Political advertising in Italy

The article retraces the history of Italian political spots, from 1979 - when they suddendly appeared in the general-electoral campaign - until now, highlighting the close relations between their formal and linguistic traits and the country’s political, institutional, historical and legislative structure. The article analyzes the most common genres of the Italian political spots and their evolution over time – declaration appeal/talking heads, feeling good, negative, documentary, leader – identifing four distinct phases according to content, formal aspects and legislative and production factors. The years 1983-94, marked by no regulation and a great enthusiasm for the new tool and major concerns about its possible effects. 1995-2004 a phase caraterized by regulatory measures and restrictions that subjected political spots to numerous limitation, stunting their potential. 2005-2011 a new phase marked by the arrives of the Internet and the diffusion of the political videos through the Net. 2011-2015 marked by the spread of Web 2.0 and Social Networks that changed not only the processes of distributing and disseminating the political spots, but also their logic, structure and language, now driven by cinema, advertising, television, music clips. In conclusion the article affirms that the political spots have been important forms of expression in which the Italian political parties and candidates have experimented with new languages and communication strategies in close relation to some of the main trends of political communication: personalization, impoverishment of the language and content of politics; spectacularization; transformation into stories – tales centred on commonplace genres and popular interpretative frames.