Legacy Media Reloaded: An Introduction

article is an introduction to the special issue devoted by Comunicazioni Sociali to The Peoples’ Internet (PIN) Project”, a comparative study of media and Internet use started in 2016 and concluded in 2019; its aim was to compare social uses of the Internet across different countries and regions of the world through a mixed methods approach. Its core consisted of representative surveys of the online population in China, the US, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Three essays compose this special issue, all of them are based on the data collected through the online survey and aim to give an overview of how Internet users operate a digital reloading of legacy media. In Combining Old and New: Patterns of Media Use across Legacy and Online Media in Germany, Julia Behre, Sascha Holig and Uwe Hasebrink describe how German media users combine contacts with different legacy and online media into a comprehensive pattern of exposure that makes sense within their everyday life. In The (Italian) “Peoples’ Internet Project”. A Picture of Cross-Media Audience over Old and Digital Media, Piermarco Aroldi and Linda Lombi provide the main evidences of how Italian Internet users draw on legacy and online media to meet their communication and daily needs. In Four Italian Media Repertoires between Legacy, Social and Digital Media, Francesca Pasquali and Nicoletta Vittadini describe four clusters of Italian users based on factor and cluster analysis. authors describe the clusters in the light of their digital and legacy media use and their socio-demographic variables. analysis shows that, if the age variable defines the consumption of younger and older clusters, the variables referring to a high social and cultural capital seem the most relevant in defining the more differentiated and comprehensive media repertoires: Mainstreamers and Allrounders.