Metafiction and media

AuthorOrjela Stafasani
Pages92-97
Vol. 2 No. 2
June, 2018
European Journal of Economics, Law and Social Sciences
IIPCCL Publishing, Graz-Austria
ISSN 2519-1284
Acces online at www.iipccl.org
92
Meta ction and media
Orjela Stafasani
Abstract
Numero Zero (2015) is Umberto Eco’s last novel. In it he ironizes journalism, journalists, history,
even science and conspiracy. Through many digressions in the narration the homodiegetic
narrator ironically narrates the social situation of 1992 Italy and the collapse of trust in
journalistic truth. Made up of 18 chapters, the novel stands as a great truth of what is
termed “Machine del fango”, namely the undermining of a personal or a group honor and/
or credibility with a clear purpose of blackmail. The intertextuality (Kristeva, 1969), the double
coding (Jencks, 1977) and the structure of a historiographic meta ction (Hutcheon, 1988), make
this a novel wri en according to postmodern poetics.
Keywords: Double coding, intertextuality, postmodernism, historiographic meta ction,
media, e ective journalism, irony.
Ironizing the global village
The emergence of mass-media which conveys its messages through several di erent
media, poses an ever growing threat to older type media. Inventions such as the
telegraph, the radio, television and later internet portals, Facebook and other
online social networks take primacy over print journalism in publicizing news and
have driven journalism towards shaping up the news items in the form of broader
investigations or opinions.
A daily newspaper is destined to become more like a weekly magazine. We’ll be
talking about what might happen tomorrow, with feature articles, investigative
supplements, unexpected predictions […]
(Eco, 2015, 15)
This competition between media reduces the authenticity while increasing the e ect
of the news, entailing that even defamation manages to climb a higher level. The
public is no longer o ered what is “good”, but rather what is “sensational”. This
is precisely what Eco addresses in his Numero Zero, the novel that introduces the
work of a newsroom struggling to obtain news. Choosing 1992 as the year in which
to set the story relates to the social developments in Italy at the time which saw the
degeneration not only of wri en journalism, but journalism in general. Regardless of
the period chosen, the novel remains relevant even for our own time when the entire
world has turned into a global village (McLuhan, 1962) and journalism has become
banal to the degree that it no longer serves to inform, but to carry rumors about
divorces, in delities or body proportions.
Eco’s novel unveils the story of journalism playing with conspiracy. Television and
other broadcast media have taken away the news from print newspapers and thus
traditional “[…] journalism has become increasingly weaker in the information
market […] (Gozzini, 2011: 295).

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT