Chi ha paura del potere? Politica e comunicazione negli studi sull'età moderna

This essay aims to explain how recent historiography has analysed the relationship between power and communication in the early modern age. The research that was carried out had the merit of fusing together multiple methodological frameworks (those of cultural, intellectual, institutional, political, and economic history), thus succeeding in reconstructing dense networks of linkage among different, distant places and finding the presence of a global system since the beginning of the 16th century. However, current interpretative models do not yet seem sufficient to unveil the information factory. What is missing is a deeper focus on the social, political, and economic forces that shape information and convey communication flows. It is therefore necessary – the authors argue – to refine the investigation tools to identify who builds the news and which powers exercise their hegemony over the infosphere.