Augusto Valeriani is Director of the Program in Digital Marketing and Communication at Bologna Business School. He is Associate Professor in Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, where he is the coordinator of the master’s degree in “Journalistic, Public and Corporate Communication” and is a member of the Teachers’ Board of the PhD program in “Political and Social Sciences.” He is currently editor of the scientific journal “Political Communication” and a member of the editorial board of the journals “Social Media + Society,” “CyberOrient,” and “Problems of Information.”
Augusto was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Westminster, London (2005-2006) and at the Annenberg School for Communication at the Uniiversity of Pennsylvania (2009-2010). He was also Visiting Assistant Professor at the Bing Center in Florence, Stanford University (2016-2018).
His teaching and research interests focus on digital media and social networking platforms from the perspectives of political and corporate communication, citizen engagement, journalism studies and storytelling practices. He is currently co-investigator of the project “TASKs. Trust, Autority, Sense, and Knowledge” (2023-2026) funded by the Ministry of University and Research under the PRIN 2022 scheme, after being co-investigator of the project ‘I-POLHYS, Investigating polarization in hybrid media systems’ (2019-2022). His research work has appeared in several international journals including: Journal of Computer Mediated Communication; New Media and Society; Information, Communication, and Society; Social Media and Society; European Journal of Communication; International Journal of Press/Politics. His latest research monograph, “Outside the bubble Social media and political participation in Western Democracies,” is a comparative study of social media and citizen participation written with Cristian Vaccari published by Oxford University Press. He has received awards and grants from the International Communication Association, the American Political Science Association and the Italian Society of Political Science.
Augusto earned a bachelor’s degree in communication from the University of Bologna in 2004 and a Ph.D. in “Communication, Media and the Public Sphere” from the University of Siena in 2008.
The course is aimed in first place at acquiring a full understanding of storytelling as a communication practice by addressing it through the theoretical lenses of sociology, psychology, and semiotics. Our main focus will be digital storytelling as we will consider how technical affordances of different social media platforms, patterns of attention economy online, and dynamics of digital celebrity affect the way different narrative techniques can be employed to develop marketing strategies. Case histories of digital storytelling employed in corporate, institutional and political marketing will be presented and analyzed.
Digital Marketing and CommunicationThe course provides a comprehensive overview of the various advertising tools that companies can use to communicate across several different media, and shows how they can be integrated within a unique communication plan. Furthermore, the course explores the various structures and competencies involved in the communication process, from creatives to advertising agencies. By mixing the marketing and the communication perspectives, this course will enable students to develop a good understanding of both communication contents and strategies.
Marketing Management