TV Goes Social: Italian Broadcasting Strategies and the Challenges of Convergence

In recent years, the Italian television scenario has become fully convergent, and social TV is an activity – and a hip buzzword – indicating both a rich set of possibilities for the audience to engage with TV shows, and an important asset developed by the television industry to provide such engagement, with promotional and economic goals. Mainly adopting the perspective of the production cultures of Italian broadcasters, the essay will explore the “Italian way to social television”, highlighting the strategies adopted by networks and production companies to encourage online television discourse and to exploit it as a content, a marketing device or a source of supplementary income.