Massimo Ragnedda

Massimo Ragnedda (Ph.D.) is a Senior Lecturer in Mass Communications at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Research Interests

Dr Ragnedda  has  a strong interest in developments in new media and theories of media, communication and culture.

In particular, his  research is divided in two main areas: First, interested in the so-called digital divide and the stratification in the access and use of the internet. More specifically,  he is  interested in the new digital exclusion in a society of information, where having or not having information may create new forms of digital inequalities with clear consequences to a democracy.

Massimo Ragnedda is  also interested in the mass media as a tool of social control in a democracy and the role of surveillance in a digital era, looking for the connection with new technologies of Communication and in particular internet and web 2.0.

Currently Massimo Ragnedda  is working on several projects which aim is to sketch a concept of inequalities in the digital sphere – seen in terms of people’s access, Internet skills, levels and types usage, and self-perceptions. More specifically, my projects propose a more nuanced understanding of how social and digital inequalities are related. Do traditional forms of inequality simply replicate themselves in the digital sphere, or does the digital divide operate under its own dynamics? What do the classic sociological approaches offer in understanding and explaining new forms of digital inequalities? In order to attempt to give an answer to these fundamental questions, Dr Massimo Ragnedda is focusing on the traditional axes of inequalities and he is  trying to understand how they are (re)produced in the digital sphere.

Dr Massimo Ragnedda have designed and taught several Media courses (including Audiences and Mass Communication, Postmodern Media Culture, Mass Communication Industries, Mass Communication case studies, Media Spaces, Everyday Media, and Media Culture) in Italy and UK, and I have taught also in Spain, Brazil and Mexico. He  supervised several MA dissertations and numerous BA projects. He has  currently supervising 4 PhD students.

In his  teaching, Dr Massimo Ragnedda endeavour to promote intellectual engagement by encouraging my students to read and think critically while exploring all issues from wider perspectives.

He has  also written widely on all media and new media topics, in Italian, in English, Spanish and Portuguese. He is authors of several books, such as

Ragnedda, Massimo, Muschert Glenn (eds), Theorizing Digital Divide, Routledge, 2017.

Ragnedda, Massimo, (2017) The third Digital Divide: a weberian approach to digital inequalities, Routledge.

Ragnedda, Massimo, Muschert Glenn (eds) (2013), The Digital Divide: The Internet and Social Inequality in International Perspective, Routledge.

Ragnedda M. (2011) Comunicazione e propaganda. Il ruolo dei media nella formazione dell’opinione pubblica, Aracne Editrice, Roma.

Ragnedda M. (2008) La società postpanottica. Controllo sociale e nuovi media, Aracne Editrice, Roma.