Research on the relationship of the press and the politics in the context of the legislation (the Italian example compared with the Moldovan and other European countries): steps made within the framework of the Research plan

by Aneta Gonţa


The first 5 months of my post-doc visit at the Bologna University, Dept. of Political and Social Sciences/Centro per l’Europa Centro-Orientale e Balcanica, within the framework of the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Windows Program were dedicated to several activities. In particular these activities were concentrated on:

-    Meetings with academic staff whose research area is connected in some way with the field of political communication, mass-media and political sectors, the relationship between the press and the politic parties during the electoral campaigns;
-    Familiarization with the general literature relative to my research subject (s) (literature on the Italian mass-media system, the functioning of the press, the history of the public and private broadcasters, the general and specific legislation regarding the media, etc.);
-    Reading/studying of relevant books/documents/materials that illustrate the specificity of the relationship between the mass-media and the politics in Italy, in terms of legislation (especially, a particular attention was accorded to the books on Right to information and communication/Diritto dell’informazione e della comunicazione, political communication, political marketing, the structure and the functioning of the mass-media system in Italy, the history of the electoral campaigns in Italy, the phenomenon of “lottizzazione” regarding the Italian public broadcaster, the difficult relationship between the press, the politics and the market, the inseparable link between the press and the politics, the trajectory of the functioning of RAI, at the beginning as a monopolist and then in conditions of concurrence with the private broadcasters, the electoral legislation, the press and the elections, etc.);
-    Familiarization with the Italian legislation in the field of mass-media: the print media regulation, the audiovisual media regulation, the public and private broadcasters regulation, the advertising regulation, the electoral legislation;
-    Collection of relevant information for my course “Media communication and the advertising” for the Master Cycle;
-    Starting of working at the elaboration of the curriculum for a course for License (the regulation of mass-media activity in the electoral legislation: the Italian case versus the Moldovan one) and for Master Cycle (Electoral legislation, electoral periods and mass-media: a comparison approach between the cases of Italy, Belgium, United Kingdom and the Republic of Moldova. In conformity with the classification of mass-media systems made by the international experts, including the Italians, the mentioned countries are part of different models of regulation and functioning of the press. It will be interesting and useful for the Moldovan experience to study the differences and to identify the elements that could be applied to my country’s system. In this context, I intend to collect sufficient empirical material in order to propose to my students a comparative analysis of several European countries);
-    Studying the Italian specificity in the field of curricula, teaching courses on media legislation, electoral legislation and the relationship between press and politics. As the Republic of Moldova is part of the Bologna process, the Bologna University way of implementation of the elements of this process is particularly useful in order to analyze and to see where we are and how we are in the common European area of knowledge.