly taken for granted by millions of individuals in the world. In this study, I have analysed some of the most relevant international publications focusing on self-management, namely that set of widely spread formulae which address the need for constant improvement that social actors experience in their daily performance. Moving from this analysis, I have tried to understand how the concept of subject is meant and represented, hereby contributing to produce – in the global imagery – more and more typical forms of subjectivity.

The prominent role played by algorithmic platforms in people’s everyday lives has in recent years triggered a growing interest towards algorithmic imaginaries, intended as worlds of experience users make of the algorithmic media, thereby building up their own awareness of the platform and in turn moulding the algorithm itself through their performativity. Today, part of the construction of individual cultures takes place on streaming platforms, media environments where subjects access cultural materials and cultural exchanges occur. Platforms, such as Netflix or Spotify, have become privileged sites for studying the platformization of cultural production and the construction of algorithmic imaginaries by users and developers. Despite this, to date little has been discussed about cultural creators’ algorithmic imaginaries. This paper intends to discuss how to include algorithmic imaginaries in research regarding platforms and cultural production, by focusing on the case of music platforms. Specifically, the main goal of this contribution is to address the following issues in the light of existing literature: i) The role of algorithms as cultural gatekeepers and how they may affect the creative disposition of music producers, as well as their strategies to relate with the broader environment of cultural production and consumption. ii) The optimization of culture, i.e., how cultural producers may attempt to create platform-optimized products adapting their creative efforts to platforms’ affordances, thus fostering processes of product homogenization. Finally, suggestions will be made for future investigations regarding how all the actors in the music industry relate to streaming platforms

This article intends to examine, in a documented and systematized way, the main contributions of scholars of the imaginary to research in journalism in Brazil, since the mid-1990s. It begins by presenting the idea of Juremir Machado da Silva (journalism as an operation of information and mythologization), followed by Vera Franca (journalism as a form of sociability), both postgraduates under Michel Maffesoli's guidance, in France. Then, the theses of Gislene Silva (journalism as a mythic-symbolic manifestation) and Ana Tais Barros (journalism as a potential generator of myths) are discussed, authors also affiliated with the French tradition initiated by Gilbert Durand, in the 1960s. The investigation seeks to examine the specific findings of each research, while promoting comparison between them, in order to highlight both the similarities and the differences in the way of viewing the news media. The strongest conclusion is that, despite the theoretical repertoire shared by Brazilian academics in the area — notably around the anthropological theory of the imaginary and the sociology of everyday life — their journalistic analyzes show conflicting results on the phenomenon in contemporary times.

Digital comics that try to maximize the affordances of their medium seem to be condemned to in-betweenness: their strength (leveraging on unusual narrative potentials) often becomes their limit, and authors are hardly able to free themselves from the role of niche experimenters and open up to audience participation. A significant exception, however, is Homestuck, a gigantic webcomic by Andrew Hussie. Strongly connected to videogame culture and the very nature of the internet, Homestuck features animations, sounds, embedded flash games, and so on. The webcomic resulted in various transmedial branches (a videogame spin-off and several friendsims, a multi-volume soundtrack, a book epilogue) and an ongoing intermedial adaptation in book format. It has equally managed, over the years, to consolidate an extremely lively community active both in its interactions with the author (with a constant exchange of ideas and an endless readiness to subsidize his projects), in its interpretation of the canon production, and in providing an amazing extent of fan production. This contribution aims to analyze Homestuck as a possible mediation between the two inclinations (experimental and participated) of digital comics.

This article aims to investigate how advertising in Italy and in children's comics has evolved. In postmodern times when goods have become messages (Klein, 2001), comics' characters are progressively morphing into products. The intensification of the relationship between cultural and economic production (Jameson, 1998) led to different outcomes. On the part of the industry, similar appropriations – although they may seem either innovative or antiquated operations - testify to the persistent idea of a deep-rooted link between childhood and the medium itself (one of the childhood geographies studied by Ahmed 2020). These appropriations also show a relationship that has been established in comics since its origins: the bond between children and consumption in the comics published in Corriere dei Piccoli. This paper discusses the survival of paper comics for educational purposes as well as its strategies to retain the reader (International Kids). These are contrasted with pure entertainment comics which present various hybrid forms on social media such as Instagram and TikTok. Finally, the boundaries between the cartoonist- marketeer and international companies that create or deny the use of testimonials in advertising are also changing. The hybrid forms of comics activate the multimedia skills of the child consumer.

Modern Chinese Comics, between center and periphery. Until the XIX century, China considered itself as the center of the world, the “Middle Kingdom”(Zhongguo 中国). However, due to intensifying and unavoidable exchanges with Western powers, the Middle Kingdom had to reconsider its cultural stance, having been confined the peripheries of the modern world. In this scenario, China developed both the lianhuanhua, its traditional form of graphic narrative, and the manhua, a new hybrid text with Western characteristics. The notions of “center” and “periphery” and their supposed dialectical relationship, as well as the definition(s) of comics, inform the selection of authors, works and events in the present essay. The main body of the article synthetically retraces the history of Chinese comics from its origins in the late XIX century to nowadays, according to a twofold perspective. While considering continuities and peculiarities of the intertextual dialogue between comics, novels and Opera, the study also underlines the significance of the West, Soviet Russia and Japan, as a positive or negative, explicit or implicit models. In conclusion, it offers an overview on the most recent phenomena in a long-term scenario.

The Debord’s Society of the Spectacle: towards the Integrated Spectacle. Published in 1967, the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord continues to be a very important tool to observe our reality. Starting from the analysis of commodity fetishism in Marx, which Debord draws on, and the vision of Benjamin about the fundamental role of the magic aspects of the commodity, the paper wondering how human life is changing when, according to Debord, commodity completely involves the social life. By analyzing the various socio-historical phases in which goods have been turned into a spectacle (from les passages to the World Expositions), adopting the principle of visibility – produced by the culture of bourgeois democracy – we reach the current situation, characterized by rhythms and stimuli that saturate the communicative and social spaces. Nowadays, a relationship of mutual complementarity is established between flow of communication and spectacle. It can be said that the “Integrated Spectacle”, mentioned by Debord in the “Comments on the society of the Spectacle” (1988) has come true: a model dominated by representations in which the spectacle is totally merged with the social culture, and the experience of reality is filtered by media. In order to emerge from the communication flow of contemporary society, spectacular events of great impact are increasingly necessary. In the era of the “attention economy”, where the scarce resource is the attention ability of consumers, daily bombed by myriads of stimuli and information, spectacle seems to be the predominantly model even used.

Mujica as an Icon. Jose “Pepe” Mujica established in Uruguay, between 2010 and 2015, a political era of long and complicated maturation, giving this small country of three million inhabitants an unprecedented international projection and, at the same time, becoming himself a symbol. Being a philosophical and a mediatic figure also, this peculiar and extremely paradoxical character has just concluded a government in which he seemed to have fulfilled his own destiny, and at the same time that of the whole Nation. Controversial both in his political measures and in his private way of life, “Pepe”, as his fellows call him, has combined in his unusual person the reality of the countrymen, so typical of our emergent continent, and an exercise of citizenship which we will probably not be able to find again easily. In the following article we intend to offer a critical review of his life and deeds, with the intention of understanding the reasons that turned him into the contemporary icon he has become.