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.

The aim of this special issue is to explore this intersection and, consequently, the cross fertilization between fashion studies and media studies, with particular regard to audiovisual media, such as cinema, television, advertising and digital video.

Many thought Brexit would not come to pass, that Donald Trump could not be elected, experts, pollsters, and probability models told us so, down to the decimal point. An entire media apparatus that was increasingly certain came to produce instead confusion. The manufactured character of news becomes dramatically exposed, as well as the entertainment-driven nature of electoral politics that increasingly look like reality shows. The vacuum left behind is threatened to be filled with the rising tide of hate speech, hoaxes, and so-called fake news.

The goal of issue 3/2016 – which could hardly be more timely, due to the industrial, normative, and cultural challenges that await Italian cinema after the promulgation of the Law 220/2016 – is to define what constructs the idea of quality in contemporary Italian cinema, from 2000 up to the present.

In the contemporary anthropological scenario of dualism between body and mind, exasperated by the general exposure to the mimetic desire of a divine body and of a body that is plastic, manipulable, replaceable, interchangeable, the theatre and the performing arts have the double function of criticism and of proposal, in which the development and the care of the individual people, of the community and of the social body are pursued through work with the body and on the body, singular and plural. This issue of CS is devoted to the exposition of the body in the society of images, spectacle and social media, and is divided into two sections, critical and experiential.

This special issue aims at exploring the encounter and intersection between fashion studies and media studies, with particular reference to visual and audiovisual products, e.g. cinema, television, advertising and digital media. We encourage scholars from the fields of both audiovisual media and fashion studies to explore this intriguing intersection and the new horizons of audiovisual fashion. We particularly welcome contributions that discuss how audiovisual studies and fashion studies can cross-fertilize each other and expand the theoretical framework of each approach.

From the 2000s onwards, various social and technological events made photography more accessible, ubiquitous, public, cheap, democratic, immediate and shared than ever before, paving the way to a renewal of photographic experience. The editors of this issue, Adriano D’Aloia and Francesco Parisi, propose the term ‘snapshot culture’ to refer to the combination of technological, aesthetic and practical shifts in contemporary photographic scenario.

Technological artefacts that only twenty years ago were but evocative objects have now become ordinary presences in our life: from artificial implants to mass cosmetic surgery and body manipulation, from new forms of permanent media interconnection to interaction with artificial intelligences. Hence a number of new crucial questions arise, related to our living together in the age of post-humanism. Nowadays, when technology is no longer a tool, or even just an environment, but is wearable and incorporated, and can act retroactively on the very structure of the organism, what are the main challenges we have to face, and the main narratives for making sense of this new human condition?

The concept of “genre” generally points to the question of how to understand a text in relation to others, and this framework is a legacy of traditional approaches in literature found within the humanities, from the Aristotelian distinction between tragedy and comedy to the classic “universal archetypes” described by Northrop Frye. In what ways is a text (a novel, a film, a tv program…) similar or different to others around it? Why does that matter? What is the value in separating texts from each other? The answers to these questions play an important role in helping understand many aspects of the production, distribution and reception of various kinds of media texts. This special issue of Comunicazioni Sociali, edited by Massimo Scaglioni and Ira Wagman, gives attention to questions of genre the study of television.

In the past, in Italy, the “exposed”, also called foundlings, were the infants or young children abandoned by unknown parents to the care of the Church or of public services. Those exposed children are a powerful reminder of the wider condition of the human beings who for many years from birth are incapable of looking after themselves and are so “exposed”, vulnerable, totally open to all perils and even to death unless someone takes constant care of them.