The Cultivation of Power: Origins of Today’s Media Industries, Politics, and Culture

The desire and need to delimit the scope of our analysis brought us to focus our attention on the relationship between power and the media, particularly from the point of view of communication. Power can thus be considered as a system of direct or negotiated relations that exists not only between individuals, but also between social and cultural spheres, and where equilibriums can be created, maintained or even destroyed. Basically, our intention is to draw attention to the special relationship between communication and power in the ‘Italian case.’ To do this, we shall tell three different stories which lie within the narrative frame of cultivation. The first tells of private television, the second of the political transformation of one of its chief architects, Silvio Berlusconi, while the last refers to the present-day situation.