Since 2013, the traditional monographic section of each issue of Comunicazioni Sociali has been supplemented by a miscellaneous section. The call for papers for the miscellaneous section is always open. Contributions will undergo the same double-blind peer-reviewing process of the monographic section. Since its inception, CS has been contributing on key debates of studies on theatre, cinema, radio, television, journalism, advertising and digital media. The journal has promoted a rigorous reflection on theory, history and critical analysis of media, communications and performance arts. It continues to be a fundamental voice within the debate on the more recent and controversial questions of communication (from ethics to anthropological design) drawing on theoretical reflection and historical analysis, as well as from the proceedings of empirical research.

Migration has been a phenomenon throughout human history. However, as a result of economic hardship, conflict and globalization, the number of people now living outside their country of birth is higher than ever. It has also become a key focul point for the media. Even though irregular immigration constitutes only a minor part of the total immigrant population in the EU, it is the one most spectacularized by the media. This over-mediatization of the phenomenon leads to a consistent discrepancy between the perception and the reality of the issue, and this distance has favored the shift of migration issues from ‘low politics’ to ‘high politics’, fueling an emergency management and a securitarian approach.

Slowly but surely, arts-based research is making its entry into Communication and Media Studies, moving away from a rather exclusive focus on written texts and oral presentations. This special issue is driven by the belief that still more could be done at the level of theorizing arts-based research practices, and at the level of deploying them in different contexts. The aim of this special issue is to further stimulate the discussion on this topic, bringing together a diversity of voices, formats and approaches.

Theatre, in its multiple forms of production – which is why we will use, hereafter, the word “theatres” in the plural, has always been an expression of the relationship between civic society, political power, and the way in which people express themselves through individual and collective performances. Thus, from the very beginning, theatres have been considered an art available to the community with the three possible functions of acceptance of the status quo, protest against existing regimes, and entertainment. At some turns in history, theatrical performances have even taken on explicit political stances of protest and criticism, or propaganda and consensus-building, reaching sometimes forms of outright militancy by affiliation to parties or forms of government (Ponte di Pino 1996, Dalla Palma 2001, Kershaw 2002, Ferrarotti 2007, Rancière 2008, Casi and Di Gioia 2012, Mango 2012, Badiou 2015, Bernardi 2015, Eckersall and Grehan 2019, De Marinis 2020, Hamidi-Kim 2014 and 2020). Moreover, if we assume, as we propose, a broad and performative notion of theatre practices (Schechner 2018), that includes games, feasts, celebrations, street demonstrations, happenings, performances in public spaces and events, then the connections between performing arts and practices (on one side) and politics (on the other) become all the more numerous. In this perspective, theatres are an intermediate process of interaction between representative and delegated power systems and their delegating subjects. A veritable media that has helped both parts of the power relationship, in spite of the complexities encountered, to shape the dynamics of collective well-being.

In recent decades, digital communication and sustainability have become central topics in the global public discourse. Since the Nineties, debates about the role of computer-mediated communication in forming opinions and about human activity’s impact on the environment have been rising. “Mediatisation” of the modern society enhanced the importance of studying social processes’ communicational aspects, such as environmental sustainability’s management. In the West, in fact, after World War II mass media have become more and more instrumental to the creation of an environmental awareness conceptualising the environment as we understand it today.

CHIARA GIACCARDI, JÉRÔME BOURDON, NICO CARPENTIER, KIRSTEN DROTNER, DANA RENGA and ANDREA VIRGINÁS reflect on the current Coronavirus-induced crisis in search for sociological solutions to the political, social and economical changes that we are experiencing.

Roundtable organised by the journal's editorial and scientific committee. Text of the roundtable will constitute a paper in the next issue of Comunicazioni Sociali (2/20).

As Leavy (2015: ix) writes, arts-based research is “a set of methodological tools used by researchers across the disciplines during all phases of social research, including data generation, analysis, interpretation, and representation.” Its emphasis on doing (making) brings in the idea that knowledge is or, expressed more modestly, can be embodied and produced through the creation of the artistic practice itself. To use Cooperman’s (2018: 22) more poetic formulation, “Arts-based research is a research of the flesh where our source material originates from the closeness and collaboration of the bodies and voices of one another.” Slowly but surely, arts-based research is making its entry into Communication and Media Studies, moving away from our rather exclusive focus on the written text. There is, for instance, the work of the multidisciplinary Collective for Advancing Multimodal Research Arts or scholars at the Communication Studies Department of Concordia University (Chapman & Sawchuk, 2015). Communication and Media studies scholars also publish their non-written texts in such specialized journals as the Journal of Video Ethnography; Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays; and Audiovisual Thinking, the Journal of Academic Videos. Moreover, both the International Communication Association (ICA) and the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) have featured exhibitions at some of their recent conferences, the former with the 2017 Making & Doing exhibition and the latter with 2018 Ecomedia Arts Festival, taking gentle steps toward (the acknowledgment of) non-written academic texts.

The relationship between communication and environmental sustainability has come to the forefront in recent years with renewed impetus. The explosion of Internet-connected devices and the dramatic challenge (and visibility) of climate change have deeply impacted how we communicate environmental risk, stimulate behavioral changes, coordinate individual and collective environmental action and monitor environmental governance. Massive amounts of environmental information of unprecedented quality and resolution are made available by technological, social and legal innovations; at the same time, long-standing issues – such as public trust in environmental communication or the uncertain ability of communication itself to stimulate behavioral change in individual and collective subjects – not only remain on the table but appear heightened and complexified by the new context.

The new guide for the authors about the submissions of articles is available, please read the instructions carefully.