Comunicazione e impatto sociale delle Università pubbliche italiane

This research work aims to investigate the developments emerging over the last decade in university communication at the Italian level. While fully aware that it is impossible to encompass within a single work the entire set of experiences, updates, and trends that articulate the complex world of communication within a university nowadays, the research aims to provide readers with the fundamental axes upon which a university's communication mix is founded. This is particularly pertinent when a university is tasked with communicating its relationship with the territory and its academic community. The theoretical framework adopted here is that of communication in the public sector (Canel, Luoma-aho 2019). This focus allows the intertwining of the theme of public communication with university communication, examining both normative and methodological innovations at national and international levels. By reconstructing existing practices, both old and new, that govern university communication activities, the primary objective of this work is to offer an-in-depth analysis — based on case studies and an extensive number of in-depth interviews — of the social impact exerted by university institutions in light of the current national scenario, particularly from a communication perspective. An additional research focus, positioned within this work as a prelude to more elaborate and systematic future investigations, aims to analyze the role of the university communicator today, and how far this figure still needs to go to achieve centrality within university governance. This is particularly relevant in light of possible future scenarios, facilitated by the synergy between human action and the potential of Artificial Intelligence tools. Moreover, this research originates from a notable gap in the literature: the scant presence of studies on the Italian context in the field of academic communication over the past decade clearly indicates a decline in scientific interest in the subject. This is contrary to significant developments in communication tools within the digital context, as well as recent university approaches connected to academic communication, such as increased sensitivity to issues of inclusion, social impact, gender equality, sustainability in all its dimensions, and other significant challenges. Despite these ongoing processes, university communication seems to be relegated to the margins, both in the scientific literature and in university strategies. University governance is primarily focused on other aspects of university management or on promoting the institution's image to increase enrollment numbers. The aforementioned trends to develop universities as inclusive and well-being-oriented places do not appear to have fully recognized the potential contributions of communication in disseminating and exploiting these practices. The objectives of this work emerge from this scenario. This landscape connects to previous periods from the 1990s to the pre-COVID era when communication transitioned from "information" to an institutionalized yet still peripheral asset in the trajectory and life of a university. However, diverging from this trend of being a "collateral" value was an intricate stream of research, supported by the presence of conferences on the subject, journals exclusively dedicated to it, and associations founded to unite university communicators and grant them relevance beyond mere chance or individual zeal. This was a significant "treasure," which in some way has lost ground. Yet, as mentioned, Universities today face pressing challenges, from artificial intelligence to the so-called Quarta missione (Polimeni 2023) and from this context emerges and develops the present research work, characterized by several years of follow-up on the main "University issues". There is a desire for university communication, by returning to the forefront within academic governance, to prompt the media to restore the discourse around the University for institutions to reflect on the strategic role of universities in society, and for research to fully engage once again with how communication can serve as a fundamental lever for enhancing the prestige, image, and reputation of a university within the social context.