Free radio in Italy and France from the 1970s to the 1990s: from the research of the freedom of expression to the assertion of commercial radio broadcasting
Fabrice d'ALMEIDA - Professor (université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas)
Maurizio RIDOLFI - Professor (université de Viterbe - Italie)
Christian DELPORTE - Professor (UVSQ)
Enrico MENDUNI - Professor (université de Rome III)
Fabrizio DENUNZIO - Associate Professor (université de Salerne - Italie)
Nathalie SONNAC - Professor (université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas)
The thesis presents an historical analysis of the birth and evolution of free radios in Italy and France between the beginning of 70s (seventies) and the end of 80s (eighties) of the 20th century. The comparative character of the study highlights the similarities and divergences of both the historical-social processes and the various political systems which determined the emergence and transformation of such from-the-ground means of communication, out of the central monopoly of the State as well as their insertion in the proper frame of national media. The study finds its place in the historical context of the two countries.
The route of free radios shows how one passed from the original claim of taking-the-word', of off-centred communication, of realization of democratic media, to the affirmation in the Eighties of the model of commercial radio, influenced by the centrality of the television and the commercials. The evolution of free radios contributes to redefine the audio-visual landscape of the two countries, causing the end of the public monopoly of the radio and TV broadcast. Free radios, expressing the point-of-new of political, cultural and religious groups of local communities, represented a moment of opening and democratization of the media sector and of widening of spaces of the public sphere. Although these objectives in the Eighties, thanks also to a changed political, social and economic frame, were substituted by the affirmation of the music radios, communitary radios, which favored non-profit forms of communication of proximity, constituted the direct heir of free radios. Despite they occupied a reduced space in the media system of the two countries, they proved the social importance of alternative and local means of communication, with respect to the radiophonic contents and the organization, partially anticipating certain features of interactivity which will be recovered years later with the rise of the web-radios.