RISULTATI RICERCA

La creatività fra tecnologia e management: riflessioni sul caso Pixar - A new digital language of extreme technological refinement, able to tell stories of great emotional impact, has been generated by computer animation. Pixar Animation Studios is a production company that in few years has given a considerable push to 3D animation: they use the new technologies giving always a great importance to story. Their huge success attracted more and more the attention of a world- wide colossus like the Disney, who proposed different deals for coproduction and distribution. After various events, on January 24th, 2006, the Mouse House acquired Pixar, with an operation of 7,4 billions dollars, and offered to Pixar leaders (Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) key roles in Disney company. This union can be defined a convenience wedding: in fact, Disney has incorporated a production company that during the last few years has obtained enormous hits at the box office; Pixar has guaranteed the association to one of the stronger brands and the biggest distribution forces in the world of entertainment. Pixar case history shows that the core element in the economy of the entertainment, what really makes the difference and brings to success, is the creative element: technology and management must be at its service.

"You're only as healthy as you fell". Scrittura e interstestualità in Taxi driver di Martin Scorsese - The goal of this paper is to analyse the famous Martin Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver (1975) with an interdisciplinary approach and from a double perspective: on the one hand, it examines the narrator’s forms of expression chiefly focusing on the written documents, the journal entries and the autobiographical references in the movie. I also consider the way the director uses these documents in order to trace the twisted psychology of the antihero Travis Bickle, the main character in the movie, played by Robert De Niro; on the other hand, this study investigates the film from an intertextual perspective, centering on how the filmic ‘text’ uses the many other ‘texts’ to which it constantly alludes: literary texts (among the others, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and Thomas Wolfe’s God’s Lonely Man), cinematic texts (for instance, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane and John Ford’s The Searchers), musical texts (songs by Kris Kristofferson and Jackson Browne), or, in some cases, even facts from real life (for example, the attempted assassinations of prominent politicians), not to mention the many autobiographical clues disseminated in the film by screenwriter Paul Schrader, director Martin Scorsese and even by Robert De Niro himself, through his peculiar performance. The result is a compound structured film which makes use of sophisticated narrative and expressive modes. A film not only inspired by its sources but also able, in its turn, to influence the work of other filmmakers and, paradoxically enough, even to affect real life: it’s the case of John Hinckley jr who, obsessioned by Taxi Driver, attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan in an effort to impress actress Jodie Foster, who had played the role of an underage prostitute in the film. All these aspects, together with its unquestionable technical qualities, make Taxi Driver one of the most significant films of a golden age for American filmmaking.

Dalla referenza alla relazione: analisi interlocutoria di un uso competitivo della parola scambiata - The paper begins from the consideration that the speech is a form of social action. The present study aims at showing as in all conversations is impossible to separate cognitive-representational aspects from social-relational aspects of the speech, because the relationship is very important to get into communication with people. In specific contexts, full of symbolic aspects, relational aspects are the basis of the contract communication, and represent the real ‘stake in game’. In a situation of political discussion, enlarged by the television mediation, the interaction is strategically oriented to persuasive and competitive purposed. In this study, the method of Conversations Analysis shows the most frequent strategies of the speech competitive use. In particular, the most frequent strategy consist of attacking the preparatory conditions and the sincerity conditions of speech acts accomplished by interlocutor, to attack his face and so to attack him as a person.

La comunicazione di crisi: il caso dell'influenza aviaria - This study analyses the Italian government institutional communication’s strategies to face "avian phenomenon", in order to assess the efficacy of communication by different messages with reference to the supplying subjects’ declared purposes and the target range. Four different initiatives, implemented during the period November-December 2005, were considered: an informative booklet, a placard, a spot and a press release. According to Fabris’ model (1992), the different communication strategies were analysed, by heeding the medium specificity, with reference to: content; accessibility; graphic aspect; potential impact on the target range. On the whole the strategies missed their goal. In fact, while the placard was positively assessed, the other strategies had some negative elements, that is the complex language and the low clarity of the press release and the booklet, and the too ironic content and the long duration of the spot.

Rappresentazioni, narrazioni: il cinema, la storia la psicoanalisi - The aim of this paper is to examine the relationships between representations and narratives about the past, in the fields of cinema, history and psychoanalysis. In fact, those three areas of knowledge and communication have a common issue: i.e. to make the past become a living, present experience. However, they fail this purpose because they are basically anachronistic, i.e. they lie in another place, another time from the represented facts of the past as it really was. The main exemple of this problem is the cinema’s attempt to show the world of the past by visual means. Narratives are the only issue to make the narrow sense of the past come out. Rather, it is the field of the game, where only illusion and allusion can recreate an acceptable shadow of the past. Cinema, history and psichoanalysis play their role in this never ending path.

L'immagine in medicina: problemi, risorse, prospettive a cavallo dei secoli XIX e XX - Image and medicine: an ancient problem. From monuments we can point out the presence of diseases in ancient times. We can also find texts. Medical iconography is related to art. After Galilei’s time, the image is related to instruments (and their reliability). Between XIXth and XXth century, new images appear: X-rays, cinematography are used by phisicians and artists. Nowadays we use virtual images too. Every medical records comprise images. In future we will be more and more dependent from instruments and their images. This ancient problem comes back, and we can’t ignore it.

Comprendere informazioni complesse con i multimedia. Quando l'immagine è a pop-up - We examined the consequences of a visualization pattern often chosen by web sites which show textual information within the web pages and the related iconic information within pop-up windows. The information visualization in pop-up windows aims to integrate text and pictures but makes difficult the analysis of both information resources. We conducted an experiment in which 80 participants read on a computer screen a text with embedded graphs either near (to the related textual information) or far (from it), plus graphs were integrated in the text or within pop-up windows. The reading behaviour of participants was observed to establish who, among them, examined the graphs and who did not. The recall for textual and iconic information was measured using a recall questionnaire. Our pattern of data shows a student’s tendency to ignore graphs, in particular when they are visualized in pop-up windows. These results are confirmed by interviews to undergraduate students who analyzed the same materials using thinking aloud method.

Comunicare con il vecchio in difficoltà - Increase aged produces more specific dangers about health and autonomy for many old people; it is possibile to see in aged a life dicotomy: from one side autonomies, creatives, enterprising, propositives old people, from other side old people present loose of physical and mental autonomy. There are many factors that may cause with years disabilities conditions: from changes of living organism in males and females climacteric, from loneliness to alienation, from illness to institutionalized. In old age happen traumatic events, more than other phases of life, as situations about (affective, social, professional and healthy loses) that may produce clinical pain, an affecctive and cognitive decline. In old age depression and dementia represent the more frequent mental and behavioral disturbances. Of course becomes more important to learn, to analyse knolewdge and communication, suffering aged and wih his family. The relationship especially with dement, requires attention, sensitiveness, the decodification of messages, of his identity and of social relationship. Some health workers mind always to some meanings in communication that are to be analysed especially in suffering aged, with dement. Communication and understanding of old people mean give opportunities of support, of changing, of relieving painful and of its clinical symptoms.

L'anziano e la comunicazione - Aging is a physiological and natural process, that goes on in time and produces changes and adaptations. Many factors give their support to outline peculiarities of aging: genetic pool, personality structure, education, culture, financial status, family, experiences, environment, emotions, motivation, creativity. Every aged buildes his own history life that usually wants to tell, to listening to softly, taking part and sensitive. People communication, the description of themselves, express their thoughts and feelings of old people, personal style of life, of interpreting life among reminds, traditions, hopes and plains. Non verbal-communication, its modalities and expressions play important role in relationship with old people. Sometimes old people don’t talk about contents that think and feel, but they do it, meet someone incline to listen and to understand their reasons. Intergenerational communication represents an important peculiarity; old-child, grandfather- grandchild relationship enrich both affective, cultural and creative conditions. A stronger feeling of safety favourites in aged an expression, a more efficient and quiet communication among personal images and peculiarities of relational and social environment.

Attaccamento ai luoghi, identità giovanile e benessere: una ricerca in Europa e implicazioni per la comunicazione interculturale - This paper investigates the connections between place attachment, Well-being and cultural differences in students of three European countries: Italy, Uk and Romania. A sample of 445 participants was investigated on a number of issues, including reported Well-being (using the Satisfaction with Life Scale), place identity, place attachment and place preferences. The results show an existing direct link between place attachment and life satisfaction; this relationship becomes stronger during the adolescence. A second cluster of data shows an emerging need to integrate and to balance global and local sense of belonging to improve the subjective Well-being. The last evidence concerns the perceived place identity, because there’s a significant difference in managing the place meanings between cultural groups. In particular, the difference we found regards subjects who consider themselves citizens of other countries while residing in the three countries examined, and as such they presumably belong to linguistic and ethnic groups of long-time or recent immigration. This findings demonstrated the utility of the integration between Environmental and Positive Psychology, with the aim to investigate the suggested happiness-place links. The implications for new intercultural communication’s strategies are discussed.

La comunicazione gestante-feto - The prenatal origin of the parent-child relationship was proposed in the past century by authors from a psychoanalytical domain affirming the relevance of the parent’s affective investment in the unborn baby. Extensive literature focused on psychological processes involved in transition to motherhood like adaptation to pregnancy, maternal role attainment, maternal identity forming and maternal representation of the unborn baby. During pregnancy the woman gradually becomes aware of the foetus as an individual being, increasingly recognizing the separate person. In the last twenty years literature has brought evidence to organized foetal sensory-motor behaviour, auditive competence and foetal learning capability as from the fifth month of gestation. These foetal abilities in turn contribute to the increasing maternal awareness of the foetus which seems to be crucial in establishing the mother’s attachment to her unborn baby. Mothers often report interaction with their unborn babies by talking or caressing the baby in the tummy. This early communication is supposed to have an influence on the development of the baby’s mind. In the uterus it is particularly easy for the fetus to catch the sonorous or tactile maternal stimulus and consequently the growing nervous system and the developing cortical areas may receive a specific stimulation. Moreover the emotional communication between the mother and foetus has been explored. Animal experimentation and human observational studies have pointed out a relationship between maternal depression or anxiety and the impairment of the fetal nervous system due to the exposition to maternal cortisol. Presence of anxious and depressive symptoms in pregnancy is common and is related to premature birth risk, obstetrical complications, lack in the mother’s prenatal care of herself and her baby and persists in a high number of cases in post partum depression. Based on this evidence the consideration of the foetus as a sensible, communicative and vulnerable person becomes very important as well as the promotion of pre and perinatal maternal mental health must be a priority.