Academic literature on the topic 'Citizens' associations – Italy'

IntroductionThe role of associations dedicated to patient advocacy has assumed strategic importance within the most advanced health systems, including the Italian NHS. In this period of strong national and international emergency, the associations of citizens and patients have also changed their actions and have implemented others to alleviate the discomforts of sick people in Italy, collaborating with institutions and health services.MethodsData were collected using a semi-structured survey, with both yes / no and open questions, developed and administered by the Patient Advocacy LAB (ALTEMS- Catholic University of Sacred Heart) to 150 patient advocacy associations. The organizational changes and the initiatives adopted by patient associations during the COVID-19 emergency was investigated.ResultsThe majority of the initiatives adopted by patient advocacy associations during the COVID-19 pandemic have been introduced during the first wave (March- June 2020), and that most of them have been maintained to (December 2020). These initiatives included improvements and updating of the communication tools aimed at reaching the higher number of patients. Thanks to these new approaches, the empathy and the assistance to patients have been increased. In addition, a number of training initiatives have been developed online and they have been followed by a large number of patients and caregivers. At an operative level, during the pandemic, many patient advocacy associations have provided their support to distribute masks, gloves, and therapies to patients. Unfortunately the fundraising activities suffered due to the lockdown, and the main problems were related to social distancing and lack of public campaigns. The institutional relationships have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic and they mainly regarded the participation in legislative interventions. Among the initiatives adopted, our sampled associations affirmed that they would like to maintain the social support provided to patients experienced during the pandemic.Finally we calculated a resiliency score and we discovered that the majority of the sampled associations developed an intermediate level of resiliency and that it is positively correlated with their tenure.ConclusionsOur results provide a fresh view about the role of patient advocacy associations during the pandemic indicate their important role within the NHS.

Research on light pollution and its effects developed in Italy through a peculiar path. After originating seminal work in the late Nineties, above all the first world atlas of night sky brightness, the academic system apparently did not leverage this asset to a wider set of studies. In parallel, some activities which are prerequisites to research and analysis, such as measurement campaigns or development of calibration tests, were initiated in a “grassroots mode” by other sectors of society, such as non-governmental associations. One of the relevant example of this process is the BuioMetria Partecipativa project which was started in 2008 in Italy with the aim of encouraging non-professionals to collect data on light pollution as a strategy for environmental awareness raising. The BMP project conjugates this component with a scientific approach, allowing the collection of valuable quantitative environmental data, using a low-cost device, called Sky Quality Meter (SQM), provided to citizens. The measurements are loaded to a database on the project web site, and are published in a variety of formats. In 2011 the system was extended to collect data from fixed SQM stations for continuous monitoring, with the development of automated data harvesting procedures and leading to complement the citizen science measures with more high-quality time series of light pollution data. At the national level, the project obtained considerable recognition, in terms of citizen participation and media coverage. Most interestingly from a research perspective, the project acted as a trigger to initiate light pollution studies by Italian experts, namely in the areas of biometeorology and marine ecology. The article will review the process which led the authors to escalate their operations from awareness raising to research, and will provide an overview of the models and of the first tests conducted in the context of our research studies.

COVID-19 exerted a strong impact on the Italian healthcare systems, which in turn resulted in a reduction in the citizens’ trust towards healthcare authorities. Moreover, the focused attention on the typical COVID-19 symptoms (fever, cough) has also impacted the social representation of health priorities, potentially reducing the perceived importance and severity of other symptoms. This study aimed to determine the association of general-practitioner (GP) contact with various symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic in Cremona, an Italian city at the very epicentre of the pandemic. Between April and June 2020, an anonymous survey was completed by 2161 respondents. Logistic-regression analyses were used to examine the associations of GP contact with sociodemographic characteristics and the presence of symptoms. Of the 2161 respondents (43.5% female, 75.0% aged less than 55 years), 959 (44.4%) reported experiencing various symptoms and 33.3% contacted a GP. GP contact was significantly associated with poor appetite (OR, 2.42; 95% CI 1.63 to 3.62; p < 0.001), taste dysfunctions (OR 1.67; 95% CI 1.20 to 2.34; p < 0.001) and sleepiness during the day (OR 4.15; 95% CI 2.13 to 8.09; p = 0.002). None of the gastrointestinal symptoms resulted in significantly increasing the likelihood of contacting a GP. This study offers a unique observation of citizens’ attitudes and behaviours in early symptom communication/detection during the initial peak of the Italian COVID-19 pandemic.

The article deals with the provision of humanitarian aid to Ukraine by the government and society (citizens) of Italy during the period of Russian armed aggression against Ukraine (2014-2018). Among them are the efforts of the large Ukrainian community in Italy (according to official figures in Italy, there are more than 230 thousand Ukrainians registered). The directions, volumes and methods of relief assistance for Ukrainian military and population in war-affected areas in eastern Ukraine and settlers were analyzed. It was determined that government financial assistance (over 3 million euros was allocated for 2014-2018) during this period came through international humanitarian organizations, which deal with the civilian people affected by the armed conflict and the program of demining of ukrainian territories. The Ukrainian community in Italy provides individual assistance (from individuals) and from organizations (for example, the Congress of Ukrainians in Italy, “EuroMaydan-Rome” and others). Ukrainian communities of entire cities and regions may be involved in collecting a large sum (the most active are Ukrainians in Rome, Brescia, Milan, Naples).Mostly Ukrainians provided cars for units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and volunteer groups in the area of fighting, equipment, clothes and funds for the needs of Ukrainian defenders, as well as food and gifts for them to holidays, organized humanitarian cargoes for the victims of the war of the population. At the same time, the Ukrainian community in Italy tried to hold public information events in support of Ukraine in the early years of the Russian-Ukrainian War and inform the Italian society and authorities about the events in it.The third source of humanitarian aid for Ukraine in Italy is Italian voluntary associations such as “Italy-Ukraine-Maidan”, which independently delivers the largest humanitarian cargo to the east of Ukraine. Italy’s assistance to Ukraine is considered in the context of the socio-political processes and the foreign policy line of the Italian government. It is determined how the traditional strong ties between Italy and Russia affect for the attitude and assistance to Ukraine.

Struggling with practical problems such as the sudden cancellation of scheduled visits and exams and a sense of abandonment and uncertainty. This is how the "ordinary" patients lived the period of the health emergency in Italy. At the same time, civic and rights protection associations, since the beginning, have been active with a sense of responsibility, creativity, and energy, often revealing themselves to be the only point of reference and the only service available to citizens. This is the double side of the coin, in the implications of the pandemic on chronic and rare patients, which emerged from the XVIII National Report on Chronic Policies of Cittadinanzattiva, presented on October 13th, 2020, and entitled: "Isolated but not alone: the response to the pandemic in the story of Patients Advocacy Groups (PAGs)". The Report arised from the story of 34 Italian associations of patients with chronic and rare diseases who adhered to the National Coalition of Associations for Patients suffering Chronic Diseases (CnAMC) of Cittadinanzattiva. This experience thanks to Active Citizenship Network was first socialized on the occasion of the 15th European Patients’ Rights Day held on May 5th & 6th, 2021, and then brought to the attention of the leaders of the G20 and other states, gathered together with the heads of international and regional organizations on the occasion of the Global Health Summit held in Rome on May 21, 2021.

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to show the importance of considering patients’ and citizens’ associations for understanding users’ involvement in health care systems. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on both qualitative and quantitative data on Italy drawn from various sources (national statistics, own survey data, qualitative interviews). Findings – Although the paper avoids an excessively positive view of the success and frequency of collective patients’ participation, it nevertheless shows that the Italian National Health Care System (NHS) is undergoing important changes in this regard. Voice and co-production among patients, health care services and professionals have become more common and important also because of forms of collective action. Professionals themselves often belong to or promote such associations and groups. The Italian case also shows that voice and co-production tend frequently to merge into a single complex strategy where patients’ requests go along with their direct involvement in health care provision. Social implications – The study provides useful information for policy makers considering the implementation of policies that promote collective action in order to increase an active users’ participation in health care. Originality/value – This is one of the limited number of Italian studies which investigates users’ involvement in the NHS and collective action, thus adding knowledge to the limited research in this field.

This article examines the personal outcomes of overseas residence in later life, by analysing some findings from the first large-scale, comparative study of the retirement of British citizens to southern Europe. Four study areas are compared: Tuscany in Italy, Malta, the Costa del Sol of Spain, and the Algarve region of Portugal. The analysis focuses on the expressed reasons for moving to and residing in the areas, the reported advantages and disadvantages, and the respondents' predictions of whether they would stay or leave in response to adverse and beneficial events. Overall the subjects give very positive reports, but there are considerable differences among the four areas. The associations of individual variation in well-being with both a person's ‘temporal commitment’ to the area and to facets of their social integration are analysed. The onset of severe incapacity, sufficient to prevent the continued running of a home, is the event most likely to cause people to leave their adopted areas of residence.

Struggling with practical problems such as the sudden cancellation of scheduled visits and exams and a sense of abandonment and uncertainty. This is how the “ordinary” patients lived the period of the health emergency in Italy. At the same time, civic and rights protection associations, since the beginning, have been active with a sense of responsibility, creativity, and energy, often revealing themselves to be the only point of reference and the only service available to citizens. This is the double side of the coin, in the implications of the pandemic on chronic and rare patients, which emerged from the XVIII National Report on Chronic Policies of Cittadinanzattiva, presented on October 13th, 2020, and entitled: “Isolated but not alone: the response to the pandemic in the story of Patients Advocacy Groups (PAGs)” [1]. The Report arised from the story of 34 Italian associations of patients with chronic and rare diseases who adhered to the National Coalition of Associations for Patients suffering Chronic Diseases (CnAMC) [2] of Cittadinanzattiva [3]. This experience - thanks to Active Citizenship Network [4] - was first socialized on the occasion of the 15th European Patients' Rights Day held on May 5th & 6th, 2021 [5], and then brought to the attention of the leaders of the G20 and other states, gathered together with the heads of international and regional organizations on the occasion of the Global Health Summit held in Rome on May 21, 2021 [6].

The aim of this paper addresses the problem of the quality of life of elderly people by presenting the energy of Latinos that arouses optimism in European citizens and provides them with joy through Latin dances on a regular basis. The research covered 163 people in the old, so-called third, age, from the European countries with the highest aging rate, namely: Italy, Germany, Greece and Poland. Results shows that physical activity in the form of Latin American dances has a beneficial effect on the functioning of the body. Not only does it allow for maintaining physical fitness and inhibiting the development of many ailments and diseases, but also stimulates the brain to constant activity, which results in improvement of the ability to make associations, concentration and, above all, memory. It is also a way to fill the gap that arises as a consequence of the completion of certain life stages. Through making new social contacts, it is possible to forget about loneliness, stagnation and the monotony of everyday life. However, above all, Latin dance is a source of satisfaction, joy and happiness, i.e., determinants of the quality of life.

Modern urban lifestyles have most likely generated a loss of awareness of the bio-cultural benefits derived from the presence of trees and forests in cities. The present study aimed at understanding the level of awareness and the ability to express significant relationships, both positive and negative, on ecosystem services and disservices by the citizens of a Mediterranean city where thermal comfort during the summer period can be particularly problematic. A questionnaire consisting of multiple-choice and open-ended questions was disseminated to citizens of Florence, Italy. The open questions allowed respondents space to describe what they perceive are the benefits and disbenefits of urban trees. Meanwhile, geospatial and climate data were processed in order to check the vegetation and microclimate conditions of the city areas where the 592 respondents live. The vast majority of respondents felt Florence is unbearably hot in summer with 93% agreeing the city needs more trees, and shaded places were perceived as the most important feature of urban green space. The results reveal many positive and negative associations to different species of trees and bring out a rich mosaic of perceptions towards urban green spaces and the features they contain. People are generally aware of a wide range of the benefits trees provide to communities and a good knowledge of the microclimate modification properties was revealed. Many of the popular public tree genera in the city, such as Tilia, Platanus and Pinus were favoured by residents however there was some overlap with trees that provoke negative experiences, and this information can be useful to city planners aiming to maximise ecosystem services and minimise ecosystem disservices.

Defence date: 18 October 2018
Examining Board: Prof. Donatella Della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore (EUI Supervisor); Prof. Luigi Pellizzoni, University of Pisa (External Co-Supervisor); Prof. Stéphane Van Damme, European University Institute and Sciences Po Paris; Prof. Gianpaolo Baiocchi, New York University
Mobilizations on high-tech projects often become arenas of contention where expertise crosses political and technical claims. One of the aspects of these citizen mobilizations resides in the elaboration of alternative politics linking bottom-up communitarian knowledge with expert advice. This innovation addresses important questions for participation and democracy in general, since expert knowledge indeed maintains a delicate relationship with democratic politics. In this work I aim to analyze how common citizens, political activists and technical experts participate in using expertise, while contributing to making «technical democracy» work. Starting from a dataset of more than 500 episodes of contention regarding high-tech projects, I focus on an in-depth comparative study of mobilizations in the cities of Venice and Florence, given their importance in the rise of the so called «new environmentalism» in Italy. Analyzing four protest campaigns I shed light on the mechanisms of co-production. focusing on 1) the characteristics of bottom-up citizens’ expertise, 2) experts’ enrollment and their peculiar forms of engagement. In both cities I have selected two cases depending on their variation in terms of technological complexity, conflict intensity and citizens' participation. While in some high-tech projects political conflict and technical controversy tend to be confined to restricted mobilizations – regarding mainly activists and experts – others show high levels of participation and broader knowledge diffusion. Crossing these two main dimensions – political conditions and technological factors – allows to look at the role of different expert cultures (professional and disciplinary background) and their interaction/intersection with political cultures (e.g. political ecologist, conservationist, environmentalist). These dimensions helps explain different typologies of expert enrollment, whether its participation is more organic to movement areas (expert-activist) or more episodic and linked to single-issue justifications (expert-ally). After a careful analysis of the Italian public debate about high-tech projects, a specific media analysis of the four cases in national and local newspapers, a multivariate ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in both cities that included direct attendance at public meetings, assemblies and demonstrations. Moreover, around 60 in-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted with public authorities, experts, activists and citizens playing a central role in the mobilization. The outcomes show how conflict, rather than inhibiting it, transforms expertise production into a contentious politics by other means. Being understood as intrinsically linked to political interests, the meaning of contentious expertise needs therefore to be understood in terms of crisis of democratic accountability and legitimation. The use of expertise by social movements has, finally, a clear impact on their structure and composition, giving rise to uncertain and unexpected alliances as well as shifts regarding mechanisms of participation and mobilization.

Defence date: 21 July 2014
Examining Board: Professor Donatella della Porta, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor László Bruszt, European University Institute; Professor Lance Bennett, University of Washington; Professor Mario Diani, Università degli Studi di Trento.
In 2011, a vast coalition of social movement actors coordinated one of the largest and most successful political campaign that characterized recent Italian history, organizing and winning a referendum that blocked a serious attempt to privatize the entire water distribution network. In a year characterized by intense mobilizations throughout the world – with the Occupy, the 15-M and the so called Arab Spring protests dominating the scene – the main Italian organizations and networks coalesced, with the external support of some small declining or newly formed parties, and gradually captured an increasing attention in society. The main environment of action of the Referendum supporters slowly passed from the Italian streets, assemblies, and squares, to the websites of the organizations, and – during the very last phase of the campaign – to Facebook, finally conquering at least in part the very closed space of the Italian mass media. On Facebook, in particular, the politically oriented communication of the referendum supporters proved to be very pervasive: the words referendum and quorum were the most present in the statuses of the Italian users of this platform for the entire 2011. The dissertation explores in detail this successful campaign, focusing on how the activists elaborated new strategies of online communication and on the processes of adaptation that the emergence of the Social Media in the Italian political environment promoted in this social movement milieu. Adopting a very wide set of methodologies, which includes Digital Ethnography, Social Network Analysis, interviews and data collection through computer programming in Python, the author explores different aspects of the mobilization that are particularly relevant for the broader discussion on online activism and campaigning. In particular, he traces the network of websites that supported the campaign, he observes the online communication practices of the activists on the web and Facebook, he describes the link that connects online and off-line activism during this large-scale campaign, and he connects the different ways of perceiving the social media environment with divergent uses of these platforms.

Defence Date: 16/10/2009
Examining Board: Bianca Beccalli (University of Milan); Nick Couldry (University of London); Donatella Della Porta (EUI) (Supervisor); Peter Wagner (University of Trento, formerly EUI)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
The dissertation addresses the general question of how social movements interact with the media in contemporary, media-saturated societies. The basic assumption is that visibility in the media is crucial to become recognized and thus valuable social and political subjects. This is especially true for resource-poor groups of activists at the margins of the political field who aim to introduce new social problems into the public arena. Compared to past decades, however, visibility today holds a different meaning, and passes through different channels due to the emergence of information and communication technologies which have transformed mainstream-dominated media systems into more nuanced and complex media environments. The dissertation is based on an interdisciplinary analysis about how social and political actors involved ingrassroots mobilizations against insecure employment in Italy and Europe seek visibility at the public level by acting in complex, multilayered media environments. In doing so, the dissertation presents three relevant novelties in two strands of literature: social movements studies and communication/media studies. At first, the analysis revolves around the concept of activist media practices and three important dimensions that emerged from the investigation: media representation of activists and mobilizations; activists’ perceptions of the media environment; and interactions between social movements and the media. The former and the latter have been addressed in the literature, but separately and without comparing how they develop with regard to different types of media outlets. Scholars in the field, moreover, do not usually consider activists’ perceptions of the media environment, despite the relevance this dimension has for understanding activist media practices. Second, the analysis is based on a comparative research design which takes into consideration three territorial levels (transnational, national and local), three types of media outlets (mainstream, sympathetic and alternative, with the second never having been empirically explored in studies about social movements and the media), and a number of media technologies (from the press to the Internet). The dissertation compares a broad range of (activist) media practices which the existing literature in the field considers separately, while in reality they develop in parallel and often intertwine. Third, the empirical research on which the dissertation is based deals with a critical area of investigation, the realm of insecure and precarious jobs. Despite the fact that this issue has already been addressed by several disciplines, including the sociology of work and industrial relations, there is only a sporadic and fragmented body of literature about mobilizations of precarious workers in Italy and Europe. After a theoretical and methodological introduction, the dissertation empirically explores the three above-mentioned dimensions of activist media practices in complex media environments. Conclusions recompose the three dimensions of activist media practices (representation, perception and recognition) in complex media environments, taking into consideration the literature on the sociology of practices and insights from two relevant theoretical approaches: field theory and actor network theory. Additionally, the conclusions discuss the empirical and theoretical validity of three relevant concepts in the field of media and social movements: 'sympathetic media', the 'discursive opportunity structure' and the 'communication repertoire'.

A defining feature of archaic Greece was the explosion of athletic competitions at many levels up to the great Panhellenic games. Panhellenic victories brought prestige to the cities, who offered their victors considerable honours and material rewards. This chapter seeks to identify diverse connections, in different cities, between athletic training and competition and the regulation of membership in these developing communities. It suggests that in some places (Sparta, Cretan cities) athletic performance was used as part of complex socialization procedures and as a qualification for community membership via small-scale commensality associations. At Athens, athletic prowess was encouraged but not imposed, and citizenship was probably opened, through pseudo-kinship subgroups, to athletes along with other skilled immigrants; comparable practices may be suspected in other athletically ambitious cities (Corinth, Argos, and Aegina). In wealthy cities in Sicily and South Italy, desperate for Panhellenic success, athletic achievement inspired the positive recruitment of new citizens.