Anthropology and Journalism: The television performance of the Abruzzo’s Earthquake (April - June 2009)

The earthquake that hit the city of L’Aquila, in Italy,—the country’s worst earthquake in the last three decades- has proved to be one of the most devastating in terms of displacement. Today, there are as many as 10,000 homeless people, displaced and dispersed in small hotels or in other, similar, other accommodation, still waiting to return to the their own individual homes. They can be considered perfect ‘exiles’ in their own country. The destruction of the city of L’Aquila and of the surrounding villages registered a massive presence on Italian television channels, especially during the first phase of the emergency. The voices and stories of the community, struck by the earthquake, became a matter of audience: the tragedy became a spectacle on TV. You are not only drawn to the first images of debris and rubble of the knocked down houses, of a general disarray, within terms of an apocalyptic scene, but in particular to the immediate interviews held only few hours after the quake, to their intrusive nature, to the morbid way in which life is shown in the tent cities, the mourning, the crying and the pain, the loss of people’s homes and personal objects