The study and research program of the Department's faculty members has always focused on the relationship between communication and different social subsets, with attention to the practices and meanings that are constructed in the media system. The complexity of the relationships between these spheres is addressed through the use of interdisciplinary approaches that are strongly integrated into the research and teaching practices of the Department's community, which promotes and practices dialogue and exchange between approaches, perspectives and methods from different fields of the social sciences and humanities. These perspectives and methods apply to a wide variety of research fields and phenomena, including
 

• the study of media systems and their evolution, with particular reference to digital environments and platforms in which changes in languages, styles and formats of communication are produced and new dynamics of content production, circulation, consumption and valorization are determined;
   
• politics, also observed in historical perspective, both in its institutional dimension and in the participatory practices of informal actors;
   
• emerging conflicts and sustainable development models, also related to the spread of new cultural sensibilities;
   
• gender issues, including in relation to processes of medial representation and self-representation; and environmental issues;
   
• old and new forms of inequality and marginality and intercultural and cooperative approaches;
   
• the communication of institutions and brands.

The Department also intends to develop synergies between different disciplinary areas in order to make the thematic areas of interest consistent with European-funded research lines. These include:
 

• ecological transition and sustainability;
• natural hazards and the perception of science;
• platforms and digitization;
• the valorization and communication of urban places and cultures in relation to new forms of tourism;
• made-in-Italy from a customer-based perspective;
• gender studies, with particular attention to the relationship between gender and media;
• inclusion policies and countering social marginality (education, migration flows, social fragility);
• democratic systems and processes of citizenship participation.