Given the relevance of AIDS as a public health problem in the Italian context and of the role of mass media in the social construction of the phenomenon, the aim of the present study is twofold: (1) to explore the main AIDS-related themes in the Italian popular press; (2) to analyse the temporal trends of AIDS representations over the last decades. For the research, we decided to consult Italian newspaper articles produced between 1985 and 1990 and between 2005 and 2010 using the archives of the main two national newspapers (La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera), resulting in an overall sample of 446 newspaper articles. A computer-aided content analysis allowed the detection of five different thematic domains (clusters), respectively focused on: Medical care (7.47%), Family support (37.03%), Science and religion debate (27%), Social exclusion (17.6%) and Healthcare policies (10.9%). These thematic domains are conceived along two main latent dimensions (factors) which explain 72.47% of the data variance which respectively deal with: (1) Attitudes towards people with AIDS (care versus avoidance) and (2) Social mandate on AIDS (powerlessness versus control). The study results also reveal the potential evolution of representations of people with AIDS over time: from stigmatised subjects who represent a risk for the entire society within a climate of social control to people progressively symbolised as frail subjects that need to be taken care of.

Given the negative role of problematic use of new technological devices (NTD) in behavioral and psychological domains, the aim of the study is the Italian adaptation and validation of the Internet Motive Questionnaire for Adolescents (IMQ-A) in order to understand the motivation for the use of NTD. A total of 769 students 10-19 aged (M = 13.22, SD = 1.56) completed the IMQ-A, the Collins Figures Rating Scale, and two measures regarding the problematic NTD use, focused on overuse during the night and during meals. The IMQ-A showed adequate internal consistency with regard to its four subscales: Coping (α = .84), Social (α = .80), Enhancement (α = .80), and Conformity (α = .68) motives. However, with regard to factorial structure, a threefactor model (excluding Conformity subscale) showed slightly better fit indices than the original model. Coping motive was correlated with problematic NTD use and succeeded in predicting higher scores in body dissatisfaction as evidence of criterion-related and external validity. The Italian adaptation of the IMQ-A can be useful in both research and clinical fields, in order to propose alternative strategies for coping to users and to improve emotion regulation facets.

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