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The concept of pluralism in the Italian public media

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2016

Chris Hanretty*
Affiliation:
European University Institute, Florence

Abstract

In this paper it is argued that the concept of pluralism – the most important value in the Italian media debate – is conceptually confused. The author identifies three mutually incompatible conceptions of pluralism used when discussing the public broadcaster Rai: (1) structural pluralism, satisfied when the public broadcaster is divided into autonomous channels or programme groups; (2) summative pluralism, satisfied when output is divided between political actors according to some ideal distribution; and (3) pluralism ‘lottizzato’, satisfied when a number of different political positions are ‘represented’ by journalists within the broadcaster.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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