ITALIAN MEDIA LA REPUBBLICA: EVOLUTION, POLITICAL STANCE AND NEW DIGITAL CHANGES

Background. The article deals with the analysis of one of the oldest Italian media outlets La Repubblica, its first apparition as a printed magazine with the strong left-wing alliance and its further transformation into the most proliferated media source countrywide. To fulfill this aim, the author studied the way this media was born and the factors that facilitated its proliferation, with both printed and digital periods taken into consideration. Materials and methods. The article is based on content analysis, digital archives of electronic media and data bases, formalisation of the retrieved data, its presentation is charts and graphics, and it’s further interpretation and analysis. Results. La Repubblica is proven to be the leader of the Italian media landscape and tends to still have left-wing orientation that is however becoming more centrist. The number of printed issues demonstrated a graduate decline, while the number of digital readers is growing. Yet it is of utmost importance to consider what user devices were taken into account while preparing the statistics. Conclusions. Media’s reach is a very important metric relevant to international relations studies, it is necessary to continue research in this field and look for different means of the exhaustive analysis of digital media.

La Repubblica