The issue of security play a central role in the policies of European governments as in the rest of the world. Factors such as: the terrorist threat, the economic crisis from which seems to be hard to get out, the general weakening of social welfare have a deep impact on society, which is crossed by an evermore widespread sentiment of anxiety and fear. The progressive crisis of values is contributing to weakening European identity and bringing out the emergence of an individualistic and self-representative component of society. As Bauman states, "we feel vulnerable: on an individual level, singularly, and all together as a nation, or rather as a human species" (Z. Bauman, 2015, Babel, Bari, Laterza, p.5). All of these factors sustain the construction of the frame of fear. We are witnessing the narrowing of the boundary between interior man and his social behavior, the pathway of identity construction of the individual is centered on the self-representation through the social and the consensus that he can achieve. It is a question of evolving and taking to the extreme, some of the basic concepts of a consumer society. The correspondence between demand and offer no longer regard the relationship between subject and object, but the subject becomes object at the moment he obtains “a like”. We are witnessing the proliferation of groups, tribes with weak ties represented by the almost obsessive search of consensus even through the instrumental use of false contents or mystifiers. One of the most serious consequences that digital society has produced is that it has surpassed and almost annihilated the role of mediation of journalism: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, are the new places to narrate reality or that which is held to be reality. We have entered the era of post-truth, misinformation, fake news, alternative truths, which proliferate on social media. Groups and communities characterized by polarized visions of the world are built and consolidated around them. In this sense, the theme of migration and its spread via the media, is today more than ever an element of sociological investigation because it proposes continuous examples of emotional rather than factual representations. The use of evermore shocking images, the same ones that rebound through the knot of communication, tend to create contrasting emotional reactions and generate fear rather than serious, in-depth reflection as to why the phenomenon continues to grow. So the frame of fear prevails. The ability to influence and persuade which factual representation has, is the fruit of the same process of construction of the image and of one’s own credibility which was taken advantage of by traditional media and has brought to the construction of the news depending on the power of the agenda setting. We are therefore witnessing a more emphatic polarization of opinions determined by our new relational and informative dimension at this point centered on the social network, a primary source in our communication and relation system. In this sense, migration has revealed itself to be an issue able to respond perfectly to the need to feed the frame of uncertainty which creates consensus and therefore power over public opinion.

The perception of security in the communities, the narration through media and social media focus on migration phenomenon in Italy

Pira F.
2017-01-01

Abstract

The issue of security play a central role in the policies of European governments as in the rest of the world. Factors such as: the terrorist threat, the economic crisis from which seems to be hard to get out, the general weakening of social welfare have a deep impact on society, which is crossed by an evermore widespread sentiment of anxiety and fear. The progressive crisis of values is contributing to weakening European identity and bringing out the emergence of an individualistic and self-representative component of society. As Bauman states, "we feel vulnerable: on an individual level, singularly, and all together as a nation, or rather as a human species" (Z. Bauman, 2015, Babel, Bari, Laterza, p.5). All of these factors sustain the construction of the frame of fear. We are witnessing the narrowing of the boundary between interior man and his social behavior, the pathway of identity construction of the individual is centered on the self-representation through the social and the consensus that he can achieve. It is a question of evolving and taking to the extreme, some of the basic concepts of a consumer society. The correspondence between demand and offer no longer regard the relationship between subject and object, but the subject becomes object at the moment he obtains “a like”. We are witnessing the proliferation of groups, tribes with weak ties represented by the almost obsessive search of consensus even through the instrumental use of false contents or mystifiers. One of the most serious consequences that digital society has produced is that it has surpassed and almost annihilated the role of mediation of journalism: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, are the new places to narrate reality or that which is held to be reality. We have entered the era of post-truth, misinformation, fake news, alternative truths, which proliferate on social media. Groups and communities characterized by polarized visions of the world are built and consolidated around them. In this sense, the theme of migration and its spread via the media, is today more than ever an element of sociological investigation because it proposes continuous examples of emotional rather than factual representations. The use of evermore shocking images, the same ones that rebound through the knot of communication, tend to create contrasting emotional reactions and generate fear rather than serious, in-depth reflection as to why the phenomenon continues to grow. So the frame of fear prevails. The ability to influence and persuade which factual representation has, is the fruit of the same process of construction of the image and of one’s own credibility which was taken advantage of by traditional media and has brought to the construction of the news depending on the power of the agenda setting. We are therefore witnessing a more emphatic polarization of opinions determined by our new relational and informative dimension at this point centered on the social network, a primary source in our communication and relation system. In this sense, migration has revealed itself to be an issue able to respond perfectly to the need to feed the frame of uncertainty which creates consensus and therefore power over public opinion.
2017
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11570/3126627
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