The Wave of ’68. Portraits of Rebel Students in the Italian Press

Abstract

This paper investigates the representation of university students in the collective Italian imaginary during ’68 through the contemporary articles published in La Stampa and Stampa Sera describing the student uprisings at the University of Turin (Italy). The paper draws on a large amount of articles published in the daily newspapers La Stampa and Stampa Sera (nearly 400, from January to June 1968, the most dynamic phase of the protests) to highlight how journalists constructed the narrative of the rebellion by criticising the image of the rebel students, using words loaded with negative meanings and delegitimising their claims without any effort to understand their motivations. The image of the students that emerges from the articles over the period of time considered is negative, constructed to underline the destructive nature of the demonstrations against the political and social system of Italy in the 1960s. There was an unfailing tendency to highlight the rioting, disturbance of lessons, and physical and verbal attacks against teachers and the police, and the language used were reminiscent of that employed in times of war. The daily national press of the time is a rich source of material, with considerable interpretative and explanatory potential; in reconstructing the events day by day, it enables us to conduct an in-depth investigation into the ideology and the imaginary at play in a given space and time. It explores corners of the history of education that escape official recording and reveals the focus of interest and the priorities of the media groups.

Keywords

• daily newspapers
• 1968
• public opinion
• universities
• italy
• la stampa
• stampa sera
• student protests