“Tormentone”, an extreme torture, is a typically Italian word describing a catchphrase, a running gag, an earworm, a summer hit or anything related with reiteration accentuated by the various media: advertisement jingles, journalists’ abusive metaphors, viral content on the internet. In this paper we attempt to understand if the audience is aware of this occurrence and willingly accepts being “tortured”, applying some theories about television and seriality proposed by Umberto Eco.
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