Il digitale assente. Nuove e vecchie prospettive del testo pubblicitario

For years now, so-called new digital technologies and new conceptual definitions such as digital storytelling or digital narratives have haunted semiotic and, more generally, narratological studies like a spectre. In a way that is both new and old, different modes of consumption challenge the rigidly text-focused frameworks and seem to call loudly for new approaches. Between the lines of the many essays that, more or less directly, have addressed this supposed ongoing revolution, it often emerges that the digital, rather than transforming narrativity and the configurations at play, emphasizes specific operations and multiplies textual levels. This essay seeks to explore how much of the old exists in the new forms of digital storytelling applied to advertising and how much of the new is found in old approaches. It becomes evident that, while part of the semiotic methodology requires profound revision, another part seems to experience a sudden and justified rejuvenation. This is certainly the case, with various nuances, for the concepts of paratextuality and intertextuality, which today can help navigate the not always easy waters of digital narrativity (whatever that may mean).