La strage di Ustica nell'opinione pubblica italiana (1980-1992): analisi di un caso politico e mediatico

This research investigates how the "Ustica case" developed in the Italian public opinion between 1980 and 1992. The term "Ustica case" refers to the political problem determined by the vicissitudes of slaughter happened to the civil place DC-9 Itavia, which occurred June the 27th 1980 in circumstances which, as noted, were clarified only after many years after the fact. The analysis is intended to capture the specificity of the process that led to the events of Ustica to acquire political relevance in the context of the Italian public sphere, in particular taking into account the role played by public opinion in a decade, such as that of the '80s and early 90s in Italy, characterized by a new centrality of the media with respect to the political sphere. Through the analysis of a wide selection of printed sources (about 1500 items of the main Italian newspapers and about 700 articles taken from the organs of Italian political parties) have therefore highlighted the media and political dynamics that led to the theming of an issue that had remained until 1986 completely absent from national politics agenda. The analysis of judicial sources also allowed to check how the politicization of the †œUstica case†�, built around the tension opacity / transparency of political power and around effective as trivializing paradigm of "massacres of State", is found at the achievement, after 1990, of the first elements of truth about the tragedy and of the widening of the issue to an international dimension.