Marco Mazzoni
Biographic Data
| ID | 909374 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marco Mazzoni |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marco |
| FAMILY NAME | Mazzoni |
| SIGNATURE | MAZZONI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Perugia |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0367-7538 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 59 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Tangentopoli Effect
This article examines Tangentopoli, Italy’s most significant corruption scandal, and its pivotal role in the emergence of media-driven populism. While much of the academic debate on corruption has focused on political influences on the press, less attention has been given to how market forces, driven by commercial imperatives, shape the media’s role in covering corruption. These pressures often result in sensationalism and scandal-driven coverage…
Spurring or Blurring Professional Standards? The Role of Digital Technology in Implementing Journalistic Role Ideals in Contemporary Newsrooms
This study examines the perceived relevance and implementation of competing normative ideals in journalism in times of increasing use of digital technology in newsrooms. Based on survey and content analysis data from 37 countries, we found a small positive relationship between the use of digital research tools and “watchdog” performance. However, a stronger and negative relationship emerged between the use of digital audience analytics and the pe…
Corruption, populism and trust in the judiciary
This article explores the relationship between media coverage of corruption, the rise of populism, and public trust in the judiciary in Italy. Introducing the concept of ‘corruption waves’, it analyses how peaks in media attention to corruption align with populist political breakthroughs. Using longitudinal data from Italian newspapers and public opinion surveys (1985–2024), the study shows that corruption scandals often create fertile ground for…
Comparing Journalistic Role Performance Across Thematic Beats
Studies suggest that, at the routine level, news beats function as unique “micro-cultures.” Exploring this “particularist” approach in news content, we compare how the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, infotainment, and civic roles materialize across 11 thematic news beats and analyze the moderating effect of platforms, ownership, and levels of political freedom on journalistic role performance in hard and soft news. Based on the second …
Interpreting or Reporting? An Analysis of Journalistic Interventionism Across Western European Countries
The literature comparing journalistic roles around the world highlights different ways of understanding journalistic work across countries. One of the main differences in conceptualising concerns the journalist's propensity for intervention: where in some contexts it is common practice for journalists to intervene with commentary and interpretation; while in others there is a tendency to adopt a more neutral reporting style. Through the conceptua…
Engaging With Fandom and Politics
The article focuses on the phenomenon of political fandom and its potential impact on citizens’ political engagement. In particular, our research intends to offer a contribution to the discussion of possible types of online fan-like attachment to a political leader. Our case study is the Instagram account @lebimbedigiuseppeconte, a fanpage celebrating the former Italian Prime minister Giuseppe Conte. We analyzed posts between 2018 and 2022 with t…
Journalistic Role Performance in Times of Covid
This paper examines journalistic role performance in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a content analysis of newspaper, television, radio and online news in 37 countries. We test a set of hypotheses derived from two perspectives on the role of journalism in health crises. Mediatization theories assume that news media tend to sensationalize or to politicize health crises. A contrasting perspective holds that journalists shift toward more…
Storytelling through images
In contemporary democracies, the image that political leaders project is of central importance to their electoral appeal, however, studies of image projection have mainly been based on textual messages, undermining often visual content such as photos, memes and postcards. This study explores populist leaders image projection through visuals on Facebook in a cross-national context, with the aim of verifying if politicians use images to promote the…
Il superleader (“ordinario”). Matteo Salvini e il suo corpo
Attraverso uno studio delle immagini pubblicate da Matteo Salvini nella sua pagina Facebook, il presente studio mira ad analizzare l uso che il leader leghista fa del suo corpo. L ipotesi di fondo à ̈ che attraverso un uso strategico di simboli associati al proprio corpo, Salvini punti a trovare il giusto mix tra  super eroe e  persona normale , al fine di risolvere quello che in letteratura viene definito  il paradosso del leader democrat…
The representation of Matteo Salvini in gossip magazines
One of the most prominent personalities of contemporary Italian politics is Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Lega (League). Salvini is not only a popular politician: he can also be considered a celebrity. He became a recognizable character through his constant presence in the popular media and his habit of appearing in informal contexts. Through an analysis of three of the main Italian gossip magazines (Chi, Oggi and Vanity Fair) between Februar…
La dimensione sociale dei disastri
The article try to understand how the community of the town of Norcia in Umbria reacted and activated processes of social and territorial resilience to try to mitigate, absorb and cope with the consequences of the earthquake of 2016. Because extreme events change communi-ties in a way not predictable and the consequences of their impact are different, based on the various responsiveness of individuals or social groups, the work has particularly d…
Constraints and limitations of investigative journalism in Hungary, Italy, Latvia and Romania
The article provides evidences about mechanisms and practices that undermine the effectiveness of investigative journalism through the analysis of selected case studies of corruptive phenomena in Italy, Hungary, Romania and Latvia. In particular, the article shows that the idea of watchdog journalism does not work actually in the observed countries. Indeed, investigative journalism requires certain socio-economic conditions, such as a low degree …
Measuring and Explaining the Diversity of Voices and Viewpoints in the News
News media can be considered to fulfil their democratic role as a “marketplace of ideas” only if they present a diverse content that gives space to a wider range of ideas and viewpoints. But how can content diversity be assessed? And what determines actor and viewpoint diversity in the first place? By employing measurements of actor and viewpoint diversity at the article and newspaper level, this study provides a complete overview on the content …
Representations of Corruption in the British, French, and Italian Press
As part of a larger European Union (EU)-funded project, this paper investigates the coverage of corruption and related topics in three European democracies: France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Based on Freedom House data, these countries are characterized by different levels of press freedom. A large corpus of newspaper articles (107,248 articles) from the period 2004 to 2013 were analyzed using dedicated software. We demonstrate that freedom …
Political intimization as a key to bypassing traditional leadership selection procedures
Italy’s Partito Democratico has for a long time been characterized by rigid mechanisms of leadership selection. Prior to Renzi’s ascent to leadership, no leader had managed to rise to power without being backed up by the party’s key figures. By undertaking a content analysis of Italy’s most important entertainment magazine, Chi, and by comparing Matteo Renzi’s coverage with the coverage received by another three Partito Democratico leading figure…
Pop-politics in times of crisis
Modern politicians need to diversify their communication strategies to reach a wide range of citizens/electors. Communication of political programmes must be associated with the effective communication of the private sphere. However, does this rule apply to a scenario in which the political stage is not ruled by politicians? By presenting the results of a content analysis of four Italian tabloids and by relying on an interview with the communicat…
The politicization of entertainment media
The concept of political parallelism identifies the different forms in which the media and politics can interact. However, media partisanship has always been almost exclusively limited to news media. This study shows that the Italian media system is at the center of a significant change, in regard to the way in which mass media political parallelism works and develops. Due to structural reasons, Italy’s political parallelism crosses the threshold…
An incomplete transition? How Italian politicians manage the celebritisation of politics
The celebritisation of politics is a process that depends on both the mass media’s need to find new stories to cover and new stars to build, and the politicians’ need for new forms of visibility to reach their constituency. This article aims to provide an overview of the forms through which the celebratisation of politics has occurred and developed in Italy. By referring to a variety of qualitative data, some of the specificities which characteri…
How Italian politics goes popular
It is widely acknowledged that present-day politicians are becoming celebrities. This causes significant effects on the way printed and audiovisual media outlets have started covering them. In fact, political leaders’ private lives are increasingly scanned by gossip magazines and entertainment TV programmes, whose coverage contributes to feed people’s interest over political leaders’ personal sphere. However, as is shown in this case study, in It…
Quando il risultato elettorale è scontato… Il ruolo dei quotidiani locali durante le elezioni regionali del 2010 in Umbria
Gli scontri nel PD umbro e il ruolo della stampa locale Il ruolo delle primarie nella selezione del candidato del PD Modalità di conduzione della ricerca I temi trattati dalla stampa locale Gli attori protagonisti nella stampa locale umbra Come è andata a finire: l'attesa vittoria della Marini Le conclusioni: i tre risultati della ricerca
Measuring and Explaining the Diversity of Voices and Viewpoints in the News
News media can be considered to fulfil their democratic role as a “marketplace of ideas” only if they present a diverse content that gives space to a wider range of ideas and viewpoints. But how can content diversity be assessed? And what determines actor and viewpoint diversity in the first place? By employing measurements of actor and viewpoint diversity at the article and newspaper level, this study provides a complete overview on the content …
Representations of Corruption in the British, French, and Italian Press
As part of a larger European Union (EU)-funded project, this paper investigates the coverage of corruption and related topics in three European democracies: France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Based on Freedom House data, these countries are characterized by different levels of press freedom. A large corpus of newspaper articles (107,248 articles) from the period 2004 to 2013 were analyzed using dedicated software. We demonstrate that freedom …
Journalistic Role Performance in Times of Covid
This paper examines journalistic role performance in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a content analysis of newspaper, television, radio and online news in 37 countries. We test a set of hypotheses derived from two perspectives on the role of journalism in health crises. Mediatization theories assume that news media tend to sensationalize or to politicize health crises. A contrasting perspective holds that journalists shift toward more…
Constraints and limitations of investigative journalism in Hungary, Italy, Latvia and Romania
The article provides evidences about mechanisms and practices that undermine the effectiveness of investigative journalism through the analysis of selected case studies of corruptive phenomena in Italy, Hungary, Romania and Latvia. In particular, the article shows that the idea of watchdog journalism does not work actually in the observed countries. Indeed, investigative journalism requires certain socio-economic conditions, such as a low degree …
The politicization of entertainment media
The concept of political parallelism identifies the different forms in which the media and politics can interact. However, media partisanship has always been almost exclusively limited to news media. This study shows that the Italian media system is at the center of a significant change, in regard to the way in which mass media political parallelism works and develops. Due to structural reasons, Italy’s political parallelism crosses the threshold…
Political intimization as a key to bypassing traditional leadership selection procedures
Italy’s Partito Democratico has for a long time been characterized by rigid mechanisms of leadership selection. Prior to Renzi’s ascent to leadership, no leader had managed to rise to power without being backed up by the party’s key figures. By undertaking a content analysis of Italy’s most important entertainment magazine, Chi, and by comparing Matteo Renzi’s coverage with the coverage received by another three Partito Democratico leading figure…
Interpreting or Reporting? An Analysis of Journalistic Interventionism Across Western European Countries
The literature comparing journalistic roles around the world highlights different ways of understanding journalistic work across countries. One of the main differences in conceptualising concerns the journalist's propensity for intervention: where in some contexts it is common practice for journalists to intervene with commentary and interpretation; while in others there is a tendency to adopt a more neutral reporting style. Through the conceptua…
Engaging With Fandom and Politics
The article focuses on the phenomenon of political fandom and its potential impact on citizens’ political engagement. In particular, our research intends to offer a contribution to the discussion of possible types of online fan-like attachment to a political leader. Our case study is the Instagram account @lebimbedigiuseppeconte, a fanpage celebrating the former Italian Prime minister Giuseppe Conte. We analyzed posts between 2018 and 2022 with t…
Pop-politics in times of crisis
Modern politicians need to diversify their communication strategies to reach a wide range of citizens/electors. Communication of political programmes must be associated with the effective communication of the private sphere. However, does this rule apply to a scenario in which the political stage is not ruled by politicians? By presenting the results of a content analysis of four Italian tabloids and by relying on an interview with the communicat…
An incomplete transition? How Italian politicians manage the celebritisation of politics
The celebritisation of politics is a process that depends on both the mass media’s need to find new stories to cover and new stars to build, and the politicians’ need for new forms of visibility to reach their constituency. This article aims to provide an overview of the forms through which the celebratisation of politics has occurred and developed in Italy. By referring to a variety of qualitative data, some of the specificities which characteri…
How Italian politics goes popular
It is widely acknowledged that present-day politicians are becoming celebrities. This causes significant effects on the way printed and audiovisual media outlets have started covering them. In fact, political leaders’ private lives are increasingly scanned by gossip magazines and entertainment TV programmes, whose coverage contributes to feed people’s interest over political leaders’ personal sphere. However, as is shown in this case study, in It…
Quando il risultato elettorale è scontato… Il ruolo dei quotidiani locali durante le elezioni regionali del 2010 in Umbria
Gli scontri nel PD umbro e il ruolo della stampa locale Il ruolo delle primarie nella selezione del candidato del PD Modalità di conduzione della ricerca I temi trattati dalla stampa locale Gli attori protagonisti nella stampa locale umbra Come è andata a finire: l'attesa vittoria della Marini Le conclusioni: i tre risultati della ricerca
How Italian politics goes popular
It is widely acknowledged that present-day politicians are becoming celebrities. This causes significant effects on the way printed and audiovisual media outlets have started covering them. In fact, political leaders’ private lives are increasingly scanned by gossip magazines and entertainment TV programmes, whose coverage contributes to feed people’s interest over political leaders’ personal sphere. However, as is shown in this case study, in It…
Pop-politics in times of crisis
Modern politicians need to diversify their communication strategies to reach a wide range of citizens/electors. Communication of political programmes must be associated with the effective communication of the private sphere. However, does this rule apply to a scenario in which the political stage is not ruled by politicians? By presenting the results of a content analysis of four Italian tabloids and by relying on an interview with the communicat…
The politicization of entertainment media
The concept of political parallelism identifies the different forms in which the media and politics can interact. However, media partisanship has always been almost exclusively limited to news media. This study shows that the Italian media system is at the center of a significant change, in regard to the way in which mass media political parallelism works and develops. Due to structural reasons, Italy’s political parallelism crosses the threshold…
An incomplete transition? How Italian politicians manage the celebritisation of politics
The celebritisation of politics is a process that depends on both the mass media’s need to find new stories to cover and new stars to build, and the politicians’ need for new forms of visibility to reach their constituency. This article aims to provide an overview of the forms through which the celebratisation of politics has occurred and developed in Italy. By referring to a variety of qualitative data, some of the specificities which characteri…
Political intimization as a key to bypassing traditional leadership selection procedures
Italy’s Partito Democratico has for a long time been characterized by rigid mechanisms of leadership selection. Prior to Renzi’s ascent to leadership, no leader had managed to rise to power without being backed up by the party’s key figures. By undertaking a content analysis of Italy’s most important entertainment magazine, Chi, and by comparing Matteo Renzi’s coverage with the coverage received by another three Partito Democratico leading figure…
Representations of Corruption in the British, French, and Italian Press
As part of a larger European Union (EU)-funded project, this paper investigates the coverage of corruption and related topics in three European democracies: France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Based on Freedom House data, these countries are characterized by different levels of press freedom. A large corpus of newspaper articles (107,248 articles) from the period 2004 to 2013 were analyzed using dedicated software. We demonstrate that freedom …
Measuring and Explaining the Diversity of Voices and Viewpoints in the News
News media can be considered to fulfil their democratic role as a “marketplace of ideas” only if they present a diverse content that gives space to a wider range of ideas and viewpoints. But how can content diversity be assessed? And what determines actor and viewpoint diversity in the first place? By employing measurements of actor and viewpoint diversity at the article and newspaper level, this study provides a complete overview on the content …
Constraints and limitations of investigative journalism in Hungary, Italy, Latvia and Romania
The article provides evidences about mechanisms and practices that undermine the effectiveness of investigative journalism through the analysis of selected case studies of corruptive phenomena in Italy, Hungary, Romania and Latvia. In particular, the article shows that the idea of watchdog journalism does not work actually in the observed countries. Indeed, investigative journalism requires certain socio-economic conditions, such as a low degree …
Il superleader (“ordinario”). Matteo Salvini e il suo corpo
Attraverso uno studio delle immagini pubblicate da Matteo Salvini nella sua pagina Facebook, il presente studio mira ad analizzare l uso che il leader leghista fa del suo corpo. L ipotesi di fondo à ̈ che attraverso un uso strategico di simboli associati al proprio corpo, Salvini punti a trovare il giusto mix tra  super eroe e  persona normale , al fine di risolvere quello che in letteratura viene definito  il paradosso del leader democrat…
The representation of Matteo Salvini in gossip magazines
One of the most prominent personalities of contemporary Italian politics is Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Lega (League). Salvini is not only a popular politician: he can also be considered a celebrity. He became a recognizable character through his constant presence in the popular media and his habit of appearing in informal contexts. Through an analysis of three of the main Italian gossip magazines (Chi, Oggi and Vanity Fair) between Februar…
La dimensione sociale dei disastri
The article try to understand how the community of the town of Norcia in Umbria reacted and activated processes of social and territorial resilience to try to mitigate, absorb and cope with the consequences of the earthquake of 2016. Because extreme events change communi-ties in a way not predictable and the consequences of their impact are different, based on the various responsiveness of individuals or social groups, the work has particularly d…
Storytelling through images
In contemporary democracies, the image that political leaders project is of central importance to their electoral appeal, however, studies of image projection have mainly been based on textual messages, undermining often visual content such as photos, memes and postcards. This study explores populist leaders image projection through visuals on Facebook in a cross-national context, with the aim of verifying if politicians use images to promote the…
Journalistic Role Performance in Times of Covid
This paper examines journalistic role performance in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a content analysis of newspaper, television, radio and online news in 37 countries. We test a set of hypotheses derived from two perspectives on the role of journalism in health crises. Mediatization theories assume that news media tend to sensationalize or to politicize health crises. A contrasting perspective holds that journalists shift toward more…
Comparing Journalistic Role Performance Across Thematic Beats
Studies suggest that, at the routine level, news beats function as unique “micro-cultures.” Exploring this “particularist” approach in news content, we compare how the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, infotainment, and civic roles materialize across 11 thematic news beats and analyze the moderating effect of platforms, ownership, and levels of political freedom on journalistic role performance in hard and soft news. Based on the second …
Interpreting or Reporting? An Analysis of Journalistic Interventionism Across Western European Countries
The literature comparing journalistic roles around the world highlights different ways of understanding journalistic work across countries. One of the main differences in conceptualising concerns the journalist's propensity for intervention: where in some contexts it is common practice for journalists to intervene with commentary and interpretation; while in others there is a tendency to adopt a more neutral reporting style. Through the conceptua…
Engaging With Fandom and Politics
The article focuses on the phenomenon of political fandom and its potential impact on citizens’ political engagement. In particular, our research intends to offer a contribution to the discussion of possible types of online fan-like attachment to a political leader. Our case study is the Instagram account @lebimbedigiuseppeconte, a fanpage celebrating the former Italian Prime minister Giuseppe Conte. We analyzed posts between 2018 and 2022 with t…
Spurring or Blurring Professional Standards? The Role of Digital Technology in Implementing Journalistic Role Ideals in Contemporary Newsrooms
This study examines the perceived relevance and implementation of competing normative ideals in journalism in times of increasing use of digital technology in newsrooms. Based on survey and content analysis data from 37 countries, we found a small positive relationship between the use of digital research tools and “watchdog” performance. However, a stronger and negative relationship emerged between the use of digital audience analytics and the pe…
Corruption, populism and trust in the judiciary
This article explores the relationship between media coverage of corruption, the rise of populism, and public trust in the judiciary in Italy. Introducing the concept of ‘corruption waves’, it analyses how peaks in media attention to corruption align with populist political breakthroughs. Using longitudinal data from Italian newspapers and public opinion surveys (1985–2024), the study shows that corruption scandals often create fertile ground for…
The Tangentopoli Effect
This article examines Tangentopoli, Italy’s most significant corruption scandal, and its pivotal role in the emergence of media-driven populism. While much of the academic debate on corruption has focused on political influences on the press, less attention has been given to how market forces, driven by commercial imperatives, shape the media’s role in covering corruption. These pressures often result in sensationalism and scandal-driven coverage…
Political science (17 works) · Politics (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Media studies (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Media Studies and Communication (10 works) · Social Media and Politics (9 works) · Media Influence and Politics (7 works) · Advertising (5 works)