Power and Communication: Media, Politics and Institutions in Times of Crisis 1443876208, 9781443876209

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Power and Communication

Power and Communication: Media, Politics and Institutions in Times of Crisis Edited by

Silvia Leonzi, Giovanni Ciofalo and Antonio Di Stefano

Power and Communication: Media, Politics and Institutions in Times of Crisis Edited by Silvia Leonzi, Giovanni Ciofalo and Antonio Di Stefano This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Silvia Leonzi, Giovanni Ciofalo, Antonio Di Stefano and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7620-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7620-9

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ..................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Framing Reality: Power and Counterpower in the Age of Mediatization Giovanni Ciofalo, Antonio Di Stefano and Silvia Leonzi Chapter One ............................................................................................... 11 Satire in Italy in the Post-Political Era Silvia Leonzi Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 27 The Cultivation of Power: Origins of Today’s Media Industries, Politics, and Culture Giovanni Ciofalo and Giada Fioravanti Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 45 The Affective Imaginary of Social Media: Capitalism, Storytelling and Cultural Intermediation Antonio Di Stefano Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 65 Does Big Brother Exist? Communication, Power, Meanings, and Relations of Production Marialuisa Stazio Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 83 New Trends in Power and Communication: Features and Cruxes of Italian ‘Five Star Movement’ Erica Antonini Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 99 Shifting Climates of Opinion: The Strategies of British Think Tanks to Cope with, and Seize, the Economic Crisis of 2008 Marcos González Hernando

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Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 117 Between Diagnosis and Prognosis: Media ‘Instruction Manuals’ on Economic Crisis Karol Franczak Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 133 Crisis and the Information Economy: Re-Reading Herbert S. Schiller Mandy D. Tröger Contributors ............................................................................................ 147

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This collection of articles originated in a specific Research Stream, ‘Power and Communication in Times of Crisis’, organized within the 11th ESA conference, ‘Crisis, Critique and Change’, which was held at the University of Turin on August 28th-31st, 2013. We would like to thank the ESA for its hospitality and assistance, as well as all the Research Stream’s participants. Furthermore, our thanks also go to Cambridge Scholars Publishing for giving us the opportunity to turn an interesting exchange of ideas into a shared project.

INTRODUCTION FRAMING REALITY: POWER AND COUNTERPOWER IN THE AGE OF MEDIATIZATION GIOVANNI CIOFALO, ANTONIO DI STEFANO AND SILVIA LEONZI

The debate on the nature of the relationship between the notion of power and the role played by communication in current Western societies appears to be boundless. The media have dramatically increased the capacity to exercise their symbolic force over other fields of cultural production (Bourdieu, [1996] 1998; Champagne, 1990; Benson, 1999; Couldry, 2004). By accumulating power, be it material (since they are economic institutions) or symbolic (as bearers of credibility and legitimation), the media have been proven to be capable of partly structuring those intrinsic rules, values, and practices that organize, for example, the political system or the academic world from the inside. The very historical trajectory of the category of ‘authority’ allows us to emphasize the crucial function of the media in symbolically weakening the universality of those dimensions that, in the past, contributed to shaping social reality. Before mass media communication was pervasively widespread throughout people’s everyday lives, political authority reproduced its own power by keeping citizens at a distance from its défaillance (cf. Sennett, 1980; Clegg, 2000). However, when television started to enter the field of politics, publicly staging the ‘scandalous’ (private) life of Prime Ministers or Presidents, things changed quickly and this type of authority, whose power was grounded in what is kept hidden and secret (cf. Simmel, [1908] 1950), began to be subjected to various forms of public contestation. In other words, the media, especially television, contributed to blurring the boundaries between stage and backstage, which are at work in a social reality where physical space can

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Introduction

signify practices, relations, and discourses (cf. Goffman, 1959; Meyrowitz, 1985). In this way, they have been able to bridge the gap (e.g. in terms of access to information) that divided politicians and citizens, turning an institutionalized distance into increasing levels of closeness. This phenomenon, approximately, started taking place more or less in the 1970s in Western countries, although in the United States the process had emerged at least a decade before. Many different and unexpected effects were produced in the field of politics by the growing power of the media, whose impact and development were strictly linked to other cultural and social processes that impacted upon many segments of society. Politicians were solicited to make their image more appealing to public opinion, by pursuing multiple strategies relying on emotional and affective narratives whose aim was to foster people’s heightened engagement. Both Ronald Reagan in the United States and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy represented, at different levels, the manifest and effective embodiment of a form of spectacular politics, in which a charismatic leadership manages to supplant the traditional principles guiding politics as a system. In other words, the fact that an actor, on the one hand, and a successful media entrepreneur, on the other, were able to become political leaders is a clear indication of how the heteronomy of the media partly succeeded in redefining, from the outside, the priorities and aesthetics of politics especially in its relationship with citizens/voters. However, this phenomenon is not to be understood as a unidirectional dynamics. In these cases, depending on the level of internal coherence that regulates the functioning of a political system, a process of creolization is likely to take place (cf. de Certeau, [1980] 1984), which is a mixture of combined codes and styles whose actualization reverberates through both politics and the media. The fact that politics is essentially played out in the media does not mean that other factors (for example, grassroots activism or fraud) are not significant in deciding the outcome of political contests. Neither does it imply that the media are the power-holders. They are not the Fourth Estate. They are much more important: they are the space of power-making (Castells, 2009: 194).

Visibility is a double-edged sword (Thompson, 2000, 2005; Brighenti, 2010). Media coverage allows politicians to direct people’s attention away from an uncomfortable truth and to avoid those issues that may alienate some voters. At the same time, greater media exposure may increase the risk of being caught out in an error or caught up in some scandal. At the bottom, as the fictional character, Harvey Dent, says in The Dark Knight

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movie (directed by Cristopher Nolan, 2008), “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain”. A politician’s ability to address and discuss controversial topics related to his/her own cultural background (e.g. Barack Obama) or his/her own sexual affairs (e.g. Bill Clinton or again Silvio Berlusconi) profiles itself as a crucial and fundamental property to continue exercising a legitimated form of political credibility. However, citizens or a larger segment of them started remaining on the sidelines of democracy, also in light of an increasing number of scandals and mistakes in which these public figures were mostly involved. The public revealed greater levels of political skepticism, even though, in some cases, some citizens from Western societies have found alternative ways to express their dissent, for example, in those areas recognized as sub-political (Beck, [1993] 1996), such as critical consumption (Sassatelli, 2006). Focusing on the media allows us to emphasize their capacity to exercise power over other forms of cultural production (‘cultural’ is employed here in a broader sense). However, they are not to be understood as autonomous entities. As Castells rightly observes, Power is more than communication, and communication is more than power. But power relies on the control of communication, as counterpower depends on breaking through such control. And mass communication, the communication that potentially reaches society at large, is shaped and managed by power relationships, rooted in the business of media and the politics of the state. Communication power is at the heart of the structure and dynamics of society (Castells, 2009: 3).

The media are intertwined environments subjected to the influence of other cultural, economic, and political forces, which, in turn, reveal themselves capable of framing reality through the media themselves. In keeping with the purposes of the book, we might mention the topic of ‘economic crisis’. This issue has undergone constant attempts by different organizations (e.g. think tanks) comprising of particular experts, academics, and strategists (cf. Rich, 2004), to narratively ‘articulate’ the event. The media also contributed, indirectly and actively, by emphasizing the tragic consequences of the crisis in terms of unemployed-related suicides and more especially, giving voice and visibility to those worldviews that appeared to be dominant and more appealing. Identifying causes and guilt was the first step in a more general process aimed at providing new economic solutions and novel political strategies. Austerity measures adopted in some European countries to cope with economic crisis are precisely the result of ideological struggles, whose origin can be

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traced back to the 1980s, a period in which a criticism of the state as an inertial and bureaucratic entity compared to the dynamic and innovative private sector, started to become a ‘common sense’ truth (Mazzucato, 2011). The complexity of the phenomenon does not allow us to fully address it in this introduction, however we argue that the media have probably played a fundamental role in contributing, in most cases, to turning an opinion into a fact, which is shared and accepted as such. In other words, the subject of ‘economic crisis,’ which is grounded in actual conditions of existence, has been described by television and newspaper accounts, and reconceptualized through conversations on the social media, where people’s everyday life experiences and mediated representations of reality converge. But, since the concrete frames that experts, academics, economists, politics, and strategists manage to deploy and spread through public opinion, in order to make sense of a complex reality, are at the core of this process, an ‘ideological position’ on economic crisis can be legitimated as a just perspective. At the same time, the increasing importance of social movements as forms of counterpower is clearly obvious. At least in principle, these are the expression of the instances of those subjectivities that are ignored or disregarded by traditional politics and economics (Melucci, 1996; Touraine, 1985; Castells, 1997). Since 2011, Occupy movements have started representing the most visible and effective attempt to place people and their communities at the core of increasingly complex phenomena. More generally, the idea behind these ‘light’ organizations was precisely the possibility that individuals, understood as citizens, could reappropriate their lives and future, subtracting the latter from the control of seemingly ‘invisible’ powers (Heath, Flectcher and Munoz, 2013, eds). In these cases, social media environments or corporate SNS (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) have paradoxically contributed to make the Occupy message publicly available. They have actually allowed activists to coordinate their protest activities, to organize internal systems of communication (on the role played by mobile phones, see Castells, Fernández-Ardèvol, Qiu and Sey, 2006), and to offer an intertwined basis of information that profiled itself as a useful means of attracting the attention of mainstream media (Terranova and Donovan, 2013). While recognizing the cruciality of these entities in making certain hidden issues visible to the public eye and of partly exercising pressures on politics and affecting government actions, we argue that social and cultural movements may actually be the victims of their lighteness itself. In fact, they rely on weak and informal ties that become stronger relations within groups that organize protest activities. But, in order to be ‘politically’ relevant voices and to resist on the street and on the Web, at some point, social

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movements might turn themselves into ‘orgnets,’ that is ‘organized networks’ (Lovink and Rossiter, 2005), diffused throughout people’s everyday social experiences, which spread, share, and embody contents and values related to specific cultural issues. In this way, weak and strong, light and heavy may be the combined properties of movements whose power is actually molecularized. Therefore, in the age of mediatization (Couldry and Hepp, 2013), the relationship between the media and other forces capable of pervasively exercising their power appears to be, paradoxically, as strict as it is opaque. Social media and smart mobile technologies fully embed the media in daily lives of people. More generally, they may affect the modalities whereby other institutions and organizations reflect on themselves and develop their worldviews. At the same time, however, politics and economics, experts and strategists have all learned how to ‘exploit’ this potential for their own purposes. Detecting the opacity that characterizes this form of ‘exploitation’ is the first step in the acknowledgment of the phenomenon. Power and counterpower, and at a specific level, media and politics, think tanks and social movements, representation and reality constitute the most important topics addressed in the book. In Silvia Leonzi’s essay, Satire in Italy in the Post-Political Era, there is an attempt to underline how political satire and political power are intertwined phenomena. Analyzing an Italian case, she has described the circumstances under which political satire has been partly colonized and contaminated by the popularization of politics (Mazzoleni and Sfardini, 2009). In fact, before Silvio Berlusconi’s success as a political figure who was able to foster constant processes of renewal of Italian politics through the introduction of unusual language, entrepreneurial values, new codes of behaviour and so on, into parliamentary life, political satire had managed to remain substantially autonomous in terms of aesthetics and contents. The author argues that, after Berlusconi’s revolution, political satire has been partly obliged to follow the ‘innovation,’ or perhaps we should say the ‘eccentricity’ of Italian politicians. This analysis reveals, once again, the long-lasting, strong and perverse bond that still underlies the relationship between media and politics in Italy. In Giovanni Ciofalo and Giada Fioravanti’s chapter, The Cultivation of Power: Origins of Today’s Media Industries, Politics, and Culture, the aim is to draw attention to the special relationship between communication and power in the “Italian case”. To do this, they tell three different stories which lie within the narrative frame of cultivation. The first tells of private television, the second of the political transformation of one of its chief

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architects, Silvio Berlusconi, while the last refers to the present-day situation. According to Ciofalo and Fioravanti, the Italians were certainly influenced by this set of values and images and by the increase in communication opportunities, as well as by the expansion of the threshold of visibility. Although this cannot really be defined as a genuine cultivation of power, it does appear to have had a great effect on the cognitive dimension and, in the long run, has produced forms of conditioning in the processes of reality construction. Along the way, one of the main architects or indeed, the person who was responsible for this fundamental period of change has also managed to become one of its leading interpreters. In other words, Berlusconi’s practical actions gave power to television, while television’s symbolic action gave Berlusconi power. This clearly oversimplified causal model, based on an inevitable retrospective process of abstraction, is also shown to be a formidable consensus machine, through which the traditional kind of power is simultaneously preserved and generated. Antonio Di Stefano’s essay, The Affective Imaginary of Social Media: Capitalism, Storytelling and Cultural Intermediation, reflects on the symbolic mechanisms that allowed the social media system to become an appealing, fascinating, and exciting world in the eyes of the public, despite its multiple contradictions in terms of the economization of online social practices, colonization of individual affects, or the corporations’ relative control over private processes of social exchange. The author contends that excitement and desire are not enough to keep people glued to the social media reality without question. Indeed, the more this sort of ‘cultural and social glue’ sticks to people’s lives, the more the ‘affective imaginary’ works by turning social media environments into tailored and habitable utopias or dystopias, depending on the circumstances. In Does Big Brother Exist? Communication, Power, Meanings, and Relations of Production, Marialuisa Stazio describes the multiple visions of agency in digital environments. More specifically, on the one hand, she notes the risk that social media realities could resemble some sort of triumph of the new ‘microphysics of power,’ or the biopolitics of the bioeconomy, based on bringing “life and its mechanism into the realm of explicit calculation” and making “knowledge-power an agent of transformation of human life,” as in Foucault definition of bio-power ([1980] 1991: 43). On the other hand, the author observes that we are still at the beginning of empirical research regarding agency in digital environments. Accordingly, as social scientists, we cope with the problematic conceptualization of this agency, which operates between empowerment and exploitation.

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Erica Antonini’s chapter, New Trends in Power and Communication: Features and Cruxes of Italian ‘Five Star Movement’, offers a more indepth description of the antinomies that characterize Beppe Grillo’s movement. The Five Star Movement appears to rely on the democratic power of the internet and on its alleged capacity to allow the common man to take part to political decision-making processes. As a matter of fact, it is actually playing on the charisma of its leader but at the same time experiencing many difficulties in its institutionalization. Grillo chased the mirage of transparent direct democracy by means of the internet. However, the latter is becoming something of a crux, as on the one hand, a utopian image helps followers to mobilize but, on the other, when success is gained, the return to daily political contents, subjects and tones is still unavoidable. In this way, the Five Star Movement has experienced the fact that “movement is easier than government” (Wiles, 1969: 168). In Marcos González Hernando’s essay, Shifting Climates of Opinion: The Strategies of British Think Tanks to Cope with, and Seize, the Economic Crisis of 2008, the purpose guiding his work is to launch a discussion on the role played by think tanks – specifically in Great Britain – in narrating and interpreting moments of crisis, with particular focus on the 2007-2008 financial crash. He mainly concentrates on exploring think tanks’ interventions and strategic positioning in relation to other actors, by describing their involvement in policy-making and politics more generally, their relationship with the media and their role as advocates and/or experts in defence of ideas. According to the author, think tanks are compelled to both push forward a particular set of explanations and policy prescriptions – often associated with an ideological inclination – whilst also attempting to give an authoritative account that has a minimal degree of epistemic authority based on expertise, which entails, at least to a degree, a claim of intellectual independence. Karol Franczak’s chapter, Between Diagnosis and Prognosis: Media ‘Instruction Manuals’ on Economic Crisis, focuses on the Polish media efforts to explain the crisis in the form of what can be called media ‘instruction manuals’ (guides, reference works, ‘essentials’), whose actual function is to have a symbolic and engaging impact on the public discourse, or – in other words – to manipulate readers or viewers into adopting a certain point of view. Using research into the framing of the public sphere, the aim of the essay is to evaluate a specific publication that meets the criteria for an ‘emergency instruction manual,’ in order to reveal how the economic crisis has been conceptualized and defined. In this way, Franczak is able to articulate an in-depth analysis of the process of social

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definition of the crisis (or rather crises) in the Polish media, and an investigation of the mechanisms of social perceptions of this category. In Crisis and the Information Economy: Re-Reading Herbert S. Schiller, Mandy D. Tröger, first of all, gives a brief account of the emerging field of the political economy of communication and Herbert Schiller’s central place within. The author, then, discusses central themes in Schiller’s work relating to the ‘information economy’, such as the role of transnational capital, communication technology, consumerism and labor. Particular attention is given to Schiller’s Information and the Crisis Economy, a work that focused on the shifting role of information as the key element to a newly developing political-economy defined by transnational capital. As such, it offers an illuminating account of the forces that drove the development of the communication infrastructure nowadays known as the internet.

References Beck, U. ([1993] 1996) The Reinvention of Politics, Oxford: Polity Press. Benson, R. (1999) “Field Theory in Comparative Context: A New Paradigm for Media Studies”, Theory and Society 28(3): 463-498. Bourdieu, P. ([1996] 1998) On Television, New York: New Press. Brighenti, A.M. (2010) Visibility in Social Theory and Social Research, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Castells, M. (1997) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Vol. II: The Power of Identity, Oxford: Blackwell. —. (2009) Communication Power, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Castells, M., M. Fernández-Ardèvol, J.L. Qiu and A. Sey (2006) Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Champagne, P. (1990) Faire l’opinion. Le nouveau jeu politique, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Clegg, S. (2000) Power and authority: resistance and legitimacy, pp. 7792 in H. Goverde, P.G. Cerny, M. Haugaard et al. (eds), Power in Contemporary Politics: Theories, Practices, Globalizations, London: Sage. Couldry, N. (2004) Media meta-capital: Extending the Range of Bourdieu’s Field Theory, pp. 165-190 in D. Swartz and V.L. Zolberg (eds), After Bourdieu. Influence, Critique, Elaboration, DordrechtBoston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Couldry, N. and A. Hepp (2013) “Conceptualizing Mediatization: Contexts, Traditions, Arguments”, Communication Theory 23: 191202. de Certeau, M. ([1980] 1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Foucault, M. ([1980] 1991) Question of Method, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect. Studies in Governmentality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York: Doubleday. Heath, R.G., C.V. Fletcher and R. Munoz (2013, eds) Understanding Occupy from Wall Street to Portland: Applied Studies in Communication Theory, Lexington: Lexington Books. Lovink, G. and N. Rossiter (2005) “Dawn of the Organised Networks”, The Fibreculture Journal 5. Mazzoleni, G. and A. Sfardini (2009) Politica Pop. Da ‘Porta a Porta’ a ‘L’Isola dei famosi’, Bologna: il Mulino. Mazzucato, M. (2011) The Entrepreneurial State, London: Demos. Melucci, A. (1996) Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, New York: Cambridge University Press. Meyrowitz, J. (1985) No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behaviour, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rich, A. (2004) Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sassatelli, R. (2006) Virtue, Responsibility and Consumer Choice: Framing Critical Consumerism, pp. 219-250 in J. Brewer and F. Trentmann (eds), Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges, Oxford: Berg. Sennett, R. (1980) Authority, New York: Knopf. Simmel, G. ([1908] 1950) The Secret Society, pp. 345-376 in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited by Kurt Wolff, New York: Free Press. Terranova, T. and J. Donovan (2013) Occupy Social Networks: The Paradoxes of Using Corporate Social Media in Networked Movements, pp. 296-310 in G. Lovink and M. Rasch (eds), Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Thompson, J.B. (2000) Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. —. (2005) “The new visibility”, Theory, Culture and Society 22(6): 31-51. Touraine, A. (1985) “An Introduction to the Study of Social Movements”,

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Social Research 52(4): 749-787. Wiles, P. (1969) A Syndrome. Not a Doctrine: Some Elementary Theses on Populism, pp. 163-179 in G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (eds), Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, London: Macmillan.

CHAPTER ONE SATIRE IN ITALY IN THE POST-POLITICAL ERA SILVIA LEONZI SAPIENZA UNIVERSITY OF ROME

Introduction While the American and British political scene in the 1980s was dominated by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and their strong liberal influence on the economic sphere, Italian politics was in the throes of strong structural changes that were capable of unexpectedly upsetting established institutional equilibriums. One of the key figures in ‘tipping the balance’ between the two leading parties was Bettino Craxi, the Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party, who had gained popular consensus in the late 1970s. Craxi was known for his tendency to make a show of his political personality, and the ‘Sigonella crisis’ (Crainz, 2003)1 had shown him to be the stereotype of your ‘strong and decisive man.’ This scenario appears to be symptomatic for a cultural and social system that was forced to renew itself after the period of political, economic, and social crisis that had characterized the so-called ‘anni di piombo’ [Years of Lead].2 In fact, at the end of a decade where ideological and social conflicts and the affirmation of extra-parliamentary terrorist groups had been the order of the day, many Italians seemed to favour private undertakings over active participation in the public sphere (Ciofalo, 2011; Colombo, 2012). 1

The ‘Sigonella crisis’ refers to the events that happened in Sigonella, in Sicily, in October 1985. Following the political rift between Bettino Craxi, the Italian Prime Minister, and Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States, even further differences were to emerge over the handling of the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking. 2 In Italy, the term ‘anni di piombo’ [Years of Lead] refers to the historical period that mainly coincides with the 1970s (from the late 1960s until the early 1980s), which saw a resurgence of extra-parliamentary violence on the part of left and rightwing terrorists.

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In part, the assassination of Aldo Moro in 1978 by the Red Brigades represented the symbol and the point of no return in this process of detachment from what is public. The Prime Minister’s body was subjected to unprecedented media coverage, from the Red Brigades’ press releases with Moro’s face in full view, to the live coverage of the discovery of his corpse inside the red Renault, symbolically parked halfway between Via delle Botteghe Oscure and Piazza del Gesù. Almost two decades before the advent of Tangentopoli [Bribesville], his murder marked the definitive end of what political observers were to call the ‘First Republic’ (Livolsi, 1993, ed.).3 An analysis of the national political scene of this period makes it clear how the Christian Democrats failed to interpret the needs of the people, who ever since the 1980s, had become more and more unwilling to take an active and assertive role in anything to do with politics, and more and more inclined to delegate the leadership of their country to charismatic figures. Many of those who contributed to bringing about any significant changes had only lived through the tail end of fascism or were even born after the Second World War, and they therefore represented a generational change that was crucial to the dynamics of renewal of the overall political framework. Furthermore, this was a time when, alongside the citizen’s decreased participation in res publica, Italians were experiencing feelings of disaffection and alienation, not just towards the State in general – the eternal object of suspicion (Sylos Labini, 2001) –, but more specifically towards the party system and its distortions. In this sense, this growing personalization process, which Craxi embodies so well, where the media image of a leader is fashioned in a very short time, is transformed within a decade (Berlusconi’s success in the 1994 elections is seen as a ‘historical’ turning point) into an established strategy on which to base the electoral campaign and the communicative pact with the Italian people. However, it is also evident that changes within the institutional setting are favoured by trends that are external to parliamentary action, but just as important for their consequences on political activity. The demise and entrenchment in the private sector coincided with the revolution initiated by Silvio Berlusconi in the field of broadcasting. Private TV stations began to enjoy enormous success, and an aggressive editorial strategy (Forgacs, [1990] 2000), aimed at liberalizing 3

In Italian history, the concept of the ‘First Republic’ refers to the republican period that began after the Second War II and ended between 1992, with the Tangentopoli [Bribesville] case, that is to say, the judicial inquiry into the system of party funding, and 1994. This was the period when Silvio Berlusconi became Prime Minister and inaugurated a new era in national politics.

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the market and backed by a strong growth in advertising revenue, brought substantial changes to the national media landscape in the space of just a few years. Canale 5’s, Italia 1’s and Rete 4’s cool, ironic, irreverent, and modern style (whose television aesthetic was completely autonomous and emancipated from the traditional style of the Rai), along with a glittering and often brazen imaginary that evokes American myths and dreams, create the conditions for the emergence of an increasingly more complex and volatile consumer demand. This mediatised spectacularization of daily life not only radiates throughout the system of the culture industry, but soon proves that it can influence politics and political strategies. The fundamental links that have always existed between media and politics in the history of this nation now appear to be inextricably intertwined. Moreover, they are clearly evident in the never-to-be-resolved ‘conflict of interest’ that is epitomized by Silvio Berlusconi, the entrepreneurpolitician, who not only owns the private TV stations but also has a keyrole in the political life of the nation. On the other hand, this transformation from citizen to consumer, whose main interest is personal well-being and fulfilment that mainly derives from the possession and use of tangible and intangible property, is not without consequences and encourages the emergence of completely new issues and perspectives. As the Italian public started to grow accustomed to an advertising and television aesthetic based primarily on seduction, they started to view the political market in a different way. As Statera [1987: 178] notes: we should therefore expect to see the return of political spectacle, with the propagation of suggestive messages, the adoption of unpredictable styles and direct symbolic characterizations, as well as elusive and engaging actions that are beyond the established line-ups. We may not like it, but this is probably the only feasible way that the Italian political system can be unblocked at the moment.

In this passage, the Italian scholar is extolling the renewal of communication styles and practices in embryo, and hence, he is not yet able to outline the negative consequences of a spectacularization that, in time, would manage to strip traditional politics of much of its meaning and content. More generally, the numerous important transformations that were taking place on the cultural plane have been neatly described by the French scholar Jean Francois Lyotard ([1979] 1984). He analyzes the transition from modern to post-modern society that was sanctioned by the end of the Grand Narratives, that is to say, those ideologies in which an

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eschatological vision was proposed to every person, where the fate of the human race is matched with great stories that are common to all. The emergence of a multitude of micro-narratives, which some scholars see as a symptom of pluralization and, therefore, of the democratization of the public sphere (Vattimo, [1990] 1992), takes on unprecedented connotations in politics. We are witness to a discursive shift towards integration: the emergence of a media environment defined by the collapse of the previous distinctions between genders, social practices, and discursive fields. In such an environment, politics and popular culture, information and entertainment, the comic and the serious, the real and the surreal have merged, creating a new mixture of expressivity (Baym, 2007: 373).

Basically, the increasingly predominant role of a genre like satire has brought about the transition from the representation/report of the imagined future to the narration/tales of events and stories based on the present, where dogmatic assertion is replaced by irony and sarcasm. As far as the objectives of the next paragraph are concerned, one of the obvious fundamental changes concerns the relationship between citizens and political authority (see Sennett, 1980). In fact, in a system where the dynamics of personalization assume the form of increasingly strong leadership and where media pervasiveness is on the rise, it is possible to see the negative consequences of an unprecedented visibility (Thompson, 1995) and the emerging criticism of a politics that is in the hands of a single charismatic figure. For authority to exist and remain intact, there must be a formal distance between the leader and his public (a void which is offset by the aura of an almost divine body), while, in this context, there is an unexpected and sometimes alienating proximity between the two. And this is where satire comes into play, as the means of desacralizing this aura of leadership. The Leader’s charisma not only becomes the subject of even the most trivial public conversation, but it is also something to laugh about all together, and its original form on the political institutional scene is defined and modified.

Political Satire in Italy from the 1980s onwards The attempt to provide a historical overview of the phenomenon of political satire in Italy from the 1980s onwards shows that the previous, indeed rather unusual relationship between political leaders and citizens now underwent an interesting evolution. In other words, the politicians

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themselves, whose role was being increasingly mediatized,4 were on the search for ways to engage with their public that were based more around dialogue, at least in terms of visibility, than on forms of hierarchical and vertical communication, proven to be less effective. In fact, as Mazzoleni and Schulz (1999: 251) have pointed out, political actors have become “able to adapt their behavior to media requirements (…) they stage an event in order to get media attention, or if they fashion an event in order to fit the media’s needs as regards timing, location, and the framing of the message and the performers in the limelight.” Obviously, this situation was not unique to Italy, but also applied to most of the Western democracies, mainly in the period beginning in the 1990s. This was when political strategies were adopted that built up a seductive image of the leader and created an emotional connection with the voters and events that were increasingly mediatized (Campus, 2010: 220). Although one cannot overlook the similarities with other Western leaders, it is also true that Italy has traditionally maintained several peculiar traits in terms of political media coverage and, more generally, as regards the relationship between media and politics, which are not found in other nations. For example, as Ciaglia noted (2013: 551), in 2009, a large number of Italian MPs were also enrolled in the Order of Journalists (12.4% of the House), and, in some cases, even continued to exercise their profession at the same time. On the contrary, in England and Germany, the figure amounted to 6.5% and 3.9% respectively (in 2010) and is a clear indication of how the relationship between media and politics in Italy has its own logic and dynamics, and how communication related professions are closely intertwined with political representation. Two episodes from the 1980s can be considered typical examples of the construction of the Italian collective identity and the relationship between media, politics, and citizenship. Firstly, the President of the Republic Sandro Pertini’s ‘active’ participation in Italy’s 1982 World Cup victory, when he was filmed playing cards on the flight home with, among others, Enzo Bearzot. The second example saw the actor Roberto Benigni picking up Enrico Berlinguer, the Secretary General of the Italian Communist Party, in 1983 in Rome. Similar ‘jovial’ and unorthodox moments involving subjects who traditionally displayed a gravitas and respect for ‘conventions’ are proof of the transition that was underway and 4

In particular, Strömbäck (2008: 234) conceptualized the process of political mediatization by resorting to a multi-dimensional approach. In fact, this scholar saw the main features of this phenomenon as being the affirmation of the mass media as a fundamental tool for information within the political framework and the establishment of a media logic that is partially independent of institutional power.

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contribute to outlining new boundaries and modes of representation. The key figures on the political scene become part of a playful, popular, and informal imaginary, which is offered to the public in a de-institutionalized and commonplace form. The presence of a comedian on a stage dedicated to political discourse, the very act of ‘picking up’ the leader, almost as if he were a child in need of protection, bring forth a potential for styles and languages, hitherto unexpressed. The public starts to get used to a different political grammar, while the private TV channels with their new content and styles provide the highest form of stimulation of all desires and the highest concentration of postmodern subject matter. Entertainment programmes such as Drive In, which focuses on speeding up languages in the age of fast food, and Striscia la Notizia, which rewrites the canons and content of journalism, are particularly interesting examples, since they were able to popularize and give new life to well-established genres and formats. Satire, which in Italy until the 1970s had tended to be of a political nature and extremely harsh and corrosive in style, now provides the public with a tool where almost every aspect of daily life can become something to laugh about. Satire is also predominantly leftwing for a number of different reasons. Ever since the Second World War, the Communist Party had been a cultural and even a safe and desirable haven for avant-garde intelligentsia (Gundle, [1995] 2000). Party members had been forced into exile during the Fascist period and were a minority group in Parliament during the ‘First Republic.’ Therefore, power was mainly seen to be in the hands of the Christian Democrats, who were far more determined and interested in controlling culture, media and television in particular, and well able to exploit its potential as an instrumentum regni. Of course, to claim that the satire of that time was leftwing may be going too far, but, in all likelihood, given the previously mentioned historical conditions, there is no doubt that leftwing satire has proven itself over time to be ‘louder,’ more mobilized, and better organized than that of the right. After all, the very fact of being the opposition, of being the minority group in Italy, and of experiencing limited job opportunities in the cultural industry actually incited several left-wing intellectuals to refine their political criticism and make it more appealing to an audience that in the 1960s and 1970s was in the throes of increasing its level of literacy (Forgacs, [1990] 2000). As Polese (2009: 9-10) observed, “satire is leftwing [...] it can be a strong political weapon [...] it needs a susceptible and short-tempered target and is, however, sustained by an absolute, extremely high level of self-esteem (Craxi, for example).”

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The 1980s represent a critical moment in this process (Ciofalo, 2011). Although the ideologies and grand narratives, the refuge for both left and right, are already in the doldrums, they have not yet completed their life cycle. Satire, therefore, still has a political connotation and is deployed in one political field or another. Political leaders have started to use the new language of post-modern aesthetics but they have not completely internalized it yet, or better, they are still in pursuit of satire rather than second-guessing it. The comedian Beppe Grillo’s dismissal from the Rai, following his monologue on November 15, 1986 against the Socialists, led by the then Prime Minister, Bettino Craxi, shows how the relationship between satire and politics in Italy was characterized by both a clear antagonism and also subject to censorship. In particular, the figure of Craxi, as Polese (2009, ed.) rightly maintains, is the perfect target to be mocked and ridiculed, inasmuch as he represents a strong and somewhat authoritarian and decisive leader. Although he became the emblem of an unprecedented spectacle of political life, Craxi was, however, still a traditional politician, which gives an almost sacred value to the management of his image and as such, does not allow his person to be trivialized. In the 1990s, the antagonism of the previous period allows for an unprecedented contamination. In 1992, Tangentopoli [Bribesville], i.e., the judicial inquiry into the illegal financing of political parties, marks the end of the ‘First Republic.’ In 1994, a Milanese businessman, Silvio Berlusconi, founded a new party, Forza Italia, in just a few months. This new party trounced the Communists in the elections and gave rise to a new political and cultural era. From this moment on, “mocking the laughing king becomes more and more difficult.” Politics has now acquired the style and languages of entertainment and uses the comic register to its advantage, putting a strain on the traditional modes of using the satirical weapon. In other words, if in the past satire had outguessed politics and laid it bare, now it is politics, with its internalized styles and practices typical of the world of entertainment, that becomes the mouthpiece of a formal and linguistic change capable of revolutionizing the way of thinking and doing politics in Italy. As Polese (2009: 9-10) observes yet again: Silvio Berlusconi, a completely new character, ever the nice guy and always quick to crack a joke, who wears a bandana and uses shoe lifts to look taller, who likes to play malicious pranks and travels around with his face made up, giving the impression of not believing in the sacredness of the power he actually embodies.

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Back in the 1970s, Berlusconi had already become someone to reckon with, first in the world of advertising and then television, and he was the key figure in introducing forms and styles into Italian politics that were highly unusual. He speaks in a conversational style (Morcellini, 1995), familiar to your average Italian or ‘your housewife from Voghera,’ who have no difficulty in identifying themselves in the slogans that often come from football jargon, or with pub jokes that make the leader ‘one of us’. The very name of the party, Forza Italia, exalts the idea of cheering one’s team on. Such innovations simplify and speed up his acceptance by the Italian people, who till now have only known him as the President of AC Milan. Over time, Berlusconi ‘refines’ his techniques and communication strategies, despite numerous faux pas and controversies, which, however, had no particular effect or negative consequences in terms of political response. On the contrary, they actually served to make him more human and therefore closer to the common man. It is emblematic that shortly after his election Berlusconi claims to be ‘anointed by the Lord’ or that he is a ‘working class Premier,’ a mixture of the sacred and profane, the high and the low, which creates closeness on the one hand, but arouses admiration on the other. The group photo taken at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in 2002 shows the Prime Minister making the ‘sign of the horns’. In 2003, shortly before taking over the rotating presidency of the European Union, he told the German MEP Martin Schultz that he would have recommended him for the role of a Kapo in a film about concentration camps. These episodes are flanked by all the jokes he cracked during public events of an institutional nature, and the meeting with Tony Blair in 2004 when he wore a bandana. This all goes to show how Berlusconi appears as a real trickster in the panorama of Italian politics. His innovations in communication, characterized by a continuous recourse to the language of comedy, have produced significant changes in the relationship between politicians and citizens. His coming to power certainly intensified the process of the strong personalization of political imaginary, where the leader’s charisma soon filled the void of meaning that the traditional parties had always had. Therefore, on the communicative level, the 1990s can be said to represent the period of contamination. Satire is no longer simply the product of extra-party characters that make light of the most significant figures in power, but rather, it is the outcome of a hybridization that sees the emergence of political players, who are, at least to a certain extent, more willing to accept satire and even to put it to their own good use, thereby weakening its harmful effects.

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In the noughties, this process of change is brought about in more defined and decided ways, so that this period can be considered as being characterized by the dynamics of subversion. The protagonists of satire acquire an awareness of the political role the public have attributed them, while, at the same time, political protagonists discover that satire is more a legitimate strategy than a disturbing tactic. As Mazzoleni and Sfardini (2009: 51) note, “the comic or stand-up comedian looks good on camera and calls the viewer as citizen into question. This is how a relationship of trust is built up between the star performer and his audience, endowing the value of truth to what is being communicated.”

The Interpreters of Political Satire Of course, there is only one Berlusconi on the Italian scenario, especially in terms of his unprecedented media power in the Western world, which meant that the Italian comedians, whose forte was in political satire and who came after him, were initially caught unprepared. But as time went by, several of them proved that they were able to ‘exploit’ the Prime Minister’s shortcomings for their own repertoires. In particular, Berlusconi was effective in initiating a process that emptied the contents and language of traditional politics and, to a certain extent, reduced the effects of the public criticism that satire tends to produce. However, if one describes the communicative relationship between politicians and comedians from a relational perspective, the resulting complexity of the situation in this period is clear to see. First of all, we need to distinguish between the different types of satire: the court jester, the laughing hyena and the preacher. Programmes such as Il Bagaglino, Chiambretti Night, Striscia la Notizia can be included as examples of the first type. They offer forms of satire that could be called ‘controlled,’ since they take place within the boundaries of themes and characters that are pre-established by the powers that be and tend to stay within a comfort zone of consolidated subjects and language. For example, although Il Bagaglino puts leading political figures on show, it is never really ‘critical’. It becomes a sort of superficial satire that takes an almost complacent look at the shortcomings and faults of the characters who are being exposed to ridicule, with content that is never of the utmost political importance. Instead, the laughing hyena category, whose protagonists are personalities like Serena Dandini, Corrado Guzzanti, Maurizio Crozza, Neri Marcorè, Zoro, etc., is a form of more direct satirical action, where the comedian puts him/herself completely in the shoes of the politician. However, the

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chosen target’s behaviour and language is not merely imitated, but – as on Il Bagaglino – taken to an extreme level that reveals the politician’s ‘true’ nature to the public. We are therefore talking about a case of exaggerated satire, but this very fact of being ‘over the top’ is what allows a public, who are not so familiar with political spectacle, to grasp the leader’s or the party’s most salient feature in just a few lines or catchphrases. The third type is represented by the preacher (Sabina Guzzanti, Adriano Celentano, Beppe Grillo, etc.) and has quite a few differences with the first two. In fact, the preacher does not need to step into the shoes of the ‘other person’ he/she wishes to satirize, but instead he/she sets himself up on a pedestal from which an extremely personalized form of satirical criticism is presented to the public. All of the aforementioned figures are prime examples of this, even if their performances sometimes have different features. Adriano Celentano is more prone to long monologues where he enters into a sort of mystical communion with his public. He speaks very slowly, giving his audience time to contemplate the meaning of his words that are never shouted but merely suggested. His style is completely different to that of Beppe Grillo who tends to put on shows where he makes great use of his physicality, accompanied by an explosive communicative verve and his ‘yelled’ speeches which enhance the effectiveness of the proposed contents.

Pop-ilarity or Political Satire in the Social Media Era All these characters are immeasurably connected to the world of television, and their symbolic identity is conveyed through the visibility that only television can provide. This link was particularly strengthened from the 1980s onwards and has had inevitable consequences on the satirical models that are proposed, on the different narrative modes that are used, and on the very politics of satire. Inevitably, ever since the year two thousand, when web 2.0 sanctioned the creation of a horizontal connection between users and the technological infrastructure, that is to say, when the groundwork was laid for the subsequent success of the social media universe, political satire has also had to change its style and course of action (Castells, 2009). The television model has always been based on a rather traditional, single performance space dominated by just one performer who transmits an educational, critical or sarcastic message, where satire is inscribed within a set of unspoken rules that must be obeyed. In this sense, television is like a closed world, and satire must not only fight with political power but also with the rules of conduct imposed by a shared

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public space. Of course, the 1990s saw languages gain a certain autonomy compared to the three previous decades, but the process was still not complete. Instead, on the Net, that is to say, in a space that encourages the centralization of relational universes rather than the spread of uncontrolled navigation (the success of Google as a search engine and Facebook as a social network confirm this trend) satire no longer belongs to a performer or to a particular space, which is, therefore, controlled in all its forms. These elements are essential factors for understanding just how satire and its protagonists have changed their appearance in the social media era and how, with the passing of time, they have interiorized forms of development in which virality or memes play a central role. Therefore, in light of all these processes, we wish to add another aspect to the categories that have already been analyzed (the court jester, the laughing hyena, the preacher). In our opinion, a further concept, namely pop-ilarity, is necessary to allow the description and definition of today’s modern trends. Hilarity and what is popular form an original mixture which shows how the transmission of the feeling of hilarity, established and spread on the web and especially in social environments, may possibly result in many of the users getting emotionally involved in a form of a satirical narrative. To explain this better, let us take an in-depth look at the page called É tutta colpa di Pisapia [It’s all Pisapia’s fault]. This involved a particular kind of audience activism, launched by the centre-right in the person of Letizia Moratti, who used social media to demonize Giuliano Pisapia, the centre-left’s candidate for Mayor of Milan in the 2011 local elections. Our analysis was conducted on Twitter (#morattiquotes) and on the ‘É tutta colpa di Pisapia’ Facebook page. It is interesting to note that everything happened rather quickly and produced a sort of communication spiral. On 11 May 2011, Sky Italy aired the debate between Moratti and Pisapia, in view of the first round of the Milan administrative elections due to be held on May 15/16. At the end of the programme, the centre-right candidate reminded viewers how Giuliano Pisapia had once been suspected of carjacking, although she provided no proof to back her claim and said it just as the final credits were rolling, preventing her opponent from answering back. In actual fact, the episode proved to be a boomerang for Letizia Moratti. On Twitter, #morattiquotes reached a quota of 141 within a few hours, and Pisapia went from being a possible culprit, to someone to be defended, to whom the social media ideally returned the right to reply. In fact, in some tweets, his name paradoxically appears alongside some of the most terrible atrocities. The heavily ironic style that is used goes to highlight not only the fact that Moratti’s accusation was

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unfounded, but that it was practically unreal or, better still, surreal. Here are some examples: #Pisapia tampered with the Fukushima nuclear reactor #Pisapia steals petrol from the tanks of electric cars #Pisapia is the black smoke in Lost #Pisapia rented an apartment (under the table) to Bin Laden #Pisapia killed Chuck Norris #Pisapia disguised as a chambermaid framed Strauss-Kahn #If you listen to Pisapia’s voice backwards, you’ll hear the voice of the devil #Pisapia disguised himself as a serpent and deceived Eve #Pisapia puts on his diving gear and uses a hand drill to hole immigrants’ boats

On 14 May, the blog of the leading national newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano explicitly cited the Twitter episode and described its success as being a big hit. Repubblica.it also reported the event on May 20, while the day before, the Facebook group ‘É tutta colpa di Pisapia’ had been set up in connection with the same situation and following the allegations launched against the centre-left candidate by Red Ronnie. The latter was a TV music show host who had accused Pisapia of having cancelled a musical event in Milan (even though he had not yet been elected). The episode sparked off a new explosion of posts on Twitter, after the initial boom recorded in the first few days. However, the rebound effect does not end here. In fact, in his opening monologue on the noted Ballarò political talk show broadcast on RaiTre on May 24, the comedian Maurizio Crozza openly cites the phenomenon of ‘É tutta colpa di Pisapia.’ 4 days later, the cultural programme Chetempochefa, once again on RaiTre, saw the journalist Massimo Gramellini include the Pisapia affair in his ranking of the week’s events. The #morattiquotes on Twitter carried on right until June 15, that is to say, a mere fortnight before the elections. A specific analysis of the rebound effect makes it therefore possible to say that satire is presented as a transmedia content, able to cross the media boundaries that separate the different media and spread itself throughout the system, according to specific languages and styles. However, as we have seen, it does seem to be confined to certain media contexts and consolidated formats in mainstream media. To be precise, the ‘É tutta colpa di Pisapia’ case is mentioned on two traditionally leftist programmes on RaiTre, and therefore more critical towards the centre-right, and in two newspapers, La Repubblica and il Fatto Quotidiano, which are also more biased to the left. At this point the following words of two American scholars come in handy, Baum and Jamison (2006: 947), when they argue that “some American voters may need The New York Times to choose which

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candidate to vote for; others may need to watch Oprah,” which indicates a diversification in media consumption processes aimed at the choice of how the audience votes. However, in the case under consideration, it is clear that satire has offered itself as a testing ground for civic networking, or rather, as a Trojan horse, which, although it does not necessarily coincide with political or anti-political action tout court, actually simplifies and speeds up the creation of potentially significant connections. Satire can actually work as a means to transform political imaginary, not merely on the discourse level but also by producing real effects. The following example shows what happened when Pierluigi Bersani, the then secretary of the Democratic Party, started to endow his political speeches with the selfsame metaphors that Maurizio Crozza, the famous Italian comedian, had once used to mock him. I must apologize to all Italians for having created a monster. I’ll have to tell Bersani! I started to use metaphors to make fun of him, but never for one moment did I think that those metaphors would have turned up as part of the PD’s political agenda [...] If I’d thought that my satire would have become a real political thought, I would have simply done the imitation of Berlusconi and said: “I turn myself in.” (on Ballarò, 13 September 2011).

Conclusion We should underline that the described events indicate how satire on the Web is able to ‘immediately’ undermine the old political strategies. This process is favoured by the speed and multiplication of comments and by the instantaneous and horizontal nature of social networks. However, especially as regards issues of a political nature, there is still a need for a given event to get some visibility in the mainstream media (major TV stations and printed headlines) if a wider audience is to be reached. Moreover, as already pointed out, satire on the Web can feed off the high level of autonomy and anarchy that characterizes the process of creating discursive practices, tactics, and languages. And most of all, as we have seen on Twitter and Facebook, the ‘É tutta colpa di Pisapia’ episode on the social media was strengthened by what Umberto Eco ([1967] 1987) described in terms of semiological guerrilla warfare, aimed at fighting the dominant culture on its own ground and manipulating it at the level of collective imagination. At the same time, however, one needs to question just how far satire on the Net is really able to foster a change in terms of attitudes and values. Indeed, there is a very real risk that it will be restricted within the

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boundaries of the playful dimension (cf. Lovink, 2012), which tends to only favour emotional experiences, driven more by the power of virality and communicative contagion than the importance of the subject itself.

References Baum, M.A. and A.S. Jamison (2006) “The Oprah Effect: How Soft News Helps Inattentive Citizens Vote Consistently”, The Journal of Politics 68(4): 946-959. Baym, G. (2007) “Representation and the Politics of Play: Stephen Colbert’s Better Know a District”, Political Communication 24: 359376. Campus, D. (2010) “Mediatization and Personalization of Politics in Italy and France: The Cases of Berlusconi and Sarkozy”, The International Journal of Press/Politics 15(2): 219-235. Castells, M. (2009) Communication Power, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ciaglia, A. (2013) “Politics in the media and the media in politics: A comparative study of the relationship between the media and political systems in three European countries”, European Journal of Communication 28(5): 541-555. Ciofalo, G. (2011) Infiniti anni Ottanta. Tv, cultura e società alle origini del nostro presente, Milano: Mondadori. Colombo, F. (2012) Il paese leggero. Gli Italiani e i media tra contestazione e riflusso (1967-1994), Roma-Bari: Laterza. Crainz, G. (2003) Il Paese mancato. Dal miracolo economico agli anni Ottanta, Roma: Donzelli. Dahlgren, P. (2000) Media, citizenship and civic culture, pp. 310-328 in J. Curran and M. Gurevitch (eds), Mass Media and Society, London: Arnold,. Eco, U. ([1967] 1987) Towards a semiological guerrilla warfare, pp. 135144 in Travels in Hyperreality, London: Picador. Forgacs, D. ([1990] 2000) Italian Culture in the Industrial Era 1880-1980: Cultural Industries, Politics, and the Public, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Gundle, S. ([1995] 2000) Between Hollywood and Moscow. The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture 1943-1991, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Livolsi, M. (1993, ed.) L’Italia che cambia, Milano: La Nuova Italia. Lovink, G. (2012) Networks Without a Cause: a Critique of Social Media, Cambridge: Polity.

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Lyotard, J.-F. ([1979] 1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Mazzoleni, G. and W. Schulz (1999) “‘Mediatization’ of politics: A challenge for democracy?”, Political Communication 16(3), 247-261. Mazzoleni, G. and A. Sfardini (2009) Politica Pop. Da ‘Porta a Porta’ a ‘L’Isola dei famosi’, Bologna: il Mulino. Morcellini, M. (1995, ed.) Elezioni di TV. Televisione e pubblico nella campagna elettorale del ‘94, Genova: Costa&Nolan. Polese, R. (2009, ed.) Satyricon. La satira politica in Italia, Milano: Guanda. Sennett, R. (1980) Authority, New York: Knopf. Statera, G. (1987) Il caso Craxi. Immagine di un presidente, Milano: Mondadori. Strömbäck, J. (2008) “Four phases of mediatization: An analysis of the mediatization of politics”, The International Journal of Press/Politics 13(3): 228-246. Sylos Labini, P. (2001) Un paese a civiltà limitata, Roma-Bari: Laterza. Thompson, J.B. (1995) The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media, Cambridge: Polity. Vattimo, G. ([1990] 1992) The Transparent Society, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

CHAPTER TWO THE CULTIVATION OF POWER: ORIGINS OF TODAY’S MEDIA INDUSTRIES, POLITICS, AND CULTURE GIOVANNI CIOFALO AND GIADA FIORAVANTI SAPIENZA UNIVERSITY OF ROME

The Unbearable Fickleness of Power February 2000 marked the advent of TripAdvisor, the portal launched by Stephen Kaufer that focuses on travelling, where members can describe their experiences and express their opinions on hotels, restaurants or tourist attractions. In no time at all, the site became a reference point for millions of people, who were in search of a virtual space that offered knowledge and skills related to real spaces. Indeed, TripAdvisor’s rankings started to rival or even surpass the authority of other starawarding guides, such as Michelin and Gambero Rosso, and deserving structures received a sort of certificate of excellence based on users’ comments. The key words of this success, just as with other social platforms, are certainly sharing, collective intelligence, and horizontal relationships. But we also have solidarity, empathy or ‘compassion,’ in the etymological sense of the word, seen as a desire to share pleasant experiences or as the hope of preventing any mishaps. However, this idyllic example of collective intelligence could not (and cannot) avoid the inevitable distorting effects produced by the darker side of the global village (McLuhan and Powers, 1989), which, in this case, was the enormous power arising from visibility and accessibility by millions of users. Therefore, despite an original reluctance to give importance to these reports on the web, commercial enterprises soon cottoned on to the centrality of these processes and the new orientation and behaviour of their potential customers. This generally meant that the success or failure of a

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business, such as a hotel, restaurant or bar, was dictated by the progressive stratification of reviews written and posted by (almost always) genuine users. Of course, TripAdvisor is only one of the many available examples, but it can certainly help us to understand the effects that communication has had on power, which has undergone drastic changes in terms of its scope and inter-related dynamics and even in the way it is employed. Obviously, no single kind of power exists, and no one has yet come up with a unique definition capable of encompassing its every aspect or explaining its wealth of meanings. Power has always been of interest to scholars and the subject of large amounts of trans-disciplinary research. For example, in the field of natural sciences, power may be seen in its simplest and most immediate sense of ‘property,’ that is to say, as the inherent ability of a particular phenomenon (e.g., the power of a magnet), while rather more complex and elaborate classifications have been offered by sociological or philosophical thought, such as Weber’s tripartite distinction into “charismatic, traditional, legal-rational” power (Weber, [1922] 1978) or Foucault’s “economic, coercive and symbolic” forms (Foucault, [1975] 1977). The desire and need to delimit the scope of our analysis brought us to focus our attention on the relationship between power and the media, particularly from the point of view of communication. Power can thus be considered as a system of direct or negotiated relations that exists not only between individuals, but also between social and cultural spheres, and where equilibriums can be created, maintained or even destroyed. Even in this sense, the different eras and different frames of reference in the history of mankind have ensured the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the phenomenon. Power can range from the mere ability of imposing one’s will, to affecting or influencing the behaviour of others or the outcome of particular events. From the religious or mythological version of a superhuman will (the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden), the birth of the first supra-individual institutions (such as the family or village), right up to the supremacy of the strongest (represented by Sparta) or the wisest (linked to the culture of Athens), the pre-modern images of power have been gradually complemented and supplemented with others that are more recent and up to date. Fate, authority, and power have been supplanted by knowledge, cunning, and the ability to observe, emulate, and make distinctions (Simmel, [1903] 1950). This was exactly what happened in court society, where the courtier’s position varied in relation to their proximity to the sovereign, the centre of the social galaxy (Elias, [1936] 1978, 1982), or with the rise of the middle class, so keen to adopt the

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symbols and styles of the upper echelons in order to be identified with them and gain their privileges (Veblen, 1899). A new form of power emerges with the birth and development of the means of mass communication. Although it is less radical than the other kinds of coercive power, it still lies between the extremes of dominance and submission and is characterized in terms of visibility, on the one hand, and manipulation or cultural imperialism (Thompson, 1995) on the other. Although the modern meaning of the concept of visibility is comparatively recent and results from the affirmation of global television and, even more appropriately, from the digital and social networking site (SNS) revolution, the concept of “stardom” (Morin, [1957] 1960) from an earlier phase of media studies does offer a theoretical equivalent. The star system created and exploited film stars in particular and used their appeal to convey messages pertaining to Western culture, capitalism, and consumerism. On the receiving end of all this are the weak and vulnerable public, deemed as literally powerless by critical and apocalyptic theories, since they are bereft of any power to choose or make their escape. However, although the ever-growing media supply actually reduced the limits in freedom of choice and the public’s influenceability (Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1955) also started to diminish, the increased number of new forms of interaction between the public and the media progressively multiplied the chances of interference in the media world. Furthermore, the risk of new forms of cultural and media manipulation lay just below the surface of this gleaming facade of new opportunities. Thus as the 1960s drew to a close, several theories resurfaced that tended to express an extremely negative view of the impact of media. At this time, the power of communication is no longer considered in terms of short-term behaviour change, but the full force of its ability to change cognitive orientations in a much less obvious way is now recognized. In other words it can affect the way we think and build our world of reference. In particular, the now-classic cultivation theory (Morgan, 2002) can be used as a key to develop our analysis. The theory basically assumes that the involuntary effects of the media system are capable of gradually changing a society’s system of moral and cultural values, through the alteration of each individual’s perceptive abilities. The main focus was on television, which was already a widespread phenomenon and a true nerve centre for the flow of information and content. Although cultivation theory was not completely foolproof, and indeed, attempts to obtain empirical evidence outside the USA were never successful, it does offer a strong theoretical proposal. The diffusion and domestication of a means of communication determine a particular type of

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power (the definition of the real) through a process of the gradual acculturation of its users. This starting point prompts us to consider what happened during the process of modernization that took place in Italy from the beginning of the 1980s onwards, which was when the private television stations started to develop and become institutionalised. The underlying hypothesis is that the growing power of media and communication, watered down within the evermore pervasive and seductive broadcasting channels, was to have a possible influence on the Italians’ cognitive dimension and perception in the years to come. This is seen in the light of the fundamental role of television, through the development and dissemination of models and unusual values, but also through consistent and credible representations and narratives. Unlike Gerbner, we had no set of data collected through questionnaires to refer to, and we consequently opted for an approach based on the historical reconstruction and random identification of several major phases. In light of this, and well aware that our hypothesis can only be an interpretative proposal, we shall first concentrate on the events that occurred from the late 1970s onwards. We shall therefore analyse how politics was absorbed into the media system by considering a number of specific communication strategies. Finally, we shall also take a look at the state of things today. Basically, our intention is to draw attention to the special relationship between communication and power in the ‘Italian case.’ To do this, we shall tell three different stories which lie within the narrative frame of cultivation. The first tells of private television, the second of the political transformation of one of its chief architects, Silvio Berlusconi, while the last refers to the present-day situation.

Power and the Never-ending Eighties Several key elements and a number of structural problems emerge in the study of the evolution of social, cultural, and political life in the case of Italy, in particular: -

the profound imbalance between Northern and Southern Italy; the general weakness of the cultural production apparatus; the complex and sometimes unhealthy relationship between politics and the media;

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the absence of an intellectual and enlightened middle class, able to guide the development of the nation towards the goal of complete modernization.

The 1980s marked one of the fundamental periods in an evolution that moved forward in fits and starts (Forgacs and Gundle, 2007). This was the decade when the redefinition of the balance of power that affected almost every field of social life laid the foundations for the current situation in Italy (Colombo, 2012; Ciofalo, 2011). Symbolically, the 1980s originally represented a new dawn for Italy and for the Italian people, after the long and dark night of the Republic (Olivieri and Zavoli, 1992), one of the most troubled and complex phases in the recent history of this Bel Paese [Beautiful Country]. Indeed, the preceding decade had been a bifronted period: on the one hand, it was characterized by the desire for both social renewal (with the guaranteeing of new civil rights such as divorce and abortion) and also cultural change (with the birth of radio and television networks) while, on the other, it was witness to a series of dramatic and unsettling events. This was when the economic miracle came to an end and austerity set in. When the youth protests of ’68 were transformed into violent and unacceptable deviations of extremist terrorism, and when the crisis of consensus and several political scandals forced the main ruling party of the time, the Christian Democrats (DC), to seek support in the Communist Party (PCI), led by the secretary Enrico Berlinguer. Furthermore, this was also the period when the corpse of the President of the DC, Aldo Moro, was discovered in the boot of a red Renault parked in Via Caetani, 55 days after his escort had been executed and he had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades on March 16, 1978. The social and political repercussions on the Italian scene that resulted from this tragic act were similar to those caused by Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. This was a turning point: many scholars have claimed that this led to the immediate downfall of the ‘First Republic,’ while for others (Clementi, 2006) it was actually prolonged, at the expense of the dream of bipolarity and democracy that had been the basis of the historic compromise previously hypothesized between the DC and PCI. Whichever interpretation is correct, the post-Moro political system was increasingly influenced by private interests and had no control over the actions of its decision-makers. In any case, it was on its way to its final implosion under the effect of the tsunami of the Tangentopoli [Bribesville] scandal in 1992. The Italy that emerges from the anni di piombo [Years of Lead] is a damaged, confused, and frightened place, reeling under the effects of a

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new war that had just finished, fought in the heart of the corridors of power and in street demonstrations, between the common people and politicians. This Italy, which had not forgotten the consequences of the fifties industrial boom more than twenty years before, now tried to turn over a new leaf, to find a new story to tell and commit to memory, and this story starts precisely in the 1980s. The country was in the throes of a modernization process that called traditional institutions and agents of socialization into question. It now opted for a more individualistic vocation, focused on the wants and needs of every single person and not the community, in the political and social sense (Livolsi, 1993, ed.). The cultural and media industry, thanks to the development of the production system, now began to act like a real dream factory, generating a multitude of contents and expanding its distribution channels and ways of being used. Innovation was one of the factors that allowed the transmission of these changes, through new tools and new practices, whose power of fascination and involvement coincided with the final transition to a more sophisticated and pervasive media dimension of daily life. This new cultural boom, as unexpected and tumultuous as that of the post-war period, brought Umberto Eco to define the 1980s as “grandiose” (2000) and was the result of an increasingly advanced media system, which freed individuals from being mere passive viewers, thanks to technologies such as VCRs, video games and above all computers. Bombastic and uncontrolled advertising and the light-hearted and sparkling content of the new television, in the broadcasts of a host of local networks, now ferried the Italians towards a more complex and soughtafter consumer society. This was when entrepreneurs aided by compliant politicians managed to gain ownership of a great number of publishing houses and newspapers and made use of the field of television, which was devoid of any legal regulations, to propose ideas and images that were both conformist and provocative (Gundle, [1995] 2000). This new far west television exposed the Italian people to the influence of the mass media more than ever before, and they were particularly vulnerable to foreign models (especially American ones), as they ventured into an imaginary world where people were encouraged to do just one thing: buy. In the meantime, a series of political scandals contributed to increasing the public’s scepticism and mistrust. In 1981, the credibility of the institutions was further undermined by the discovery of the existence of a secret Masonic lodge, the P2, whose members occupied positions of power in various social spheres. Thus, despite the late but paradoxically premature attempts by the DC and the PCI to ring internal changes, a third

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political party, the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) started to make its mark on the scene. The party’s symbol was no longer the hammer and sickle, but a red carnation, and since 1978, it had put itself forward as the main standard-bearer of the new spirit of the time, courting celebrities, intellectuals, designers, entrepreneurs, as well as show-business personalities. In the 1983 elections, the party had done away with its somewhat faded image and chosen to run with that of its charismatic leader, Bettino Craxi (Statera, 1986). Despite all the criticism and accusations of Americanization, this marked the beginning of an unprecedented process of personalization of politics and was the advent of a new era (Colarizi and Gervasoni, 2005) for political communication and, above all, for the management of power. In this context, entrepreneurs were portrayed as heroes in the production of consumer goods and economic welfare and became the epitome of work values, success, power, and money. This new totally Italian form of leadership that is relentlessly celebrated by the media manages to take the spotlight in social, cultural, and even political spheres. This colonization of the vast territory of private television stations, which deliberately detached itself from the traditional sectors of the culture industry, was exactly how Silvio Berlusconi’s hero’s journey (Campbell, 1949; Vogler, 1998) came into being. This entrepreneur had started out in the building industry, then turned his hand to the media sector, and in very little time at all (1994) managed to become the Premier of the Italian government. The establishment of a second private television broadcasting service between 1983 and 1984, as an alternative to the public one, gave impetus to the cultural revolution that rejects the values of the social, cultural, and political movements of the 1970s and extols profit, consumerism, and mindless entertainment. This new configuration becomes the backbone of the obsession with innovation (Bentivegna and Morcellini, 1989) which, as we have pointed out, had permeated the whole of Italian society for quite some time (Ortoleva, 1995). This need was so strong and so compelling that it was able to achieve symbolic manifestations. For example, in 1984, the Italians took to the streets in protest against a judicial decree that prevented some private TV stations (networks owned by Berlusconi’s Fininvest) from broadcasting, since they failed to comply with the existing laws on transmission. Many people saw this as an attempt on the part of a backward State to stop the process of change and keep the idea of a state monopoly of television intact. In actual fact, the decision of the magistrates from Rome, Turin, and Pescara was correct from a legal standpoint, as it was based on a loophole in the law (1974) that was

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outdated for the changed media system. Bettino Craxi’s PSI stepped in to solve the problem by putting Law 10/1985 into force in record time. The political significance of this act is aptly summed up in the name with which it has gone down in history: the ‘Save Berlusconi’ law. Moreover, this intertwining of the interests of the ruling parties and the history of television broadcasting was to be irreversibly strengthened throughout this decade and beyond, starting with the dispute in 1988 between Berlusconi’s Fininvest and De Benedetti’s CIR (Compagnie Industriali Riunite) for control of Mondadori, Italy’s largest publishing house at the time, until the discussion and approval of the 1992 ‘Mammì law’ regarding television regulations. A political storm, however, was about to hit Italy. Although the succession of different governments from the same parties in the period between 1981 and 1992 seemed to portend a period of stability on the edge of a ‘blocked democracy,’ rampant corruption soon brought a structural crisis to the country. On 29 April 1993, Parliament was called upon to vote to approve the prosecution of Bettino Craxi: the dissenting vote led to the violent reaction of the opposing Lega Nord [Northern League] and Italian Social Movement (MSI), which fuelled the public outcry and gave rise to numerous protest demonstrations throughout the peninsula. This marked the end of the political career of the leader of the PSI, crystallized in the images of national newscasts in the omnipresent gaze of the television that he himself had helped to build, at least in part. This was the last act of the ‘First Republic.’ The newly created power vacuum on the political scene was gradually occupied by new actors and reincarnated by a renewed symbolic imagery. True to say that political power had already been dealing with the media and the pervasiveness of the small screen for quite some time. Politicians had been forced to learn new linguistic codes, typical of the TV flow, where they were obliged to rethink timing, formats, and even the contents of the communication, under the banner of a relentless mediatization and the need to put on a show. 1994 was the year that finally saw a narrowing in the enormous gap between the parties and the traditional politicians. This was the overwhelming result of the collapse of a system based on power and corruption, and an electorate who did not favour change and who needed reassurance, after the bluff of the economic miracle of the 1980s. This body of voters had many points in common with the consumer/narcissistic viewer (Cesareo, 1990), who was now so firmly hooked on the content offered by commercial television. The same kind of person who was always glued to the TV screen and who eagerly watched Silvio

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Berlusconi’s transformation from a skilled media entrepreneur, among other things, into the possible new protagonist of Italian politics. De facto, political power has now been completely subsumed by the power of the media.

Berlusconi’s Journey The creation and broadcasting of more or less specific media content that could influence public opinion resulted in a deep bond between commercial television and civil society in Italy. However, this close relationship must also be seen as depending on the long process of renovation or indeed, reconstruction of the national collective imaginary. This was how the 1994 landslide victory of the recently formed Forza Italia political party, under the leadership of Berlusoni, sinks its roots into both the general feelings of distrust, generated by the previous misgovernment of the country, and also into the cultural mainstream, which, initially, the Fininvest TV stations had managed to start rolling. Therefore, although it cannot be denied that the cavaliere del lavoro [Knight of the Order of Merit for Labour] Silvio Berlusconi’s political career had actually begun almost twenty years before, his entrance into the world of television in the second half of the 1970s, with the launch of the small local TV station, Telemilano (which became the Canale 5 national network in 1980) saw the use of several communication strategies that certainly merit further consideration. In retrospect, these strategies can be identified as, for example: 1. a nice fairy tale; 2. construction of the enemy; 3. the use of irony; 4. the need for innovation; 5. the use of metaphors; 6. the exaltation of the mythical body. Berlusconi is an able teller of nice fairy tales (Abruzzese, 1994) and he was aided and abetted by the refusal of his opponents to meet him on his own ground, since they wished to defend an alleged political sacredness that was actually being questioned by most Italians. Berlusconi’s political campaigns are in the form of a narrative and in line with communication strategies that were already at work in other contexts, and particularly common in the political and business world (Salmon, [2007] 2010). In this case, this narrative must be seen as the development of a coherent story

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whose message pays particular attention to several key elements of the story arc: the disruption of the initial equilibrium, the exaltation of the hero, and the identification of the antagonist. Just like any other cultural product (a film, a novel or a comic book) Berlusconi’s political history begins with the hero’s call to adventure (Vogler, 1998), in which he is forced to solve a problem that affects his own community. In fact, every time he appeared on TV during his first election campaign, he always took great care to describe the danger and degradation of the baseline scenario (the ordinary world), with the aim of catching the public’s attention and starting the story off. Of course, this story was a fairy tale, whose explicit reference to the tragic situation, which was doomed to end catastrophically, addressed the need to create a protagonist and justify his arrival on the scene (Benedetti, 2004). Therefore, we basically have a puzzle, made up of many examples related to stories and anecdotes from everyday life and to a common sense of reality, which can be pieced together like the tiles of a mosaic to create one great final image. A careful construction process creates the contrasting and menacing presence of the enemy, which becomes an additional constant narrative element, albeit a changeable one. Depending on the dramaturgical needs, this generalized other can be a communist, a judge, a reporter, and so on. The need to use strong arguments to quickly create and then maintain broad consensus leads to the adoption of an expedient that is well known and always effective in political speeches: the construction of the enemy, who is revealed as a creeping, insidious, invisible threat, against which one has to stand up and fight. On the one hand, this leads to a climate of tension and uncertainty, fuelled by the aura of mystery that surrounds this particular reality of reference, while, on the other, we have the hope of salvation, embodied in the figure of a hero who will never be trapped or beaten by the difficult task or hardships he meets on his way. This narrative strategy can be easily and simply adapted to suit whatever kind of circumstances. For example, this could be the communist threat that overwhelmed Italy in the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s; or the ‘left-wing judges,’ whose investigations were blamed for having caused Tangentopoli [Bribesville] in 1992, the fall of Berlusconi’s first government in 1995, and, last but not least, for being behind his subsequent and systematic political persecution. However, for the identification of these enemies (of democracy) to be successful, more than one narrative mode is required, and the comedy genre, through the use of irony, can trigger off processes of downsizing and delegitimization (Prospero, 2010). This is quite simply due to the fact

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that whosoever produces this humour is both endeared to his audience and also admired for his smartness. The goal is not just an exercise in style, and humour is not merely put to decorative or aesthetic use. There may also be an attempt to divert attention from the seriousness of certain issues, shifting the conversation to another level, namely that of sympathy (in the etymological sense of sharing a feeling) and entertainment (in the etymological sense of diversion). A slogan, nickname or a joke are used to introduce the characters that are represented in a critical manner, but no indepth arguments are needed, since, by its very nature, the irony is based on its immediacy and not on its explanation. Moreover, irony, as an essential element of discourse, is certainly more in line with the now-established canons of spectacularization, popularized by the variety shows and fiction programmes broadcast on commercial TV, whose father was ‘Berlusconi the entrepreneur,’ while ‘Berlusconi the politician’ was its son. However, in this perfect blend between form and content, between signifier and signified, between medium and message, there are other aspects to be considered in this choice of making political discourse more accessible, even at the risk of it sounding trivial. Another important element was certainly the need to innovate which was now a frequent feature of televised debates and in the press. The reason was quite simple: the time had come to address the need for change that stemmed from the serious discontent and sense of trauma that years of corrupt administration had left behind. This is why everything that Berlusconi presented was contrary to tradition, as a sort of redemption from the past. Forza Italy is, therefore, not a party but a movement, its offices are clubs, long speeches are reserved for the opening speeches at conferences or at the presentation of innovative events such as Tax Day or Security Day. Berlusconi the Hero does not derive his legitimacy from politics, but from the business world, and he steps forward as a great politician-manager of a statecompany. The use of metaphors is another essential communication strategy that allows this hero’s journey to be fulfilled. The choice of metaphors that each culture makes to formulate its thought (Santulli, 2005) defines the character of this selfsame culture and its representation of the world. Football-related metaphors play a symbolic role within Berlusconian narrative, but although some of the original meaning is retained, and there is a direct connection with the common idea of participation and involvement, a camouflage of the political universe is, however, created in the name of a kind of gamification. A playful dimension emerges which, just like a real football game or even a TV game show, foresees a race, competitors, rules, stakes, and a winner. His candidacy becomes his taking

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the field and his government allies are a team. Even the name of his party, Forza Italia derives from the attribution of an ideological value to one of the most common expressions used by supporters when they urge the Italian football team on to victory. Entertainment becomes political, and vice versa, politics becomes entertainment, even going so far as to recycle football symbols with the aim of celebrating a new kind of union between the leader and his voters (Calabrese, 1998). This union is made even stronger through the principle of exaltation of the mythical body: a form of mythicization that freely draws from the same collective imaginary that private TV had helped to define especially during the 1980s. The centrality of the videosphere (Debray, 1993), long appreciated by the American political class, now also clearly emerges in the Italian context, which had been grounded in a traditional position for years. Berlusconi plays several different roles, like a postmodern Zelig who is capable of self-monitoring and minimizing any risks that his multiple projections could jar the nerves of his spectators. What is more, he deliberately adds a couple of more provocative or even unfamiliar facets to his now commonly accepted image as entrepreneur, President of a successful football team, family and self-made man, and politician. He does this by sifting through his past and his private life and using books, magazines, broadcasts and live performances to make these features public. Thus, we have different variations in the figure of the hero, which range from entertainer to singer, from anchorman to Latin lover. This overlapping produces a complex protagonist, who has both virtues and vices, and who is capable of activating a higher level of engagement. He is basically an icon, whose main ability is precisely that of understanding and summarizing different elements in a single symbolic character (Maffesoli, 2008).

Back to the Future In our opinion two main observations can be made at this point: the first regards the evaluation of the impact and meaning of the type of power generated by the relationship between politics and communication. The second mainly focuses on communication alone, and, in particular, on the possible definition of the consequences arising from the modern structure of our media system. Without falling into the trap of simplistic technological determinism, it is reasonable to assume that the social, cultural, and even political changes that came about in Italy were fundamentally a subsequent result of the birth and evolution of a new television standard that became the driving

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force of the whole cultural industry. The Italians were certainly influenced by this set of values and images and by the increase in communication opportunities, as well as by the expansion of the threshold of visibility. Although this cannot really be defined as a genuine cultivation of power, it does appear to have had a great effect on the cognitive dimension and, in the long run, has produced forms of conditioning in the processes of reality construction. Along the way, one of the main architects or indeed, the person who was responsible for this fundamental period of change has also managed to become one of its leading interpreters. This is probably the essence of the kind of power that we have tried to describe which could simply be summed up as follows: Berlusconi’s practical actions gave power to television, while television’s symbolic action gave Berlusconi power. This clearly oversimplified causal model, based on an inevitable retrospective process of abstraction, is also shown to be a formidable consensus machine, through which the traditional kind of power is simultaneously preserved and generated. This is a similar effect to the one described by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in Il Gattopardo [The Leopard] (1958), when he argues that everything needs to change, so everything can stay the same. For nearly two decades, in the name of out with the old and in with the new, Berlusconi has been more of a helmsman than a revolutionary. His innovative mode of communicating, constructed by the use of elaborate strategies, allowed him to capture the winds of change that were blowing on the Italian social, and then the cultural scene of the late 1970s and channel them into the reservoir of tradition. In this way, the particular situation that was the outcome of a predominantly communicative revolution was transformed into something that was complementary, and not alternative to the existing social structure. The most obvious consequence of this meant that a single decade (the 1980s) was made to last right until the start of our present (Ciofalo, 2011). It was almost as if the hero’s journey went on and on and the promised happy ending kept on being postponed. In the meantime, however, technological innovation, the speeding up of the rhythms of change, and the emergence of new communication tools have helped to make this situation increasingly unstable. The very idea of communication itself has been changed: from the sum of the mass media to individual and collective habitat, habitus and heimat (Ciofalo, Leonzi, 2013, eds). The large undifferentiated entity of the viewers of the past has now been transformed into an audience that can overcome the screen and become an active part of the media sphere. Consumer activities are no longer focused on the moment of receiving and decoding, but are now concerned with the creation and manipulation of dimensions. Digital has

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overthrown logical broadcasting and proposes a return to horizontal relationships that are no longer so strongly linked to the spatio-temporal context, but more open to relational influences. Therefore, this selfsame innovative but deeply generalist television, which in the course of time had spawned a new form of power, became the last bond between Berlusconi and his voters/viewers and the last diffuser of common cultural codes. This late-TV imaginary, nurtured by soap operas and TV series, cartoons and outdated quizzes struggled to resist and offer something new in an economically and socially changed media landscape. Paradoxically, the enemy in this case was not an external antagonist, but the very premise that had made the call to adventure possible, that is to say, communication. The new Internet cultures thrive on continuous exchanges, discussions, and forums. They create virtual worlds, protests, and movements demanding rights and find it hard to accept that anyone could be their single spokesperson or that no one listens to their opinion. This transition from the traditional principle of transmission to the current system of sharing, that is to say, from one-to-many to many to many, provides a valuable interpretive key for understanding the new reformulation of power. The small screen is gradually losing its centrality in the communication system between networks and digital languages. Society and the public no longer exist as such, but are mixed up in a myriad of communities, each with its own identity and its own coherent narrative. And since myth is always the result of a language (Barthes, [1957] 1972), Berlusconi’s language, inspired by the television of the past, has lost many of its mythical traits because it is not up to conveying the spirit of the time. The nice fairy tale takes a new course, the need for innovation and metaphors are no longer used up in the exercises in style of past times. Even irony and the exaltation of the mythical body are subject to re-appropriation by the communication users. What was once popularity is overturned through the viral spread of caricatures and videos and becomes pop-ilarity (see Silvia Leonzi’s chapter in this book). Therefore, on 12 November 2011, when Silvio Berlusconi handed in his resignation as Prime Minister to the President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano, the small gathering of demonstrators in the square below cannot help but bring to mind the images that accompanied the end of the ‘First Republic.’ Obviously, it is clear that this event cannot merely be considered as being limited to the communicative level. For power to be able to operate effectively, reputation and credibility are values that have become the parameters through which international finance and banks conduct a systematic review of the world. Credit-rating agencies like Standard & Poor’s determine the success or failure of governments

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and, metaphorically speaking, assume a role that is not unlike that of the users of TripAdvisor. Therefore, the first two of Berlusconi’s successors had to come to terms with the new synergy that resulted from the increasing overlap between the economic and communicative spheres. Mario Monti, the technical expert, called in by Europe as the man who could lead Italy out of its acute debt crisis, was not held in such high esteem by the Italians, as is clear from the results of the 2013 elections. This led to an unprecedented parliamentary deadlock, which was only brought to an end after days of consultations, by the formation of a government of broad alliances under the leadership of the young Enrico Letta, a member of the Democratic Party (PD). However, even this new Premier was not able to get a grip on the country, and the excessive economic and communicative rigor he adopted did not lead to the desired results. On 22 February 2014, the new secretary of the PD, Matteo Renzi, was appointed Prime Minister: a new hero ready for a new journey. Renzi is younger than Letta and more outgoing than Monti, and right from the beginning, he has always asserted that he was predestined for this role, and that his eventual failure would be inextricably linked with that of the entire country. He is the new man, just like the Berlusconi of the past, with transversal appeal, someone who can manage a multitude of roles and convey an abundance of images of himself. He is the scrap merchant who does away with the old ruling class, the man of action, who is capable of forming links with the new (and old) Italian business communities, the communicator, present in both traditional media (from newspapers to television), as well as on the SNS (via tweets, selfies, and participation in social campaigns). He is the interpreter and the current manager of a new power where the centrality of international economy has changed, and communication exchanges take place at incredible speed. He is the holder, but also the user of a collective imaginary that has been affected both by the power of the acculturation of television in the 1980s and, at the same time, by the participatory culture of the Web of today. An imaginary world that is made up of American TV series like Happy Days (1974), Italian quiz shows like Telemike (1987), and global initiatives, such as the Ice Bucket Challenge (2014), in a constant hybridization between parochialism and internationalization, between the traditions of the read only cultures and the innovation of the read and write ones (Lessig, 2008). This is the overall result of yet another redefinition of the physiognomy of power, which, at the present moment, feeds on economy and culture, but thrives on communication.

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And what is more, it is probably true to say that the journey has only just begun.

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Gundle, S. ([1995] 2000) Between Hollywood and Moscow. The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943-91, Durahm: Duke University Press. Lessig, L. (2008) Remix. Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy, London: Bloomsbury. Livolsi, M. (1993, ed.) L’Italia che cambia, Firenze: La Nuova Italia. Maffesoli, M. (2008) Iconologies. Nos idol@tries postmodernes, Paris: Albin Michel. McLuhan, M. and B.R. Powers (1989) The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century, New York: Oxford University Press. Morgan, M. (2002, ed.) Against the Mainstream. The Selected Works of George Gerbner, New York: Peter Lang. Morin, E. ([1957] 1960) The Stars, New York: Grove Press. Katz, E. and P.F. Lazarsfeld (1955) Personal influence: The part played by people in the flow of mass communications, New York: The Free Press. Olivieri, R. and S. Zavoli (1992) La notte della Repubblica, Milano: Mondadori. Ortoleva, P. (1995) Un ventennio a colori. Televisione privata e società in Italia (1975-1995), Firenze: Giunti. Prospero, M. (2010) Il comico della politica. Nichilismo e aziendalismo nella comunicazione di Silvio Berlusconi, Roma: Ediesse. Salmon, C. ([2007] 2010) Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind, London: Verso. Santulli, F. (2005) Le parole del potere, il potere delle parole. Retorica e discorso politico, Milano: Franco Angeli. Simmel, G. ([1903] 1950) The Metropolis and Mental Life, in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited by Kurt Wolff, New York: Free Press. Statera, G. (1986) La politica spettacolo, Milano: Mondadori. Thompson, J.B. (1995) The media and modernity. A social theory of the media, Cambridge: Polity Press. Veblen, T. (1899) The theory of the leisure class, New York: Mentor Books. Vogler, C. (1998) The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers, Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions. Weber, M. ([1922] 1978) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Berkeley: University of California Press.

CHAPTER THREE THE AFFECTIVE IMAGINARY OF SOCIAL MEDIA: CAPITALISM, STORYTELLING AND CULTURAL INTERMEDIATION ANTONIO DI STEFANO SAPIENZA UNIVERSITY OF ROME

Does Late Capitalism Dream of Social Media as Imagined Worlds? Until recently, social media environments have undergone several empirical and theoretical surveys, focused on multiple dimensions of the phenomenon. These studies have, for instance, investigated the underlying structure or architecture of social networking sites (Papacharissi, 2009); the socio-cultural factors affecting individual practices and strategies performed online (boyd, 2008; Liu, 2008); the patterns of action the users are likely to follow in building self-descriptive profiles with the aim of widening their networks of connections either consciously or not (Donath, 2008; Donath and boyd, 2004), and also the growing tension that lies at the root of social media development, given that they have paradoxically facilitated both the social exchange and commercial exploitation of social relationships (Lovink and Rasch, 2013; Fuchs, 2010). In this respect, social media are clearly becoming a fundamental part of the informational flow that Terranova (2004) originally described in terms of network culture, which includes both political and physical processes. In keeping with the purposes of her own reflection, the Italian scholar’s proposal overestimated both the persistence of stratifications and structures, and the role played by the subject. She thus brought the multiple and contrasting nature of new media environments to the attention of Internet researchers. At the same time, scholars such as Howe or Anderson started following

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other lines of research that are somehow closer to business philosophy and marketing. They depicted these online infrastructures as social environments that enabled individuals, as users and specialists, to enhance their power by subtracting their own potentialities and capabilities from the chains of old traditional structures. Furthermore, users were portrayed not as a kind of passive audience, but rather, as active actors who were able to use practices, relations, and discourses to generate new ‘fields of interactions’ within an already existing technological infrastructure. They did this through the transformation and at least partial modification of the online environments that surrounded them. Obviously, a constantly changing object, especially one that includes a larger set of human actions, does not allow the development of shared perspectives among the scientists who are intent on investigating it. In fact, depending on the use of a particular approach, the production of sociability, the particular structure of social networking sites, the microblogging spaces and the encouraged and promoted wikis are differently examined and explained. From a point of view that is more likely to overestimate the positive potentialities of social media, online social interactions become more and more the sign of a new cultural renaissance, and terms like “cognitive surplus” (Shirky, 2010) or “the long tail” (Anderson, 2006) cease to be neutral and disinterested concepts. Indeed, by designating particular objects of this reality in terms of online social exchanges or collective intelligence, they started framing the reality itself; in this way, previously unseen fragments of social life have increasingly took the form of instruments of symbolic power. On the contrary, a critical scrutiny that is indebted, for instance, to a Marxian analytical framework in identifying a close connection between the development of capitalism and the emerging properties of the Internet will probably turn the production of sociability into an expression of a new capitalistic mechanism of extraction of value from online social relations (Prada, 2010). These references related to web 2.0 are a few of the huge quantity of texts, discourses, and words which have contributed, according to their symbolic relevance and influential capacity, to fostering the emergence of specific models of thought or schemes of representation. They, to some degree, classify social media as a result of incessant symbolic struggles aimed at defining and, finally, ‘controlling’ this particular reality. One might argue that the chance of controlling the online environments as a whole is nothing but a utopia. However, no attempt is being made here to re-evoke the dystopia of Orwell’s 1984, but rather, as will emerge later, we believe that multinational companies like Google or Microsoft, each

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with different impacting capabilities, have already exercised a form of soft power over the individual production of contents and data sharing. Lovink rightly argues that on the one hand new media create and expand the social spaces through which we interact, play, and even politicize ourselves; on the other hand, in most countries they are owned by literally three or four companies that have phenomenal power to shape the architectures of social interactions. Whereas the hegemonic internet ideology promises open, decentralized systems, why do we, time and again, find ourselves locked into closed, centralized environments? (Lovink, 2013: 10).

In other words, in the era of social media we are facing several different and substantial paradoxes. As online actors, we are free to enhance our power of connectivity, but, at the same time, we are literally pushed to ‘live’ in a constantly renewed system of interactions, thanks to the technological evolution of tools for real-time communication such as mobile computing and smartphones. Terms like ‘immediately’ or ‘what’s happening now’ are the symbolic signs of a world devoted to immediacy in which we are repeatedly required to read, reply to, and share the latest messages, posts, tweets, videos, and photos other users are writing or uploading. Yet, as Turkle (2007) highlighted, “we are primed to receive a quick message to which we are expected to give a rapid response.” This implies that the more technology provides users with speed and rapidity in the act of connecting themselves with somebody else, the greater the chance that anxiety and superficiality increase (Eriksen, 2001). In addition, the recent emergence of cloud computing has strengthened the individuals’ tendency to store their personal data on internet-accessible servers, owned, for instance, by Google, rather than on their own desktop computers and tablets. From a certain point of view, cloud computing gives users the opportunity of archiving a large amount of data without being limited by storage space (Gehl, 2011). Yet, using Stallman’s words (in an interview with The Guardian in 2008), although this process of moving the users’ self-produced data to Internet servers determines an improvement in the practical management of daily activities, it also entails a loss of personal control: “Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.” Therefore, the more we are able to produce and generate a huge quantity of data, the more Internet servers are likely to keep us at a distance. At the bottom, as users and members, we are guests who run the risk of being excluded from

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the guest list, unless we become paying guests, where ‘paying’ refers to how much of ourselves we are willing to yield to multinational corporations specializing in Internet-related services and products, in exchange for the pleasures of communication and social exchange. Given these premises, the question we should ask ourselves is how the social media system became such an appealing, fascinating, and exciting world in the eyes of the public, despite its multiple contradictions in terms of economization of online social practices, colonization of individual affects, or corporations’ relative control over private processes of social exchange. Obviously, the following paper is unable to provide a complete answer, given all the aspects that could be put under investigation. Instead, by primarily assuming social media as ‘imagined worlds’ (cf. Anderson, 1991; Appadurai, 1996), namely the product and the producer of an activity of interested and disinterested symbolic construction, we intend to focus on those symbolic factors that contribute to turn this given reality into an appealing, shared object. In this respect, the chapter identifies and examines those stories, symbols, representations, and actors who, in different ways, have helped to create a dominating, affective imaginary of social media. In fact, understanding the nature of such development allows us to partly examine how social media became the stake of a symbolic struggle dissimulated in the form of a state of cultural, mutual harmony.1 Therefore, for the purposes of the following paper, it may be worth recalling an obvious yet significant assumption, namely that the Internet, as well as social media, came to life in a capitalist society. Indeed, the very social practices that take place within it (in a mediation process between the website designers and architects on the one hand, and the embodied practices of users on the other) have reflected capitalist behavioural 1

Adopting Wacquant’s remarks (2004: 101), this paper attempts to “return to the primary historical mission of critical thought, which is to serve as a solvent of doxa, to perpetually question the obviousness and the very frames of civic debate so as to give ourselves a chance to think the world, rather than being thought by it, to take apart and understand its mechanisms, and thus to reappropriate it intellectually and materially.” For the purposes of our paper, critical theory may represent the starting point and the final destination of a cultural path whose centre could be the idea of “organized networks” (Lovink and Rossiter, 2005). This category refers to the transition from the galaxy of cultural and social organisations whose growth is due to self-organising and self-supporting network relations, to the idea of using technology to organise network structures with the aim of strengthening them and making them able to support alternative cultural approaches related to corporation and commercial products. In this sense, therefore, critique may assume the form of a plan that is able to organize things in a different manner (Lovink, 2012).

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patterns and symbolic imaginaries. More specifically, the Internet does not represent a continuation of capitalism or a break with it, but rather, “a mutation that is totally immanent to late capitalism” (Terranova, 2000: 54).2 It is for this reason that we argue that dividing the reality of social media from the tendencies of “cultural capitalism” (Rifkin, 2000)3 runs the 2

Consequently, if it is true that both its development model and its type of infrastructure may partly rest on the technical advance of communication engineering, it is, however, equally important to remember that insurmountable barriers no longer continue to divide science, technology, politics, and economy (cf. Bourdieu, [2001] 2004). One might mention the origins of the Internet (cf. Castells, 1996) that tell us how fundamental state intervention was in creating “a strategy around a new high growth area before the potential is understood by the business company” (Mazzucato, 2011: 18-19). At the same time, one can question the level of autonomy afforded to those researchers whose aim is to either find new ways to interpret big data (boyd and Crawford, 2012), or to create a new algorithm that would encourage people to stay connected to a social network site (cf. Parisi, 2013). Their solution to a specific question might provide Google and Facebook with unexpected and relevant “discoveries” able to enhance the latter’s economic power and symbolic capital. Not surprisingly, the 2013-2014 Yahoo! Fellow was Kalev H. Leetaru whose work on Big Data and Culturomics provides significant developments in the field of Internet studies. It therefore follows that a researcher and his/her Department might be induced to follow specific research trajectories to obtain significant funding and, last but not least, symbolic recognition. Furthermore, any objects of study and research questions that have an intrinsic impediment to becoming mainstream topics – because, for instance, the results of the investigation are not easily predictable or empirically applicable in the short term – are likely to be at a disadvantage vis-à-vis others that comply with the dominant logic. While one acknowledges the inherent limitations of modern science, it is still, however, the highest producer of meaning. Thus, in a technologically advanced system where meaning becomes lacking in practice, a corporation, whose existence strictly depends on how much information it is able to control and sell, tends to both incorporate scientists’ activity into its mechanisms by turning them into mere technicians, and also to indirectly address scientific research to these problems from the outside, which is better suited to its purposes. Such an influence probably results from the increasing and unstoppable authority of these multinational companies, which they have gained not only by allowing users to cultivate their own individuality within an exciting space of social networking, but also, as we shall see below, by depicting themselves as the new paladins of individual and social freedom from the early stages of their rise. 3 Late capitalism works on human contact and interaction or on people’s bodies and affections. Hardt (1999: 96) considers “affective capitalism” as being a twofold process: “whereas in a first moment, in the computerisation of industry, for example, one might say that communicative action, human relations, and culture have been instrumentalised, reified, and ‘degraded’ to the level of

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risk of appearing as an extremely limiting research choice.4 In fact, it would imply the undervaluation of both the social processes that comply with such a totalizing way of life and also the forms of critical activity that find a functional space in social media environments to express their dissent and to suggest different ways to imagine online social relationships (cf. Lovink and Rasch, 2013). In addition, as shall be examined later, the belief that social media are an autonomous world, which consists of a walled reality of micro-interactions and micro-discourses, might have further consequences at the cultural level. It could, for example, disqualify and neglect the ways through which specific narration styles impact on the schemes of representation of such a social object. Instead, following Boltanski and Chiapello’s seminal work ([1999] 2007), we can assume capitalism as being able to renew itself through the embodiment of social and artistic critiques of its production models. Capitalism has proved itself especially capable of reducing and neutralizing the powerful effect of the public indignation caused, for instance, by those forms of depersonalization and authoritarianism it actually contributed to develop and reproduce as such, through a system of labor marked by both hierarchy and control. In order to make indignation fruitless, capitalism is required to internalize people within its mechanisms by enlisting them as significant actors. For example, as Boltanski and Chiapello noted, in the field of corporations, the most appreciated people are those who enter new projects with strong personal commitment and flexibility and in an independent and confident way. The driving characteristic is these people’s willingness to put their skills and emotional resources at the service of individual projects by assuming personal economic interactions, one should add quickly that through a reciprocal process, in this second moment, production has become communicative, affective, deinstrumentalised, and ‘elevated’ to the level of human relations – but of course a level of human relations entirely dominated by and internal to capital.” 4 But where do we find the most visible signs of capitalism? Even if one assumes that an alternative economic model does not yet exist, and that capitalism appears to be like the air that we breathe, we can still identify the traces of its passage in various circumstances. Leaving aside the digital economy and immaterial labor, which represent a relevant, seminal topic in the literature focused on the relationship between the Internet and capitalism (Terranova, 2000; Fuchs, 2010), one might reflect, for instance, on the logic underlying the process of quantifying everything (cf. Morozov, 2013). In other words, a kind of reductionism that can turn a simple online comment into an instrument of construction of social reputation is taking place, as well as the reduction of any aspect of reality to a quantifiable element that allows something symbolic to also be turned into an economic value.

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responsibility. In such cases, the worker becomes an entrepreneurlabourer, or an entrepreneur himself, who takes part in capitalist practices by virtue of the strength of his own self-motivation to perform.5 But for this to happen, individual involvement has to entail an ideology justifying such a type of engagement. According to these French scholars, the spirit of capitalism is provided by three different dimensions: excitement, security, and fairness. The last two aspects are likely to be characterized by a more evident social connotation, since the people’s expectation that their demand for security and justice is met is not only for themselves, but also for their children and the common good. In turn, the first dimension seems to evoke individualistic properties, even though it should be recalled that the consequences of actions relying on excitement clearly have social implications. Excitement is the product of the freedom and autonomy that capitalism should be able to guarantee and offer to people showing personal traits that resemble those belonging to the “connexionist man” who relies on his communication skills, his convivial temperament, his open and inquiring mind. But he knows also how to give of himself, to be there as and when appropriate, to exploit his presence in personal relations, in faceto-face encounters […] As Bellenger develops the point, he possesses ‘a strategy for conducting relationships, a kind of self-monitoring that results in an aptitude for producing signs which can facilitate contacts’ […] he possesses ‘the ability to control and alter self-presentation’ (Boltanski, Chiapello, [1999] 2007: 114).

By integrating this effective representation with what Prada (2010) stated about “economies of affectivity” and, particularly, the capacity of capitalism to extract value from our relationships, our leisure time, our desires, and enjoyment by producing “the production of sociability itself” through its economic organisation, we believe that social media are not 5

In this respect, the pattern of practices we are able to observe online is, under certain circumstances, close to offline reality, even if we must consider whether this distinction (offline/online) makes sense yet. Therefore, following Boltanski and Chiapello’s proposal, we cannot assume online cooperative practices as a sort of voluntarism, in the form of a gift. When attacking the ideology that exalts the gratuitousness of the work of fans and lovers, Lovink (2012) evokes the need for a real political struggle against these new relations of exploitation. According to the Dutch scientist, such a struggle can only be accomplished by making prosumers aware of their exploited condition and organising free labour to fight back, because the real goal is not to replace the professionals with amateurs but rather, to make amateurs become professional.

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only closely intertwined with capitalism, but rather, capitalism has found a powerful instrument, environment, and technology in social media to enlist people in reproducing its functioning, values, mechanisms. The excitement of sociability and connectivity allows this strategy to successfully take place, directly or indirectly strengthening people’s involvement. In fact, a process fostering the cultivation of individuality through a widespread sociality represents the highest form of naturalization of reality, since it stimulates a desire for material and symbolic accumulation, for instance, in the form of interactions and social exchange: “Social media not only commercialize social interaction and user-produced content but also define which aspects of social contact, self, and experience, will be commercialized” (Patelis, 2013: 125). However, excitement and desire are not enough to keep people glued to the social media reality without question. As we have seen, the more this sort of ‘cultural and social glue,’ whose capacity to attract users has been further enhanced by algorithm and software development (cf. Manovich, 2011; Parisi, 2013), sticks to people’s lives, the more the ‘affective imaginary’ works by turning social media environments into tailored and habitable utopias or dystopias, depending on the circumstances.

The Imaginary of Social Media: Stories, Actors, Symbols, and Representations Therefore, the following chapter seeks to subtract the social media reality from the common representation that exclusively emphasizes its logic of networking and stresses the playful nature of the social interactions occurring therein. In fact, social media are a more complex field of struggles, whose stakes for people ready to play the game (to use Bourdieu’s words) may be privacy, control of personal data, value of social relations, individual authenticity, and users’ cognitive/affective surplus. Obviously, these aspects do not exhaust all the potential dimensions contained in this vast world, but the quantity does not matter here. The chapter has reached the point at which we can no longer avoid asking ourselves how and under what conditions the social media imaginary began to take shape. Let us concentrate, therefore, on this topic. In my opinion, social media are the product of a constantly changing process: they are primarily ‘imagined worlds,’ that is to say, they are imbued with symbols, stories, and values that make these realities look like ‘evoked worlds,’ before they become a context of practices and experiences that in turn affect the imaginary’s actual trajectories. This kind

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of reflection rests on the assumption that an object or a figure does not speak per se. In other words, in order for social media to become a shared reality, users are required to embody or internalize them through their practices and attitudes. In so doing, they turn the ‘image’ of media environment into a naturalized thing, that is, a reified entity, which no longer presupposes doubts, uncertainty, or questions (cf. Berger and Luckmann, 1966). In this respect, it might be advisable to include in the reflection we intend to develop those fascinating and, at the same time, intriguing figures and symbols, such as ‘grids,’ ‘clouds,’ and the like, which could provide a different contribution in making the social media imaginary more affective. In fact, one might recall Anderson’s “long tail” (Anderson, 2006), which, also at the visual level, legitimated all those apparently peripheral realities, by offering them a possibility to fully express themselves and to subtract their development from traditional production chains. Although this was a proposal that needed to be a successful business model and was hence affected by a marketing-related emphasis, for some cyber-enthusiasts, Anderson’s solution became one of the most recognizable symbols of a developing system whose cultural expansion appeared, at that time, exponential and endless. On the other hand, under different conditions, the ‘social network diagram’ constituted a symbolic amplifier of gigantic proportions for users endowed with significant levels of cultural and technical capital, who felt the need to know where to position themselves in the inextricable flow of information, comprising of words, discourses, buttons, and so on. By freezing the flow of time and placing individuals close to someone they knew best and maybe loved the most, social network representation offered users a set of coordinates to determine their relational identity. Is it any surprise that in the image of Facebook we can glimpse a way of understanding our now global-spanning networks of relationships and make sense of the ‘timeline’ of our lives? Does not the general obsession with ‘friends’ reveal the loneliness of this global world, yet also reveal our human desire for genuine friendship? Is it not self-evident that the libidinal investment in profiles serves a merely all-too-accurate reflection of the difficulty of maintaining our sense of identity in a world adrift from any tradition and sense of place? (Hui and Halpin, 2013: 115).

The process described here should be understood as being the subsequent phase of a more extended dynamics that includes the involvement, firstly, of technical experts (graphic designers, software programmers, and so on) who play a fundamental role in designing, devising, and managing an online infrastructure, and, secondly, of those

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specialists originally identified by Bourdieu ([1979] 1984) as “cultural intermediaries,” engaged with symbolic production.6 Over the last decades, reflection has developed to the point of rethinking the Bourdieuian analytical category, since the cultural field has experienced a state of permanent transformation. Different approaches have stressed the fact that cultural intermediaries no longer exist or that they are no longer needed. This tendency seems to reflect the quite common belief that intermediation has come to an end: terms like “prosumer” and “produsage” (Bruns, 2008; Ritzer, 2010; Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010), which successfully describe and examine how and under what conditions the hybridization between production and consumption works, suggest that we have entered the era of disintermediation. This seemingly appears to be the case at the cultural level. From a certain point of view, the expansion of Internet networks and the development of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 offer users the great opportunity to transform themselves from virtually silent viewers into talkative producers. However, while recognizing the legitimacy of a reflection that found, for instance, a widespread and affirmative practice in the user generated content, we believe that such a phenomenon does not necessarily imply the decline of intermediation. In fact, for the purposes of our chapter, we argue that cultural intermediation has acquired an increasingly sophisticated form of symbolic power, which is no longer simply being deployed in mediating between production and consumption. Obviously, this activity of mediation remains its peculiar feature, but, unlike the past, the new cultural intermediaries, in the form of multinational companies such as Google and Facebook, and in the form of individual experts such as Chris Anderson or Jeff Howe,7 have extended their range of action, by colonizing those spaces originally belonging to producer and consumer. In fact, on the one hand, the social media corporations are able to provide users with tailored services without supposedly asking for anything in return. In this respect, Google itself ‘sells’ answers as objective truths that are actually nothing more than the outcome of subjective trajectories filtered by search technologies and 6

The idea of cultural intermediation provoked a wide debate among sociologists and media scholars (cf. Featherstone, 1991; Negus, 1992; Nixon, 1997; Molloy and Larner, 2010), all of whom actually started adopting the category based on a misunderstanding of Bourdieu’s original proposal (Hesmondhalgh, 2006). 7 Whether the discourses of marketing and business make up the vocabulary of those should critically evaluate the Internet, accordingly Chuck Klosterman (quoted in Morozov, 2011: 312) is right when stating “the degree to which anyone values the Internet is proportional to how valuable the Internet makes that person”.

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algorithms. We should be careful not to fall in the trap of an ‘esoteric’ perception of this mechanism, and let ourselves be fascinated by the speedy returns to our queries. These almost mythical portals are, in fact, no more than smart strategies combining the use of advanced systems of collecting, stocking, retrieving, and ordering data, together with direct and indirect profiling and personalization of advertisement targeting. And on top of that, state-of-the-art marketing and sophisticated communication management are the hallmark of Googolian ‘evangelization’ (Ippolita, 2013: 101).

On the other, the aforementioned ‘figures’ (journalists, consultants) are not only capable of creating needs, but also of building ‘affective worlds’ through their professional competence, which is a particular compound of culture and economy, play and work. Furthermore, at the crossing of private companies and educational institutions, their hybrid nature makes them the leading protagonists of the emerging phenomenon of storytelling (Salmon, [2007] 2010) whose principles have been transferred from the literary world to the social one, thereby dissimulating the economic logic behind the most powerful symbols that are found not in complicated theories of taxation and economic growth, or in efficient structures for health care delivery or in strategies for fighting terrorists or winning a war. They are found in pictures and sounds that tap into primary group experiences of things that promote pride or satisfaction or tap into reservoirs of fear or revulsion (Leege and Wald, 2007: 296297).

Storytelling could be described as carrying out the art of telling stories, which is an art that humanity has cultivated since its emergence. This skill has now been economically and symbolically refined, by transforming it into a strategic instrument that marketing, management, and politics have started to employ to affect people’s way of thinking and, above all, desiring (see Rose, 2011). In this way, the individual is immersed in an affective reality where the fascination of his/her thoughts is likely to be successful to the extent that it is able to stimulate his/her need to take part in a social, shared representation. In this respect, storytelling has proven to be an enthralling widespread strategy that provides the social actor, in the form of citizen and consumer, with the opportunity to replace the disorder, the lack of control over his/her own life, and the general shortage of (social) meaning, typical of the postmodern condition, with a coherent structure of feelings and actions. In fact, storytelling is precisely comprised of stories that turn a fragmented world into an emotional reality where fragments become units. Understanding this process and, especially, the

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direction of its trajectories allows us to recognise the nature of the connection that bonds the individual to both actual and also imagined reality. A story is carefully organized with characters who assume different roles and play a part within a narrative framework. As such, it involves various events whose protagonists are a hero and an antihero, allies and enemies, good and bad. But, in order to unveil the ideology lying behind storytelling, it is not enough to look at the story’s principles. In fact, since the description of ‘historical events’ involves both facts and interpretations, the most interesting element is the role played by the one who decides to tell that story (e.g. the social media guru, a business consultant), the person who chooses, among other things, the mood and outcome of the story, the protagonist’s point of view, and the frame in which the story unfolds. Therefore, storytelling is revealed to be a significant instrument that is capable of emotionally involving people, be they employees, citizens, consumers, or viewers alike. In our opinion, this form of communication and the bearers of its techniques not only found social media sites an extremely fertile ground in which to thrive, but also a social texture to be furnished with symbols of justification and excitement. In other words, the construction of stories, both of the ‘great men’ capable of changing the world, such as Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, and the ordinary people who provide these realities with a fundamental, material substance through their common experiences, makes a substantial contribution to giving strength to that imaginary. In this respect, the following examples serve to explain and show in more detail how this process takes place. In order to understand social media, or at least a part of the capitalistic logic behind them, it is worth dwelling on Apple’s communication strategies whereby, in our opinion, the American multinational company was successfully able to open and close the alienation process, namely the gap between human beings and technology. As Morozov rightly argued (2012), Apple works on the spiritualism of technology, in other words, its products are designed as though they were actual extensions of the human body (McLuhan, 1964). However, it should be recalled that spiritualism would be an empty motif if this company had not built a coherent and articulated, communicative universe, and if a charismatic figure such as Steve Jobs had never existed. First of all, Apple’s constant reminder of the counter-culture symptomatically revealed how economic logic may be dissimulated by the mask of a ‘humanistic emotional apparatus’. This exaltation was significantly stimulated both by ‘1984’ – the television commercial directed by Ridley Scott that introduced the Apple Macintosh personal

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computer – in which traditional corporations, depicted as Orwell’s ‘big brother,’ were defeated by a young female runner capable of destroying the powerful flow of information (“Why 1984 won’t be like 1984”), and by the Think Different campaign, which used major figures also from the art world, such as Pablo Picasso and John Lennon, as unaware intermediaries, from whom Apple could extract the values of distinctiveness and geniality. Both these ‘media events’ are revolutionary turning points, or, one might say, they tell us a Promethean story. In fact, just as Prometheus stole fire from the Gods to give it to humans, providing them with progress and civilization, Apple challenged IBM by appearing as the only hope to ensure freedom in a computer world dominated by industry control. Furthermore, this would have ultimately created the conditions for a different consumption system in which power becomes, yet again, the representation of the values and interests of people.8 Secondly, Steve Jobs was the one who made it possible. As a ‘total entrepreneur,’ able to embody the characteristics of the cultural entrepreneur (to the extent that he legitimised and imposed new patterns of thought) and a symbolic one (since he kept each type of internal and external communication under control), he was not a mere trend hunter, but rather, a creator of needs. This is especially clear in his seminal speech at Stanford University in 2005. For the occasion, Jobs told three stories that articulated a personal hero’s journey (cf. Vogler, 1998) in which, after the rise and subsequent fall, he could finally draw a neoliberist picture of triumph. In his conclusive message, “stay hungry, stay foolish,”9 we may

8 Some years later, allowing users to share music files through a peer-to-peer file sharing service, Napster actually turned what originally was a marketing strategy – fooling people into thinking they had power – into a real opportunity to revise the cultural industry as a whole. 9 In this respect, in order to criticize this dominant way of thinking, Wu Ming accomplished an alternative visual campaign to the enormous literature praising Steve Jobs, developed through a blog and a twitter profile (Steve Workers cultural movement, http://steveworkers.tumblr.com/). It was a counter-narrative strategy based on posts and images transforming the affirmative speeches and discourses provided by Apple and its leader. Steve Jobs became Steve Workers: if Steve Jobs advised one to stay hungry, Steve Workers said stay foolish. This was a collective game where, once again, irony primarily drove recognition, a crucial factor because authority remains omnipotent as long as it keeps being conceived as an external authority (Sennett, 1980). In fact, irony internalises the untouchable. Steve Workers was certainly able to make power visible and legible, but the fact remains that it did so within a symbolic order in which the performance weakened the real action. In other words, in order to achieve high visibility in the short term, a

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also read between the lines that Apple never confined itself to merely selling devices. Instead, it composed a wide narrative repertoire that was proven to be functional to an affective representation of the company’s identity. In this respect, Steve Jobs’s performances were crucial in eliciting an unusual form of emotional involvement from his audience. His stories, his body, his entire mediatised life jointly outlined a coherent universe in which each individual, in the form of a noble consumer who consumes noble products, felt the excitement of not simply playing a secondary part in an ordinary representation, but of having a fundamental role in the process of changing the world. After all, in 2006, on the wave of the success of Web 2.0, the American magazine Time chose “You” as Person of the Year, that is to say, all those people who spent their free time turning themselves into active producers. Even in this case, individuals were required to actively participate in what was described as an ongoing and exciting democratic process. However, although Promethean stories can be considered as a sort of naturalized fact, that is, as a narration lying beneath the surface of the social exchange that is taken for granted by those individuals who have found an effective means in social media environments to communicate themselves and their sociality, it should be clear that the imaginary of social media does not only consist of this alone. In actual fact, social media are also a story of democratization. In this respect, it may be useful to recall the seemingly historical events of the unrest in Iran and the socalled Arab Spring, which were capable of gaining the attention of Western societies. In particular, bloggers, journalists, and cyberenthusiasts have emphasized the increasingly pervasive role played by technological devices (smartphones) and social network sites (Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube) in organizing protests and urging common people to express their political dissent against their country’s government. Not surprisingly, many popular voices mostly on the Web started using the appealing label of ‘Twitter Revolution’ to celebrate the ability of social media to provide citizens with the necessary means to turn a normal protest into a social revolution. From a certain point of view, as Morozov (2011) noted, the liberating role of the tools is emphasized and, at the same time, the role of human agency is downplayed. However, this tale of democratization quickly became a story characterized by empty spaces, holes, and shortcomings. In this respect, in our opinion, the enthusiastic interpretation of such events proved itself lacking when it confused the

movement runs the risk of privileging a catchy slogan at the expense of effective models of action (on this topic, see Lovink and Rossiter, 2005).

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historical capacity of the media to challenge those “monopolies of knowledge” that Innis (1951) acknowledged more than half a century ago, with their effective capability of overthrowing the status quo. In fact, clicking the Facebook button ‘I like’ or retweeting another person’s tweet are actions that work within a communicative framework, but are unable to actually make a revolution happen. The principles of democracy may be disseminated to other societies at large by using the Internet, but if we were to believe that democracy could be an exclusively online and mediatised process, then we would be misleading ourselves. Twitter was particularly used in Iran, North Africa, and the Middle East to successfully coordinate protest actions by providing activists with the possibility of organising their movements and plans with an unprecedented agility and speed. But, that said, making it easier for activists to express themselves does not imply that it is less difficult ‘for that expression to have any impact’ too. In addition, as Sysomos revealed (quoted by Morozov, 2011), the number of Twitter accounts registered in Iran in 2009 were only 19,235, that is to say, 0.027 percent of the population. Once again Morozov was right in describing the Twitter Revolution as a sort of fascinating but self-referential label. In fact, while recognizing how widespread the Iran-related topic was on the site, he highlighted that the flow of information related to Iranian uprisings was mostly generated, in the form of tweets and retweets, by people living outside Iran (Morozov, 2011: 15-17). So, is the Twitter Revolution dead? (Sharma, 2014). It has probably never started. This kind of story seems to partly reflect the meaning lying behind Google’s motto “Don’t be evil.” A simple but winning strategy for a multinational company is to be able to neutralize those political measures and interventions aimed at restricting its power, while avoiding creating contrasts or eliciting negative attention from public opinion. In this respect, it should be clear that what we have called a story of democratization might turn itself into a story of demagogization. Paradoxically, in a system where the neoliberist way of thinking prevails (see, e.g., Couldry 2010), the fulfillment of all the possible desires of an individual, for example, on Google’s search engine, risks being assumed as the best way to make democracy work. In reality, what Google’s strategy is actually accomplishing is the consolidation of the subjective foundations of the individual by decreasing his/her potential sociability. In fact, precisely when it provides the user with a tailored and exact answer to the question asked, as it sells “the myths that more, bigger and faster always equates with better” (Ippolita, 2013: 7), and offers the user a wider range of resources and means to manage his/her activity in a coordinated

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manner, Google is increasingly able to create the conditions for the “walled garden of self” (see, e.g., Lovink, 2012). Google exercises its power through the “monopoly” of technical space and time that separates the question from the answer. In this respect, the more the space remains unknown and the shorter the waiting time, the more Google manages to profile itself as a neutral intermediary. Under these circumstances, breaking its monopoly becomes extremely difficult. The above-mentioned cases partially help to shed light on the nature that characterizes social media and contributes to structure their imaginary. Therefore, for the purposes of this chapter, these examples have been confirmed as a revealing sign that social media are being increasingly imbued with a political, economic, and cultural rhetoric in Western society that makes it harder to understand their real potential.10 However, in my opinion, much work still has to be done in order to analyze how the affective imaginary can be mirrored in people’s actual practices, and to describe the social roots of those professions that appear more strictly tied to the social media reality in the form of digital, integrated cultural intermediaries.

References Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, New York: Verso. Anderson, C. (2006) The Long Tail, New York: Hyperion. Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Berger, P.L. and T. Luckmann (1966) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Boltanski, L. and E. Chiapello ([1999] 2007) The New Spirit of Capitalism, London: Verso.

10

This aspect brings to mind Sen and Nussbaum’s capability approach theory (Sen, 1985; Nussbaum, 2003). If we consider capabilities to be what each individual is capable of being or could do, and if the capability of an individual to be or do is the freedom of that individual to be or do, then it is doubtful whether social media environments allow the viability of the entire array of individual capability. In this respect, following the viewpoint developed by Sennett (2011), it appears increasingly clear that the cooperative capabilities of people are greater and more complex than those which social network sites are able to meet and satisfy.

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Bourdieu, P. ([1979] 1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —. ([2001] 2004) Science of Science and Reflexivity, Cambridge: Polity Press. boyd, d. (2008) Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics, University of California-Berkeley, School of Information. boyd, d. and K. Crawford (2012) “Critical Questions for Big Data. Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon”, Information, Communication & Society 15(5): 662-679. Bruns, A. (2008) Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond. From Production to Produsage, New York: Peter Lang. Castells, M. (1996) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Vol. I: The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford: Blackwell. Champagne, P. (1995) “La double dependence. Quelques remarques sur les rapports entre les champs politique, economique et journalistique”, Hermes 17-18: 215-229. Couldry, N. (2010) Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after Neoliberalism, London: Sage. Donath, J. (2008) “Signals in Social Supernets”, Journal of ComputerMediated Communication 13(1): 231-251. Donath, J. and d. boyd (2004) “Public Displays of Connection”, BT Technology Journal 22(4): 71-82. Eriksen, T.H. (2001) Tyranny of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age, London: Pluto Press. Featherstone, M. (1991) Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, London: Sage. Fuchs, C. (2010) “Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet”, The Information Society 26: 179-196. Gehl, R.W. (2011) “The Archive and the Processor: The Internal Logic of Web 2.0”, New Media & Society 13(8): 1228-1244. Hardt, M. (1999) “Affective Labour”, Boundary 2 26(2): 89-100. Hesmondhalgh, D. (2006) “Bourdieu, the media and cultural production”, Media, Culture & Society 28(2): 211-231. Hui, Y. and H. Halpin (2013), Collective Individuation: The Future of the Social Web, pp. 103-116 in G. Lovink and M. Rasch (eds), Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Innis, H.A. (1951) The Bias of Communication, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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Ippolita ([2007] 2013) The Dark Side of Google, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Leege, D. and K. Wald (2007) Meaning, cultural symbols, and campaign strategies, pp. 291-315 in W. Russell Neuman, G.E. Marcus, A.N. Crigler and M. MacKuen (eds), The Affect Effect: Dynamics of Emotion in Political Thinking and Behavior, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Liu, H. (2008) “Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances”, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1): 252-275. Lovink, G. (2012) Networks Without a Cause: a Critique of Social Media, Cambridge: Polity Press. —. (2013) A World Beyond Facebook, pp. 9-15 in G. Lovink and M. Rasch (eds), Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Lovink, G. and M. Rasch (2013, eds) Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Lovink, G. and N. Rossiter (2005) “Dawn of the Organised Networks”, The Fibreculture Journal 5. Manovich, L (2013) Software takes Command, New York: Bloomsbury. Mazzucato, M. (2011) The Entrepreneurial State, London: Demos. McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man, New York: Signet Books. Molloy, M. and W. Larner (2010) “Who Needs Cultural Intermediaries Indeed?”, Journal of Cultural Economy 3(3): 361-377. Morozov, E. (2011) The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World, London: Allen Lane. —. (2012) “Steve Jobs’ pursuit of perfection – and the consequences”, New Republic February 22. —. (2013) To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, London: Allen Lane. Negus, K. (2002) “The Work of Cultural Intermediaries and the Enduring Distance between Production and Consumption”, Cultural Studies 16(4): 501-515. Nixon, S. (1997) Circulating culture, pp. 177-234 in P. du Gay (ed.), Production of Culture/Cultures of Production, London: Sage. Nussbaum, M.C. (2003) “Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice”, Feminist Economics 9(2-3): 33-59. Papacharissi, Z. (2009) “The Virtual Geographies of Social Networks: a Comparative Analysis of Facebook, Linkedin, and ASmallWorld”, New Media & Society 11(1&2): 199-220.

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Parisi, L. (2013) Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics, Space, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Patelis, K. (2013) Political Economy and Monopoly Abstractions: What Social Media Demand, pp. 117-126 in G. Lovink and M. Rasch (eds), Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Prada, J.M. (2010) Economies of affectivity, http://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/juan-martin-pradaeconomies-of-affectivity/ Rifkin, J. (2000) The Age of Access, New York: Putnam. Ritzer, G. (2010) “Focusing on the Prosumer. On Correcting an Error in the History of Social Theory”, Prosumer Revisited 1: 61-79. Ritzer, G. and N. Jurgenson (2010) “Production, Consumption, Prosumption. The nature of capitalism in the age of the digital ‘prosumer’”, Journal of Consumer Culture 10(1): 13-36. Rose, F. (2011) The art of immersion: How the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories, New York: Norton & Co. Salmon, C. ([2007] 2010) Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind, London: Verso. Sen, A.K. (1985) Commodities and Capabilities, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sennett, R. (1980) Authority, New York: Knopf. —. (2012) Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation, London: Allen Lane. Sharma, R. (2014) “Is The Twitter Revolution Dead?”, Forbes April 4. Shirky, C. (2010) Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, New York: Penguin. Terranova, T. (2000) “Free Labor. Producing Culture for the Digital Economy”, Social Text 18(2): 33-58. —. (2004) Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age, London: Pluto. Turkle, S. (2007) “Can You Hear Me Now?”, Forbes April 21. Vogler, C. (1998) The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers, Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions. Wacquant, L. (2004) “Critical Thought as Solvent of Doxa”, Constellations 11(1): 97-101.

CHAPTER FOUR DOES BIG BROTHER EXIST? COMMUNICATION, POWER, MEANINGS, AND RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION MARIALUISA STAZIO UNIVERSITY OF CASSINO AND SOUTHERN LAZIO

The title of this chapter – ‘Does Big Brother exist?’ – is a quote from 1984, George Orwell’s novel. It’s an excerpt from a dialogue between Winston Smith – the protagonist of the novel – and O’Brien, the ‘Thought Police’ agent. In effect, since 1949, when the novel was published, the phrase ‘Big Brother’ has been applied to situations characterised by a high level of ‘surveillance’ and public ‘mind control’. In the same way, since the printing of the first edition, the telescreens, which in Orwell’s novel kept the people under observation and spread manipulated news, have become commonly accepted as some sort of ‘mind manipulation devices.’ In sum, the Orwellian scenario could somehow be compared to those outlined, for many years, by a certain Western critical strand of media communication studies, in which – according to Dallas W. Smythe – scholars located the “significance of mass communication systems in their capacity to produce ‘ideology’ which is held to act as a sort of invisible glue that holds together the capitalist system” (Smythe, 1977: 1). In these fields of studies, whether explicitly or not, a sort of transmission model of communication was at work, one in which the individuals composing the audiences cannot essentially escape the influence of the direct, strategic, and planned infusion of messages by which they are immediately affected. On the other hand, as we know very well, empirical research undermined this ‘basic’ communication model, emphasising the ‘activities’ of the individuals composing the audiences: the selection of contents determined by situational and attitudinal attributes; the two step flow model, etc. (McQuail, 1997, 2005; Webster, 2006; Napoli, 2011).

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Furthermore, semiotic ‘fecundation’ in communication studies suggested that mediated messages are also comparable to an open work (Eco, [1962] 1989) that the individuals composing the audiences could decode and interpret through various forms of interpretive cooperation which attribute “various possible senses” to the “empty form” of a text (Eco, [1965] 1972). As well known, in this dialectic, individuals can perform decoding practices, which can be contrary to preferred readings (Hall, [1973] 1980), in order to resist media influence by producing alternative readings which serve the interests of the subordinated group. In short, we can say, albeit with some oversimplification, that according to these fields of study in the area of mass communication there would occur a “struggle between homogenization and difference” (Livingstone, 1998; Morley, 1989; Curran, 1990; Ang, 1996; Stevenson, 2002: 75-118) in which – according to John Fiske – the “homogenizing centralizing integrating force” would try to maintain “semiotic and social power at the centre” and in which the “power to construct meanings, pleasures, and social identities that differ from those proposed by the structures of domination is crucial” (Fiske, 1987: 320). About 20 years ago – 10 years after 1984 – Ien Ang returned to the subject of ‘power and communications’. She underlined that “critical scholars now acknowledge that audiences are not passive absorbers of ‘dominant ideology’ transmitted by the media but actively produce their own meanings with the help of the predispositions they bring to texts” (1994: 142), but, whereas the ‘equation of power’ presupposed in the transmission models of communication does not work, The problem, rather, is to explain how capitalist modernity ‘imposes’ itself in a context of formal ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’. In other words, how are power relations organized in a global village where everybody is free and yet bounded? (Ang, 1994: 138).

She concluded, moreover, that: (…) at the heart of capitalist postmodernity is an extreme contradiction: on the one hand, its very operation depends on encouraging infinite semiosis, but, on the other hand, like every systemic order, it cannot let infinite semiosis go totally unchecked (1994: 149).

In this manner, “the negotiations and resistances of the subordinate, bounded as they are within the boundaries of the system, unsettle (but not destroy) those boundaries” (1994: 150).

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In short, whereas for Hyman and Sheatsley (1947, ‘Some Reasons why the Information Campaign Fails’) the research question was “why isn’t there more homogeneity,” in the late 1990s, the focus was on “why isn’t there more heterogeneity” (Ang, 1994: 145). The reference point was still, nevertheless, as in the ‘effects tradition,’ the ‘meanings’ and their ‘transmission’ or ‘cooperative construction,’ so as to explain the issue of social integration through the dissemination of a “central value system throughout the entire social fabric” (Ang, 1994: 137). Scott Lash conceptualized this pattern, framing it in ‘classical cultural studies.’ In effect, according to Lash (2010: 133), “in the register of hegemony and classical cultural studies, the symbolic worked epistemologically.” It is what he termed “epistemological power,” which “works through logical statements or utterances, through propositions that are predications of a subject. The language of the symbolic through which hegemony is exercised in this sense, as a mode of predication, that is also a mode of judgement” (Lash, 2010: 133). On the other hand, over the last twenty years, the power theories and the communication system – with its logics and its cultures – have both changed. The broadcasting communication system – in which we had a ‘single source’ and a single ‘centre of power’ – has given way to a form of communication revolving around the internet and other horizontal digital communication networks. Many scholars detailed the notion of network society (van Dijk, 1999; Wellman, 2001; Castells, 2000). In this chapter, however, we shall limit ourselves to describing the new scenario along the thinking of Manuel Castells, according to whom in the network society, different forms and sources of ‘power’ and ‘counterpower’ are embedded in social, economic and political institutions; they are networked, mutually interconnected and mutually ‘balanced.’ These forms of ‘power’ and ‘counterpower,’ moreover, struggle with domination/resistance dynamics, “either by forming separate networks and/or reforming existing networks” (Castells, 2011: 779). Finally, “in the network society, power and counterpower aim fundamentally at influencing the neural networks in the human mind by using mass communication networks and mass selfcommunication networks” (Castells, 2011: 773). In brief, according to Castells, “social power throughout history, but even more so in the network society, operates primarily by the construction of meaning in the human mind through processes of communication”. In other words, the maintenance of the ‘power’ and stability of social, economic, political institutions – the part that occurs ‘through processes of communication’ – is related to the ‘construction of meanings.’ Using Lash’s conceptual frames, we could say that Castells’ ideas about “how social power

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operates” overcome “epistemological power,” because they abandon “reproduction” logic (Lash, 2010: 131). At the same time, however, in Castells’ thought, the shift “from the hegemonic mode of ‘power over’ to an intensive notion of power from within (including domination from within) and power as generative force” (Lash, 2007: 56) still operates by a “construction of meanings.” This very closely resembles the logic of ‘hegemony’ which, according to Lash, is “effective through meaning” (Lash, 2007: 57). As well known, in 1977, in his seminal (and above quoted) article about communication as the ‘blindspot’ of Western critical scholars, Dallas W. Smythe suggested the focus should be shifted from the ‘production of ideology’ to the production of the ‘audience commodity’. In other words, he proposed to observe cultural production as an economic activity which follows the rules of the capitalistic production, whose ultimate goal is profit. In the network society, in a context of informational capitalism (Castells, 2000; Webster, 2006; Schmiede, 2006; Fuchs, 2008), Christian Fuchs – in the wake of Smythe’s thought – pinpointed a new strategy of accumulation, i.e. the selling of the prosumer/produser commodity, the ‘commodity form’ produced by social networking services (Fuchs, 2008, 2010, 2012). Both in the audience and in the prosumer/produser commodity production processes, the individuals who use the devices (television, pc, tablet, smartphone, etc.) ‘turn’ themselves into a component of a commodity, whether by their ‘watching activity’ (which is the activity that constitutes the audience commodity) or by ‘permanent creative activities,’ such as communication, community building and content production (Fuchs, 2011), which constitute the prosumer/produser commodity. The scope of this chapter does not allow us to reconstruct the history of the organizational, economic and technological mutations that have occurred, nor to analyze the differences between these two modes of ‘selfcommodification.’ Therefore, we shall limit ourselves to tracing how the ‘theory of cultural industries’ has described the ways in which the models of media industries – publishing (books, music, film), flow (broadcasting) and editorial (press) (Miège et al., 1978; Flichy, 1980; Miège, 1989a, 1989b) models – have evolved into several hybrids, which emerged in the digital era, beginning with the rise of segmented and pay TV (Miège, 1997, 2000; Tremblay, 2008; Mœglin, 2012), and how these models have been re-assembling, with the addition of new elements, within a “new digital media order” (Miège, 2011) that continues to rely on the over-a-

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century long legacy of socialization cultivating the expectations of audiences about the fact that content is free (Bustamante, 2004: 811). So, in order to be brief, we could frame the users of self-commodification processes in what Chris Anderson, in a different theoretical and ‘ideological’ approach, recently ‘retitled’ as the ‘three party system’ or ‘three-way market’, in which “a third party pays to participate in a market created by a free exchange between the first two parties” (Anderson, 2009: 19). Logically, this system is grounded on the assumption that advertising (which “pays for everything”; Anderson, 2009: 19) could really exert behavioral effects on its audiences, or – as Jhally and Livant (1986) would say – on the assumption that audiences and digital communication network users could actually have an effective “use value” for the advertisers who buy audiences and network users. As is well known, during the ‘Blindspot Debate’ following Smythe’s first article about the ‘audience commodity’ (Murdock, 1978; Smythe, 1978; Livant, 1979, 1982; Jhally, 1982; Jhally and Livant, 1986), Sut Jhally (1982) began to propose his theory about the use value of the audience commodity. In short, he affirmed that, even if messages have a use value for audiences, audiences do not necessarily have a use value for advertisers, because people’s watching activity does not necessarily generate movements of goods. In effect, during watching time, audiences are not productive for the advertisers who have bought them. More precisely, audience production is not related only to more ‘watching activity’, but also to the processes of production of its ‘use value’ that, according to Smythe (1977: 3), occur during the whole of the audience’s “non-sleeping time”, that is ‘working time,’ in which the audience members perform “for the advertiser to whom they have been sold” a particular kind of work, namely “to learn to buy particular ‘brands’ of consumer goods, and to spend their income accordingly” (1977: 6). Evidently, these self-valorization processes occur during the ‘watching activity’, i.e. throughout the processes of decoding and interpretive cooperation (Livingstone, 2007), but also during interactions through networks of social relations, which are very often – but not necessarily – enhanced by the media. In fact, individuals cooperate to valorize the ‘commodity’ they constitute, and to increase the number of the individuals who compose it, by different forms of ‘activity’ such as, for example, the spreading (Jenkins, 2006) and the drilling (Mittell, 2009) of information, which are also activities able to cooperate to construct social identities, and to build and increase social and reputational capital. In short, these

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individuals – through their “loyal attention” (Smythe, 1977) or their content production and dissemination activity – make it possible to set the price of their attention, that is to say, the price that networks and web platforms can demand, and that advertisers have to pay, to display the advertisements to them. In addition to that, they valorize the contents they ‘use’ in the international markets of contents, and, finally, they construct the value of broadcasting networks and web platforms on the financial markets. In short, according to Christian Fuchs, “audiences create the value of the commercial media commodity, whereas audience statistics determine the price of the audience commodity” (2012: 722). In summary, when the ‘product’ of cultural industries consists of their self-same ‘users’, the users’ construction of ‘meanings, pleasures and social identities’ (i.e. the private goal of any communicative action) can be considered productive labor. This could mean that we have to investigate the connections between media users’ activity and media users’ exploitation, because the coproduction of meanings during watching activity, the construction and exchange of meanings in the social networks, as well as the ‘permanent creative activities’ of ‘communication, community building and content production’ in the social media, are necessarily connected to the use value (thus, to the exchange value) of the ‘commodity’ that media users compose. Consequently, we have to analyze and evaluate how these processes of ‘meaning construction’, inasmuch as they are self-valorization processes, lead people into specific ‘relations of production’ in which the ‘labor’ of meaning construction represents a factor of production. Furthermore, these phenomena of ‘self-commodification’ could also be contextualized in those phenomena in which the information technologies comprise and constitute our lives rather than mediate it (Beer, 2009: 987). In other words, the variable nature of media users’ activity – related to ‘existential needs’ (e.g., entertainment, social identity, building and maintenance of social relations, etc.) aimed to not only survive individually as a human and social being, but also to build, organize, and maintain socio-economic systems – in its connections with user ‘selfcommodification’ in communication activities, can be framed in the transition, conceptualized by Scott Lash, “from power and politics in terms of normativity” to an ontological regime of power “much more based in what can be understood as a ‘facticity’” (Lash, 2010: 132). Returning to the ‘audience use value,’ as is well known, use value is a relative term: different consumers will have different use values for the same commodity (Jhally, 1982). Thus, advertisers cannot know if the

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audience commodity that they sell is right for the goods they advertise. And they risk much ‘wasted watching’ on the part of ‘irrelevant viewers.’ One of the strategies to avoid this risk is to reorganize the watching population. Specification and segmentation of the audience – by pinpointing the target market – organize the audience, and lead the segments towards a form of concentrated viewing: people watch harder and with more efficiency and efficacy (Jhally and Livant, 1986: 133). In other words, from the marketers’ and advertisers’ points of view, these people have best accomplished their individual and social apprenticeship to ‘self-commodification.’ Thus, marketers have long mined consumer information in order to send direct mailings and make telephone pitches to the people most likely to buy their products, and advertisers have inquired, through panel-based research, into the TV shows people watch, the radio stations they listen to and the newspapers and magazines they read. As Philip M. Napoli argued, considering the dynamics of how media organizations gather information about audiences and generate audience understanding, we can observe a shift, namely from an impressionistic and instinctive approach to a ‘data driven’ approach, increasingly enabled by the ‘mining’ of ever larger and better flows of information. In summary, (…) the days of movie studio executives, or television or radio station programmes, or magazines and newspaper editors making decisions based on their own subjective assessments of what will succeed and what will fail, have largely been replaced by a decision-making environment driven by a wide range of analyses of audience tastes, preferences, and historical behavioural patterns (Napoli, 2011: 11).

Today, while marketers and advertisers are confronted with an overwhelming level of inventory and audience fragmentation (indeed, each customer interaction occurs on a different device, through a different media channel and at a different time during the life-cycle of brand engagement), digitalization – with its various kinds of smart cards (loyalty card, rewards card, points card, advantage card, club card) – and the growth of internet transactions generate a large amount of transactional data, i.e. the personal information that consumers provide when they set up an account on a shopping site. Furthermore, consumers are adding to this massive amount of categorized and structured data, as well as much unstructured behavioral data, which results from the use of social applications and websites. In summary, the process of data collection – thanks to information technology and because economics, politics and culture are organized

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predominantly along technological information networks – is now thorough and widespread: many systems can be interconnected, and collecting, storing and analyzing large amounts of data is cheaper and easier than ever. As widely known, this announces the ‘Big Data era,’ which has been revealed to be rich in implications for business, government, democracy and culture. So much so that, in this respect, some people have evoked the Big Brother spectre (from David Lyon, 1994: 5780, to Sir Mark Walport, Chief Scientific Adviser to the U.K. Government, who explored this subject in his public lecture at the Oxford Martin School on 5th December 2013). In effect, as is well known, many concerns are arising about aspects of ‘behavior control’ leading to what has also been termed the surveillance society (Marx, 1985) or, more recently, dataveillance (Clarke, 1994; Norris and Armstrong, 1999). Alarm is focused on the effects and consequences which “potentially include the exercise of disciplinary power against users, the panoptic sorting of users, and the general invisibility and inescapability of Search 2.0’s impact on users’ online activities” (Zimmer, 2008). These widely diffused warnings are already being widely investigated (Norris, 2003; Elden, 2003; Simon, 2005; Jarrett, 2014; Langlois, McKelvey, Elmer and Werbin, 2009; Werbin, 2012; Andrejevic, 2007; Gandy, 2006; Haggerty and Ericson, 2006; Haggerty and Samatas, 2010). Nevertheless, whether in business, economics or other fields, it currently seems that decisions will increasingly be based on data and their analysis rather than on experience or intuition – or theoretical, ethical, or ideological points of view. Only a small fraction of ‘Big Data’ is actually being analyzed, while an incredible amount of untapped information still lies in potential data ‘gold mines.’ On the other hand, data flows of various millions of petabytes per year are quite unmanageable – and/or manageable with a high risk of irrelevance – in the absence of conceptual frameworks. Theoretical thinking is indeed crucial in ‘encapsulating’ data in order to deal with the range of problems set by a complex, adaptive, evolving, and holistic social system (West, 2013). In any case, among the multitude of economic and social actors who are hoping to benefit from better data analytics, those that are actually mainly employing and exploiting the data are publishing companies, social networking companies, marketing and advertising firms, and, obviously, the companies that work for them: the new ‘data mining’ companies which collect and process data from different sources. Among these, this paper will select only those that are employing and exploiting ‘data’ in ‘threeway’ communication marketplaces.

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In effect, growth in this area of productive activities, in which ‘advertising pays for everything,’ coincides with growth in the value of the information used in marketing with the aim of designing promotional campaigns based on consumers’ buying habits, brand preferences, and product usage (www.businessdictionary.com). In this area, the emergence of the ‘data revolution’ – and its spreading from buying online ads only to all advertising, from television to mobile phone ads – really seems the latest attempt at refinement of the ancient and well-known strategies of audience specification and segmentation that governed ‘traditional’ media logics. Indeed, the current profusion of data – as well as the ‘mining’ and elaborating criteria employed to extract, from ‘crude data,’ their (real or supposed) forecasting power about consumers’ future purchasing behaviors – promises marketers and advertisers the maximization of investment revenues and profits insofar as it aims at eliminating any sort of fortuity. The hope, and the promise, that this large amount of data is providing is to find a way to push an individually personalized ad to the right person, at the right time, by using data which have traced one’s past consumption behavior. In short, the ‘bet’ and the hope that marketing and advertising industries are entrusting to data is to avoid ‘wrong viewers’ and to defeat their major enemy: wasted watching. On the other hand, in the recursive information/communication flows generated by producers/consumers interactions – with the fundamental ‘complicity’ of algorithms – different kinds of ‘creative’ and ‘imaginative’ labor seem to have become less important. For example, companies could be driven to decide what contents to create and push, or what new products to debut, or whether it is profitable to place an ad, on the basis of the ‘objectivity of data’ as revealed by an impartial third party, like software and its analysts (McAfee and Brynjolfsson, 2012). Or, again, in advertising agencies, the artistic and storytelling aspects of ad campaigns – which were traditionally the territory of creative people – risk having to surrender to algorithm dictates, while ads have to try to adhere as much as possible to consumer ‘idiolect.’ With respect to the issue of ‘trusting’ the power of technology to supplant human abilities and sensibilities, it could be useful to recall some debates which occurred at the dawn of the ‘digital age’ in the ‘media education’ field on interactivity (as the “instrumental relationship between humans and machines under control of a request for information”; Sansot, 1985: 87) and its implications in human-to-human relationships mediated by interactive devices. These implications concern the intentions of the sender – and in this case the distinction is between the functional

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interactivity and the intentional interactivity of media (Barchechath and Pouts-Lajus, 1990) – or the ‘activities’ of the receiver – the distinction here being between transitive interactivity and intransitive interactivity (Chateau, 1990; Jacquinot, 1993). The category of functional interactivity encompasses the interactions between a machine, its software and its users. From this point of view, a printed document or television program entails a very small component of functional interactivity. The only ‘activity’ we are allowed to carry out with a radio or TV is turning them either on or off. We can pick up a newspaper, magazine or book and put them down. We can go to a movie or not. Intentional interactivity (Barchechath and Pouts-Lajus, 1990), on the contrary, originates in the fecund recognition of interpretive cooperation on the part of the audience, and in the challenges posed by authors and texts to the requests of receivers to have ‘something to do’ (Jenkins, 2006). From the ‘receiver’ point of view, functional interactivity turns into transitive interactivity – i.e. mechanical interactivity – and intentional interactivity stimulates intransitive interactivity, which is what “allows the audience to deploy a sensorial, emotional and intellectual activity to serve message interpretation” (Chateau, 1990; Jacquinot, 1993) or, in other words, “enables the user to react mentally” (Jacquinot, 1999). The inferences of these investigations are that interactivity, in a mediated communication process, regards more the intention of the sender and the performance of the ‘receiver’ than the functional level of devices. Indeed, trust in the interactive characteristics of devices could sometimes encourage a lack of intentional interactivity in the sender, which, in turn, would probably stimulate a lack of intransitive interactivity in the receiver. So, returning to the ‘cornerstone’ of a communication system in which advertising ‘pays for everything’ – i.e. in which advertising campaigns could indeed activate an audience activity consistent with investors’ wishes – we know that, in ‘old fashioned’ advertising campaigns, advertisers had to ‘bet’ on the attention of the audience, which they had to ‘capture,’ trust in interpretive cooperation on the part of the audience, and count on word of mouth, which they had to encourage and stimulate. So, since advertisers depended on ‘infinite semiosis’ and social buzz, they had to design campaigns and ads which were very intentionally interactive. On the contrary, data driven advertising campaigns seem to be underpinned by a linear and mechanical communication paradigm, so they run the risk of assigning very little importance to the immaterial and creative work of advertisers and their audiences. While creative advertising people have to surrender to algorithm dictates, the risk (but

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also apparently the easiest and cheapest way to work) could be to propose users only what they have already searched, bought, seen, and clicked – and ever increasingly so, since user activities could trigger a new process of data collecting which, in turn, could recursively give way to a new sequence. In other words – employing the interactivity categories outlined above – when functional interactivity and the resulting feedback information flows appear very satisfactory, the sender’s communication strategies run the risk of displaying very little intentional interactivity. With respect to users, personalized ads – which, because of their proximity to consumer ‘idiolect,’ tend to solicit the receivers’ intransitive interactivity as little as possible – also risk leading towards discouraging creative/interpretive dynamics in decoding, reducing the dangers (and the freedom) correlated to interpretive cooperation and aberrant decoding (Eco, [1965] 1972), which in turn are inextricably connected to the dialectic between media users’ activity and media users’ exploitation. In any case, we have only just recently begun exploring the extent to which ‘algorithmic power’ and these recursive circulations of data are playing a role in shaping tastes, wishes, and cultural clusters (Beer and Burrows, 2007; Beer, 2009, 2013). Thus we can only say that forms of customer care and personalized service – to which we are currently getting accustomed – apparently ‘respect’ the individuality of consumers by being modelled on their behaviors and needs; yet – as some scholars are already envisaging – using these algorithms could be considered to embody particular forms of rationality, symptomatic of a general mode of social ordering (Beer, 2009; Lyon, 2003), or as a sociotechnical process (Canhoto, 2007), which could hide new forms of governmentality (Foucault, [1978] 1991: 102; Foucault, [1980] 1991: 78-82). So, returning to the title question – Does Big Brother exist? – we might say that marketing and advertising strategies related to algorithms and data use entail the presupposition of the possibility of power and control, and some intention to influence the receiver strongly. Thus, with regard to these intentions, we would be inclined to hypothesize a Big Brother-style future in which our actions and choices could take on a life of their own in data form, and ‘come back home’ to discipline us, to prescribe us our selfsame attitudes in a new form of “conduct of conducts” (Foucault, [1975] 1977). Fully developing these premises, the borderline scenario that we come to imagine is the parallel construction of many realities: many individualized, ‘idiolectic,’ properly affordable worlds of purchasable goods, each designed through the ‘rear-view mirrors’ of past individual consumption (Turow, 2005, 2006). In other words, this approach seems to

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be threatening consumers with the ‘eternal return’ of their past choices, and to be planning for them a future folded back on the past: a sort of “closed circle of eternal sameness” (Horkheimer and Adorno, [1947] 1972: 190). In summary, on the one hand, this could resemble some sort of triumph of the new “microphysics of power,” or the biopolitics of the bioeconomy (Bazzicalupo, 2006; Fumagalli, 2007; Amendola, Bazzicalupo, Chicchi and Tucci, 2008), based on bringing “life and its mechanism into the realm of explicit calculation” and making “knowledge-power an agent of transformation of human life,” as Foucault defined bio-power ([1980] 1991: 43). Yet, on the other hand, we are still at the beginning of empirical research about agency in digital environments that comprise our lives (Burrows, 2009). And, in addition to that, we also have some problems with conceptualizing this agency, which operates at the moment along a ‘binary logic,’ between empowerment (Jenkins, 2006; Rosen, 2006; Bruns, 2008) and exploitation (Lash, 2007; Beer, 2009; Dahlberg, 2010; van Dijck, 2009; Rebillard and Touboul, 2010). Nonetheless, we feel confident that – even in the sound context of the production relations of informational capitalism in which users valorize themselves as components of a commodity – user agency endures, empowers and acts as one of the factors in the dynamics of system complexity. So, if we limited ourselves to considering the intention underpinned by algorithms and data use, we would perhaps do something similar to what Lasswell did when he supposed he could find the effects by analyzing the contents of communication. Indeed, only those who still conceive of relations as linear and causal (as some marketers do) can believe that an intentional action could necessarily involve a predictable consequence. Thus, for the time being, if we wish to ground better and wider forms of empirical analysis of algorithmic power relations on datadriven advertising campaigns and user choices, wants and cultural clusters, we have to work towards theoretical frameworks able to face the dynamics of complexity, including a multidimensional approach to user agency, in its different dimensions (political-economic, social, semiotic, etc.) and in its different intensity and effectiveness.

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CHAPTER FIVE NEW TRENDS IN POWER AND COMMUNICATION: FEATURES AND CRUXES OF ITALIAN ‘FIVE STAR MOVEMENT’ ERICA ANTONINI SAPIENZA UNIVERSITY OF ROME

International and Italian Conditions for the Rise and Development of the Five Star Movement Current democracies seem to suffer the increasing spread of populist movements which develop around a charismatic leader. Most of them are inspired by an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ rhetoric, by political actions designed to play on collective emotions and by deceiving people through radical speeches, suspicious suggestions and distasteful provocations. It is a more and more alarming phenomenon which is taking advantage of democracies in crisis by purporting itself, often successfully, to be the “cure” (Taggart, 2000; Mény and Surel, 2000; Laclau, 2008). As a matter of fact, crises within parties and the fall of certain ideologies have led many contemporary leaders, from both the left and the right-wing, to rediscover and widely use this ancient formula in order to gain the trust of citizens willing to be seduced by simple messages amplified by the media. On the other side, the widespread unease caused by corruption, largely affecting Western political elites, and policies carried out by international organizations – destabilizing traditional politics and questioning the sovereignty of States in managing new global phenomena – are fostering the current spread of populist movements and, at the same time, boosting the growth of local movements as well. An analysis of the influence of populism in Europe highlights how this phenomenon is closely connected with the crisis of the representative

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democracy born in the 20th century. In a “post-democratic” era (Crouch, 2004), where institutions are distrusted and ruling classes are viewed negatively, populist rhetoric allows many leaders to gain votes by proposing themselves as men who are not part of the ‘system,’ that is men willing to give voice to the common man. In such an era, giving power to those who appear to share the same feelings and needs of the ordinary people seems to be the best solution to ‘renew’ democracy. This is a very rough outline of the pattern, but it seems to work perfectly when, in an era of radical changes, individuals feel unsafe and need to concentrate on a designated ‘enemy’ who appears responsible for all their troubles, besides a charismatic leader whom they can identify with. On the other side, this sort of dynamic helps to worsen the democratic system that populist leaders state they want to protect and renew. One of the main reasons for the crisis of contemporary democracies, which is a fertile soil for populist movements, is the poor representative role carried out by the traditional ruling class, even more so within a framework in which modern parties are losing their basic functions. Political science has well analyzed the shift from mass party (Weber, [1922] 1978; Duverger, 1951), playing on ideological messages and based on mass memberships, well rooted on territory and with a well-defined target, to catch-all-party (Kirchheimer, 1966), featuring an increasing lack of ideological messages in order to reach and persuade as large a number of people as possible, and to professional/electoral party (Panebianco, 1982), featuring streamlined structures, where bureaucrats are replaced by marketing and communication experts, the main objective is the electoral campaign and politics is personalized, at the expense of the collective dimension of the decision-making process. Regardless, talk of any ‘crisis of parties’ is banal, as it would be better to distinguish between a decreasing presence of parties within society – with regard to memberships, identifications, electoral volatility, decline of social functions typical of the old generation mass parties – and, on the other side, an increasing presence of parties within the political system, for functions such as selecting political personnel and defining the contents and agenda of public policy (Ignazi, 1997; Massari, 2004). This contradiction greatly facilitates the spread of populism. Besides suffering the countless facets of contemporary populism, the ‘Beppe Grillo’ phenomenon – that is a comedian becoming leader of a successful political movement – was the litmus paper for many events which have happened in Italy in recent years (Santoro, 2012: 8; Tarchi, 2003).

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The best-known Italian historical precedent regarding Grillo’s phenomenon is the ‘Fronte dell’Uomo Qualunque’ (Common Man’s Front), that is a movement which later on would become a political party. It originated from the homonymous newspaper ‘L’Uomo Qualunque’ (The common man), founded in Rome by playwright and journalist Guglielmo Giannini in 1944. It was a heavily humorous and satirical paper, with its target audience being discontented persons (of which there were millions in the post-war period). Giannini was not pro-fascist, although his movement caught the attention of some underground groups clearly inspired by fascism. Giannini’s aim was to make the ‘common man’s opinion’ public; he was against all nationalization processes and all parties and regimes, opposing both fascism and communism. This experience left one long-lasting influence in the Italian political discourse: from then onwards ‘qualunquismo’ became a common derogatory term in Italian political lexicon for a non-committal attitude, cynical political disinterest, a lack of social responsibility or anti-political populism, resulting in superficial and conservatory opinions regarding national and governmental matters (d’Orsi, 2012). Following a typical pattern concerning the rise of populist movements, the more recent rise of the Five Star Movement can be attributed to an extremely critical political situation, in some ways similar to the crisis through which Italy lived in 1993. On the one side Il Popolo della Libertà (People of Freedom) was decaying, leaving an empty space in the appropriate political area of the spectrum, and on the other, a wider moral crisis similar to the Tangentopoli [Bribesville] of the early 1990s, but perceived to be at a systemic and no longer individual level, was affecting the entire political scenario (Ceccarini, Diamanti and Lazar, 2012; Corbetta and Gualmini, 2013: 210). The Five Star Movement’s success has to be ascribed also to the wide spread TV culture, which plays on what historian Giovanni Gozzini called “the individualist mutation,” which has been developing inside Italian society since the 1970s: “From Dallas to the Big Brother many productions have contributed to disrupt any collective horizon of history and politics, till reality itself has shrunk to a microcosm of individuals” (Gozzini, 2011: 140-141). Also regarding the dominant presence of politicians on TV, Balassone wrote: “It seems we are discovering politics again, but it is just a show depoliticizing politics. Alliances prevail over contents, simple messages over complex messages, mood over reasoning, emotions over logic, voice over listening, newbies’ direct experience over experts’ knowledge and competence” (Balassone, 2004: 92). These changes were said to be dormant in Italian minds, and a warning followed

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that: “their full consequences will be showed in the next ten years” (Gozzini, 2011: 140-141). And it is not by chance that Beppe Grillo “has reached his political success in Italy, where every evening for over twenty years, Italy has been parodied on the TV channels owned by the most powerful man of the nation in a TV program pretending, at the same time, to entertain Italians, replacing news broadcasting: Striscia la Notizia” (Santoro, 2012: 23). Antonio Ricci was the creator and writer of this TV show, as well as other TV shows such as Drive In, and he was also the first writer (and thus point of reference) for the comedian Beppe Grillo. Striscia la Notizia has featured “young, extreme, wacky and rhyming comic scenes, where breaks for ads are natural” (Gozzini, 2011), thus “transforming investigation into clowning” whereby “information is mastered by gossip” (Santoro, 2012: 24; Szendy, [2008] 2012). A heavy use of catch-phrases supports this kind of mechanism, which helps advertised goods to become “living and reproducing again and again inside us.” Catch-phrases have led viewers to become addicted to words and serial mental processing, and have conveyed a cocktail of real and fake events – reality and fiction, news and scripts – this style is featured in Bruno Vespa infotainment TV shows and the daily debates broadcast every afternoon by RAI TV. In Striscia la Notizia serious and humorous news items are mixed, resulting in a kind of cosmic indifference, “a gray zone providing the viewer with relieving feelings and portraying a world where only the individual exists, and all the other things can be molded as you like” (Santoro, 2012: 27). Moreover, in his 1990s shows, Beppe Grillo used to analyze economic and ecological subjects, and he did it with the rhetoric typical of the confused and outraged common man, saying things such as “I don’t know what’s happening, I can’t understand, facts are going beyond fiction.” This is the kind of message Grillo delivered to the angry audience who were confused by the severe crisis of Tangentopoli. Many of the elements described above, first of all the desire to reduce the gap between the common man and the political elite, became true with the huge political turnover taking place in Italy after the March 1994 elections. That round of voting, carried out for the first time with the Mattarellum voting system, radically changed Italian politics. The political elites were deeply renewed, with 71% of Members of Parliament being elected for the first time, a percentage which has only ever been seen in times of regimes in crisis (for instance, in 1919, after the end of the First World War and the introduction in Italy of the Proportional Representation system, newly elected Members of Parliament stood at 60%, as Guarnieri pointed out). The most important data in the 1994 round of voting

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concerned the Members of Parliament: numbers of political professionals drastically reduced, being replaced by members coming from private sectors – i.e. entrepreneurs, officials and managers – who decided to directly affect politics themselves, and no longer delegate the representation of their interests to political professionals (Guarnieri, 2006). Another factor which probably influenced the Five Star Movement’s success, has been the role played by Silvio Berlusconi since 1994, when he introduced himself as an “entrepreneur on loan to politics,” in order to stand out from the “Caste” (also implying that the private sector is superior to the public one). Some years later the “Caste” has become the main frame of Grillo’s rhetoric, and, as well explained by Pareto, by distinguishing between the truth, utility and efficiency of an ideology, a cognitive frame does not need to be true in order to be efficient. But although Grillo is undoubtedly reaping some of the benefits of the conception and social function of parties generated by Berlusconi, his background is totally different from the latter’s, from a social, anthropological, aesthetical and moral point of view, as Grillo’s main theme is the outrage caused by political decay. However, both Berlusconi and Grillo reject the idealistic value of politics as a “realm of plurality” (Arendt, [1951] 1973) and the art of symbolically translating violence into dialectics of conflict; although Grillo is calling for the carrying out of this objective in a new way, as imposed by the “absolute transparency” typical of the electronic direct democracy, where someone may see an extreme form of what Benjamin called “aestheticization of politics” (Recalcati, 2013: 49, 20).

The Five Star Movement and its Digital Populism: Main Features and Cruxes Despising experience and professionalism The plebiscitary pattern of referendum, repeatedly used by Berlusconi for anti-communist purposes, is echoed by Grillo’s following slogan: “Either me or the Caste,” stating, in a very simple way, that political professionals should be despised indiscriminately. At the same time, Grillo praises the benefits of a newcomer, even at the expense of the experience supported by training. Similarly to some linguistic codes belonging to Northern League, although with a large number of differentiating elements (Passarelli and Tuorto, 2012), the Five Star Movement aims at catalyzing “virtues of people against government” by emphasizing and polarizing the stress on

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“us” versus “them”. Consistently with the Italian rhetoric typical of political cynicism, ‘us’ is made up of individuals having nothing to do with politics, that is individuals aiming for political success in order to embody the model of those “who are just like us, but managed to do it before us,” and becoming, by virtue of this, “our direct representatives” (Bruno, 1994; Greblo, 2011; Fornaro, 2012). This is why housewives and unemployed individuals, as well as young lawyers, were the prevailing profiles winning in the Five Star Movement’s primary elections – called parlamentarie to emphasize their new proposal. The main theme of the Five Star Movement – which is not interested in class conflict and has only had a few embarrassing episodes related to ethnic identity – is the expropriation of democracy, something which can only be solved by directly participating in an election and gaining votes, that is by simply replacing the political elite (Biorcio, 2010). In other words, reference is given to the “sovereignty of people,” and “anti-politics … used as political tactics” (Mastropaolo, 2005). In this regard, a pivotal element defining the Five Star Movement from political, ideological and cultural points of view is its target, who are not “simple and humble” people, but the “sophisticated people surfing the web.” Although many analysts pointed out a relationship between populism and “anti-modernity” (Lipset, 1981; Bell, 1985; Mény and Surel, 2000), Grillo’s target is not a people lost in modernity. Quite on the contrary, it originates from modernity (Corbetta and Gualmini, 2013: 203). The attitude of “exalting newness” is quite a common phenomenon typical of Italian political culture, whose roots can be traced back to the late and non-consensual features of the unification process of the country. According to this, a poor and ‘non-mature’ vision of institutions is revealed, as institutions are seen as “oppressive and limiting the life of desire,” not to mention that “the fatigue of debates and mediation” is seen as “a pointless burden” (Recalcati, 2013: 85, 96). But newness in itself has never been a value, and real changes only take place when past generations are respected, thanks to the legacy passed on from those before us. The ideology of ‘scrapping’ (rottamazione), which is nowadays so popular in Italy, raises the issue of a new political elite only in age terms, so it runs the risk of underestimating the sense of legacy and any historical continuity (Recalcati, 2013: 73, 52, 116).

Neither Right nor Left In line with what has been said above, one of Grillo’s political cornerstones is the post-ideological nature of the Five Star Movement, that

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is “neither Right nor Left.” The Movement politically originated at a local level, with the five stars depicted on the logo standing for “water, environment, energy, transport and development.” These are typical themes relating to local politics but, above all, they are universal key issues, representing public goods connected with civil rights, with which identification is easy. As pointed out by Margaret Canovan, this is a typical trait of the “populist politicians” who, in order to disavow any political bias, want to appear as non-partisan and pragmatic outsiders, speaking only in the name of “the people” with the intention of showing off how they allegedly have overcome the old political patterns. This is just a tactic, consisting of “simulating that one is not playing,” as Canovan explains thanks to an effective paradox (1981). Moreover, since the 1990s, marketing communication has found out the political effectiveness of storytelling techniques over collective imaginary. In a framework within which politics is personalized and parties or ideological projects have to face crises, what remains at communication level is just ‘the human being’ and ‘his stories.’ Thinking of the aforementioned reality shows should suffice, with their frame of fame given to the common man, who becomes exemplum in embodying the individual ‘who is just like us, but managed to do it before us,’ as already written above.

Simplification, Manichaeism and conspiracy By means of his stories Grillo is able to simplify complex matters, thus complying with typical communication strategies used by populists, whose leaders’ tones resemble those of tribunes or religious prophet, largely using provocations and plots (Mény and Surel, 2000). As clearly pointed out by Taguieff, “the time of populism is the time of myth, and populist action belongs to the field of magic politics” (2002: 185-186). In 1951 Hannah Arendt wrote that a project conveyed by totalitarian ideology constantly pretends to refer to a different reality located in the future, where experience is not needed (even by adapting facts to ideas if necessary, and not the other way round) and facts are unilaterally and deductively interpreted from axiomatically accepted premises, thus “proceeding with a consistency that exists nowhere in the realm of reality” (Arendt, [1951] 1973: 471). It is not by chance that, according to Arendt, the need for security – which is typical of atomized individuals in mass society – is completely fulfilled by the prophetic and scientific language used by totalitarian propaganda. This plays, on the one side, on the feelings of isolation and non-belonging typical of those atomized

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individuals, and, on the other side, on the disregard with which the inconsistency of reality is seen by masses themselves, who prefer a sharp and unilateral interpretation of reality – explaining facts as examples within universal laws – rather than a complex and contradictory one. Far from defining the Five Star Movement as totalitarian, it is nonetheless appropriate to pay attention to the danger implied by speeches tending to simplify complex facts with the aim of ensuring a wider audience (Revelli and Forti, 2007). As a matter of fact, the ‘Caste’ pattern designed by Grillo is charming but, at the same time, relieving of responsibilities. This pattern clearly separates ‘us’ from ‘them,’ honest citizens from rapacious politicians. What does really matter is that the ‘undifferentiated society’ must never be questioned, as reporting corruption (which always concerns ‘the other’) is enough to clean the conscience (Santoro, 2012: 51). Similarly, Grillo often resorts to the logic of conspiracy and tends to identify cause-and-effect connections in events which would actually need more than just mono-causal interpretations. As long ago as the 1990s, Grillo dealt with economic matters in his shows, and he already referred to politicians as simple executors, inviting his audience to go beyond their discourses, according to a vision by which politics is depicted as always depending on economics, from vested interests and relevant conspiracies.

Exalting the internet Exalting the internet at the expense of traditional media is one of the main traits of the Five Star Movement’s rhetoric, which depicts media as an arena filled by cuts and borders, rather than one room with a unique converging logic. Thinking of Grillo’s shows dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, this attitude may seem quite a paradox, as in the past he showed himself as a prophet viewing technology as an apocalypse, almost embracing the Luddites. As is well known, his ‘conversion’ to the internet – which would become a real fetishism – took place after he met Gianroberto Casaleggio, an internet guru and marketing communication expert, and later, also the creator of the blog Beppegrillo.it. In Grillo’s ideology, the internet is no longer a place for social relations, clashes between powers and meetings among several subjects, but it becomes “an emancipating machine having a soul and an autonomous force transcending the contained social and productive relations, capable of bringing us into a new era.” In other words, it stands for “a kind of panacea” (Santoro, 2012: 39, 116). Formenti defined this ideology of the “internet direct democracy,” which can also be

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found in other experiences, as “a mix of technological determinism, fanciful libertarianism and neo-liberalism” (2008). Actually, notwithstanding his statements on the democratic nature of the internet, Grillo is using his blog as a traditional medium, not at all interactive and not particularly horizontal. It has a vertical communication pattern, developing through processes similar to those featuring TV and theatre shows. In addition, Grillo broadcasts his streaming videos, and uses TV only when there is no debate, similarly to Berlusconi, who announced his “entering the field” through a famous videotape, with which he used TV to directly communicate with the electorate, giving no chance for questions (Santoro, 2012: 43; Nizzoli, 2012). As a matter of fact, relationships within the movement are not as horizontal as it may appear. ‘Influencers’ have a privileged role and, above all, leadership is highly personalized and communication highly centralized. In fact, Grillo updates his blog more and more frequently, posting diktats and influencing the Movement’s policies; he owns copyright for the Movement’s logo and name and, above all, expels dissidents, such as town councilors Federica Salsi and Giovanni Favia. Moreover, Grillo’s Movement does not own an autonomous and national portal, as it is still part of the blog Beppegrillo.it, a newscast site with an editorial staff and a clear hierarchical position with regard to the readers, whose posts are displayed on the lower part of the page, while “on top the image of the leader, unassailable and inflexible, stands out” (Santoro, 2012: 66, 124, 129). In addition to that, public opinion is not the leading character of symbolic events such as the V-Day (‘Fuck off-Day’), because, according to Grillo, “public opinion exists only if it exists on media”, i.e. on the TV and in the press, as Giovanna Cosenza pointed out in her blog hosted by Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper. It seems that Grillo’s ‘rhetoric of the internet’ is actually suffering from ‘a mix between online and offline worlds.’ First, the virtual nature of the internet is countered by “the massive and physical presence of Grillo in his rallies” (Corbetta and Gualmini, 2013: 24), where politics and ‘theatre’ are strictly connected. Secondly, many surveys have enlightened that even within the Movement, those people most active on the internet are the most active people in the real world too, just like in any other political party (Corbetta and Gualmini, 2013: 22; Bordignon and Ceccarini, 2013). So, in spite of the contents of many of his statements, by deciding to invest his TV fame in setting up a blog, Grillo has originated a “hybridization” between television and the internet (Santoro, 2012: 67), revealing a great number of contradictions and inconsistencies: he is celebrating the internet as a new and horizontal medium, but is discouraging debate and effective

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participation; he is demonizing traditional media, but is actually interacting with them, forcing them to accept his conditions and communication strategies. Grillo is also trying to gather a collective of people agreeing with him, with the aim of creating a sense of belonging in a more and more individualized society. This can also be obtained by using and mixing funny, provoking and reassuring languages, which are strongly influenced by the traits peculiar to infotainment and storytelling which have been affecting Italy since the 1980s (Panarari, 2010). This languistic technique, as pointed out, “is capable of putting together the need to cause ‘sentimental stimuli’” (Jesi, 2011) and “the reproduction of hypnosis and catch-phrase fetishism” typical of Antonio Ricci’s shows (Santoro, 2012: 118). Grillo’s monologues blend comedy and report, epithet and proposal. The linguistic codes are the same as those he used in the TV spots he filmed years ago for a famous yogurt brand. In those spots Grillo played a seller persuading the audience with surprising, funny and interesting cameos and, according to the best traditions of advertisement, succeeded in encouraging consumption while stimulating taste for provocation (Santoro, 2012: 21). The trend to create community and a sense of belonging by resorting to emotions can be found on the internet, even if the pattern relating to Grillo and his audience is still highly polarized: “on the one side there is Beppe Grillo as an individual, together with the fame he has acquired during the years. On the other side there is the crowd of users, organized in virtual communities within the social networks.” But this crowd is searching at the same time for news and identity by means of frame stories, working as points of reference from which the confused mass of information can be presented, with the aim of playing again the main role. In this way “beppegrillo.it conveys contents which will be spread with power geometry within social networks, thus establishing, between the Comedian and the People, a link capable of keeping together [...] both the power of propaganda, typical of consumption and related to the logo, and the power of friendship, more intimate and emotional, typical of social networks like facebook” (Santoro, 2012: 66). In other words, Grillo presents himself as an anomalous leader, who hits home with emotions and not with reason. He is an icon of show business and entertainment on the internet; he stands at the center of the relationship between politics and the micro-social dimension (Diamanti, 2012). This is what happens in many kinds of populism, “staging the excess of impetus” (Recalcati, 2013: 55; De Maria, Fleischner and Targia, 2008), thus arousing consensus.

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With reference to the Italian context, once again these strategies seem to find fertile soil, if we think of Italy to be crumbling traditionally, and a non-homogeneous nation, “a body in pieces,” of which the unification process has never been able to completely assemble (Morcellini, 2011). This is why, as many have noted, Italian people easily believe populistinspired illusions, in which “the hypnotic glance of leaders always keeps separated the pieces, thus preventing the ideal unity to be completed” (Recalcati, 2013: 98-99). Even in this case, the Five Star Movement fills the representative gap caused by the decreasing presence of parties within the society and, at the same time, plays on how citizens see the pervading presence of parties within state institutions. This way “representatives” are replaced by “representations” (Mongardini, 2002).

‘Leaderism’ or Democracy? Local or National Level? Questions for the Five Star Movement From an overall viewpoint, it seems that the Five Star Movement has largely affected the Italian political scenario, dealing “the final stroke to the deteriorating and destabilizing process involving the parties born in the Italian Second Republic, breaking up alliances, leaderships and balances of power.” Renewal of the political elite and the debuts of young politicians are some of the most positive aspects in this phenomenon (Corbetta and Gualmini, 2013: 27). However, three months after the Italian general elections of February 2013, in which the Movement surprisingly managed to attract about ¼ of votes, its decline was one of the most notable things to be seen in the data arising from the next local elections (May 2013). According to several analysts (Corbetta and Gualmini, 2013; Biorcio and Natale, 2013), although in general elections Grillo was able to gather votes originating from different kinds of electorates, clearly all sharing a feeling of alienation from politics and a will to protest against politicians, recent local elections were a real debacle for Grillo’s Movement. Grillo himself lost 58,2% of the votes he had collected just three months earlier. In Sardinia and southern Italy the drop was heaviest, with the Movement losing almost 23% of their votes in these areas. So what became of Grillo’s votes? Analysis of voting in Rome may be useful to help understand this. Data showed that few of those who had voted for the Movement in February confirmed their vote in May – about ¼ of them (26%). This percentage was higher for the other parties. 51% of those who had voted for the Democratic Party and 43% of those who had voted for The People of Freedom confirmed their votes. About ¾ of those

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who did not confirm their vote for the Five Star Movement voted for the other candidates, but most of them (40%) abstained. This is not a real issue, though. In fact, most of the votes collected by Grillo in February 2013 came from people who had abstained in the past. About ¼, (26%) of those who had currently voted for the Movement had abstained in the previous round of votes. Analysts also pointed out that this phenomenon regards other parties, too. Anyway, interpreting this data as the definitive end of the Movement would be a mistake. As a matter of fact, Grillo’s success is strictly connected to the choice of the other parties. If the latter are able to complete the reforms Italians have been expecting for months, Grillo’s movement will be weakened. Quite to the contrary, if parties and government are not able to complete any reform (above all the awaited reform regarding electoral law), Grillo might well be revitalized and gain consensus again (Mannheimer, 2013; Pinto and Vignati, 2012). But above all the future of the Five Star Movement depends on how it will face two fundamental cruxes: the contradiction between ‘leaderism’ and ‘democracy’ and the one between ‘local’ and ‘national’ participation. With regard to the first antinomy, as already noted above and like any other populist movement, the Five Star Movement appears ambiguous with respect to democracy, as on the one side it strongly defends the sovereignty of people, but on the other its structure, based on a charismatic leadership, seems to deny the real essence of democracy itself. The Five Star Movement actually acts for breaking down institutional mediation, but it also paradoxically relies on its authoritative father or, better, its ‘anti-father,’ as, according to Nietzsche, “the greatest wisdom is to be able to set, to go down” (Recalcati, 2013: 58). Balancing the self-government desired by Grillo with his monocratic leadership is hard, as he directly addresses his audience without any debate, thus causing clashes inside the Movement itself. One of the most undeniable contradictions within the Movement is the one between ‘charisma’ and ‘leadership.’ Grillo is undoubtedly a charismatic leader but he does not seem to be able to transform charisma into a natural leadership, that is in something which requires the following three elements: a political program (a realistic idea of what to do), an organizational structure and the ability to persuade people (and not just to command obedience) (Galli della Loggia, 2013). In other words, the key element is to transform the electoral exploits into a leadership capable of giving life to a durable political subject. On this point, Corbetta detects a clear contradiction between the Five Star Movement’s theoretical goals and the concrete state of affairs. As a

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matter of fact, in other cases rejecting any representative form has often resulted either in strengthening the connection between the charismatic leader and his followers, or in setting up collective bodies and turn-over of offices. But the Five Star Movement seems to follow a ‘third solution’ relying on the democratic power of the internet and on its alleged capacity to allow the common man to take part to political decision-making processes. Notwithstanding the fact that the Movement states that it is using the third solution, it is actually using the first one, playing on the charisma of its leader but at the same time experiencing many difficulties in its institutionalization (Corbetta and Gualmini, 2013: 205-206). As to the second contradiction, the Movement was politically born at a local level. As highlighted by the first few months of action of its elected members within national institutions – after the February 2013 round of votes – “participation and synthesis possible at local level cannot be repeated at national level without mediation” (Corbetta and Gualmini, 2013: 213). Probably most of those who did not confirm their vote to Grillo, thus abstaining, were disappointed by the Movement’s policies. Maybe too much attention has been paid to internal organization (relations with media, accounts) in place of proposals concerning the daily life of citizens, a matter on which Grillo had based his electoral campaign. Surveys also revealed that an important quota of Grillo’s voters would have preferred the Movement to accept the government agreement proposed by the Democratic Party, as many considered the exercised opposition as a sterile position to take. Above all, its elected members at the national level have to manage more complex issues than those they were used to dealing with at the local level; that is issues requiring honesty but competence and experience as well. Moreover, many analysts focused on similarities and differences between the Five Star Movement and the Northern League, although the latter’s extreme positions always developed along the path of the traditional structure of a party (Diamanti, 1995). Both the Five Star Movement and the Northern League were born thanks to their own charismatic leaders, Beppe Grillo and Umberto Bossi. Both were lacking in a political background or experience but were able to amass a large following and give success to their movements by intercepting the discontent felt by people no longer willing to support inadequate, traditional political parties. In addition, both leaders had or have a utopian aim as a backdrop to their protests: Bossi aimed at a separated and independent northern Italy, with Grillo chasing the mirage of transparent direct democracy by means of the internet.

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However, the latter is becoming something of a crux, as on the one hand, a utopian image helps followers to mobilize but, on the other, when success is gained, the return to daily political contents, subjects and tones is still inevitable. In the case of the Northern League, a utopian vision allowed the movement to easily become a party with local interests, maintaining an important but subordinated role at a national level. Instead, in the case of the Five Star Movement, the utopia is originating mostly of its own contradictions (Galli della Loggia, 2013). As a matter of fact, so far its promises have been ranging between an Italian utopia – the end of professional politicians and political disinterest, and generous services granted to the community – and objectives impossible to achieve – as is the case in Parma, where it has proven to be very expensive and difficult for elected members to carry out their promised halting of incinerator plant development (Corbetta and Gualmini, 2013: 208). In other words, similarly to any traditional populist movement, the Five Star Movement has experienced the fact that “movement is easier than government” (Wiles, 1969: 168).

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D’Orsi, A. (2012) “Antipolitica e uomo qualunque”, MicroMega 4. De Maria, F., E. Fleischner and E. Targia (2008) Chi ha paura di Beppe Grillo?, Milano: Selene. Diamanti, I. (1995) La Lega. Geografia, storia e sociologia di un movimento politico, Roma: Donzelli. —. (2012) Gramsci, Manzoni e mia suocera, Bologna: il Mulino. Duverger, M. (1951) Les partis politiques, Paris: Colin. Formenti, C. (2008) Cybersoviet, Milano: Raffaello Cortina. Fornaro, F. (2012) “Un non-partito: il Movimento 5 Stelle”, il Mulino 2: 253-261. Galli della Loggia, E. (2013) “Se il carisma non basta”, Corriere della Sera June 10. Greblo, E. (2011) La filosofia di Beppe Grillo. Il Movimento 5 Stelle, Milano: Mimesis. Grillo, B. (2006) Tutto il Grillo che conta, Milano: Feltrinelli. —. (2010) A riveder le stelle, Milano: Rizzoli. —. (2012) Alta voracità, Milano: Rizzoli. Grillo, B. and G. Casaleggio (2011) Siamo in guerra, Milano: Chiarelettere. Guarnieri, C. (2006) Il sistema politico italiano, Bologna: il Mulino. Gozzini, G. (2011) La mutazione individualista. Gli italiani e la televisione 1954-2011, Roma-Bari: Laterza. Ignazi, P. (1997) I partiti italiani, Bologna: il Mulino. Jesi, F. (2011) Cultura di destra, Roma: Nottetempo. Kirchheimer, O. (1966) The Transformation of the Western European Party Systems, pp. 177-200 in J. La Palombara and M. Weiner (eds), Political Parties and Political Development, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Laclau, E. (2008) La ragione populista, Roma-Bari: Laterza. Lipset, M. (1981) Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, Baltimore, Md: The John Hopkins University Press. Mannheimer, R. (2013) “Così l’astensione ha travolto i 5 Stelle. Abbandonati da quasi 6 elettori su 10”, Corriere della Sera May 29. Massari, O. (2004) I partiti politici nelle democrazie contemporanee, Roma-Bari: Laterza. Mastropaolo, A. (2005) La mucca pazza della democrazia, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Mény, Y. and Y. Surel (2000) Par le peuple, pour le people, Paris: Fayard. Mongardini, C. (2002) Ripensare la democrazia: la politica in un regime di massa, Milano: FrancoAngeli.

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Morcellini, M. (2011, ed.) Neogiornalismo. Tra crisi e rete, come cambia il sistema dell’informazione, Milano: Mondadori Università. Nizzoli, A. (2012) “Videopolitica. Il Grillo ‘silente’. La comunicazione del Movimento 5 Stelle nelle Amministrative 2012”, ComPol 3: 523530. Panarari, M. (2010) L’egemonia sottoculturale, Torino: Einaudi. Panebianco, M. (1982) Modelli di partito. Organizzazione e potere nei partiti politici, Bologna: il Mulino. Passarelli, G. and D. Tuorto (2012) Lega & Padania. Storie e luoghi delle camicie verdi, Bologna: il Mulino. Pinto, L. and R. Vignati (2012) “Il successo e i dilemmi del Movimento 5 Stelle”, il Mulino 4: 731-738. Recalcati, M. (2013) Patria senza padri. Psicopatologia della politica italiana, Roma: Minimum Fax. Revelli, M. and S. Forti (2007, eds) Paranoia e politica, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Santoro, G. (2012) Un Grillo qualunque. Il Movimento 5 Stelle e il populismo digitale nella crisi dei partiti italiani, Roma: Castelvecchi. Szendy, P. ([2008] 2012) Philosophy in the Jukebox, New York: Fordham University Press. Taggart, P.A. (2000) Populism, Philadelphia, Pa: Open University Press. Taguieff, P.-A. (2002) L’illusion populiste, Paris: Berg. Tarchi, M. (2003) L’Italia populista. Dal qualunquismo ai girotondi, Bologna: il Mulino. Weber, M. ([1922] 1978) Economy and Society, Berkeley: California University Press. Wiles, P. (1969) A Syndrome. Not a Doctrine: Some Elementary Theses on Populism, pp. 163-179 in G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (eds), Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, London: Macmillan.

CHAPTER SIX SHIFTING CLIMATES OF OPINION: THE STRATEGIES OF BRITISH THINK TANKS TO COPE WITH, AND SEIZE, THE ECONOMIC CRISIS OF 2008 MARCOS GONZÁLEZ HERNANDO UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The purpose of this chapter is to launch a discussion on the role think tanks – specifically in Britain – might have in narrating and interpreting moments of crisis, focusing particularly on the financial crash of 20072008. Due to space constraints, I will concentrate mostly on exploring what sort of conceptual tools might prove useful in starting such an endeavor, especially regarding their interventions and strategic positioning in relation to other actors. This is done while keeping in mind both the irruptive character of the event in question and the multifarious character of these organisations: their involvement in policymaking and politics more generally, their relationship with the media and their role as advocates and/or experts in defence of ideas. In view of this, it is worthwhile to notice that, because of the peculiar locus of these institutions, they are compelled both to push forward a particular set of explanations and policy prescriptions – often associated with an ideological inclination – and also to attempt to give an authoritative account with a minimal degree of epistemic authority based on expertise (Pierson, 1994), which entails, at least to a degree, a claim of intellectual independence. This precarious equilibrium – between defending normative ideals and performing as experts – is particularly poignant and difficult to maintain in moments of radical doubt, when an opportunity appears to readdress or defend a previously held view while also opening a space for intervening, favoring a particular narrative of events over another. In order to illustrate this, I will go through a few examples of how think tanks

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might operate and mobilize their resources and constraints in the face of an unstable ‘climate of opinion.’ The 2007-2008 financial crash – sparked in the public conscience by Lehman Brothers’ filing for bankruptcy in September 2008 – called for a reappraisal of the global economic order and a quick explanation of what was happening. This “fateful moment” (Giddens, 2007) encouraged the reappearance of discussions on the nature of capitalism that, for many, had long been superseded. Newfound suspicions on the sustainability of the global financial system became ubiquitous and the causes of the momentous events began to be traced to the subprime mortgage market, but also beyond (Sinclair, 2010). Thus, one of the first discussions (which still continues) was whether to explain the crisis at the level of actors that could be blamed or at a more systemic level (Gamble, 2009). In that sense, the 2008 crisis was also a crisis of our self-understanding, and can be called a sudden trauma that ought to be explained (Eyerman, 2011). In these times of austerity it is easy to forget, but for a moment, no one really knew what was happening, and it was difficult to identify a precise culprit. It is important to remember, however, that this crisis is of a particular kind. Due to its informational (rather than physical) character, the abstractness of its indications and the unfathomability of its consequences, the economic crash was a highly complex and ‘representational’ event, meaning that it is necessarily mediated through symbols and language and that its full magnitude is not immediately apparent. Crosthwaithe (2012), remembering this, has stressed the textual, semiotic character of financial meltdowns: this latest iteration possibly stretched the limits of this ‘representability,’ as the semi-autonomous logic of technology-mediated international trade made the situation even harder to fathom for any individual agent. And, as with other crises, the questions ‘what happened?’ and ‘what should be done?’ became central; thus, the present itself turned into a turning point in history, a node through which past and present are structured and where action is imperative (Koselleck, 2002). Therefore, if crises warrant a narration and involve a call to act in a complex situation (Roitman, 2014), economic crises do so with particular force. Therefore, acting became unavoidable for anyone with an intellectual purpose, as explanations and advice were widely demanded by both policymakers and members of the public. In this setting, several public intellectuals and institutions were compelled to make public interventions to assert their positions (Baert, 2012; Eyal and Buchholz, 2010) and be seen as relevant actors since, without an account of events, one cannot offer ‘advice.’ This called for the pre-eminence of intellectual agents that could position themselves by occupying certain loci in the debate,

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expounding their interpretations and appealing to different audiences through various performances and strategies (Alexander, 2011). Hence, experts had a fundamental role to play (Brooks, 2012; Pierson, 1994). The sudden collapse of the solvency of major financial institutions in the U.S. and Europe – and the sovereign debt crisis that ensued (Thompson, 2012) – was accompanied by a plethora of technical (Lo, 2011), and frequently also moral (Rohloff and Wright, 2010), explanations. At the same time, questioning experts became commonplace, as they mostly failed to foresee the events. Even more so, these discussions often went beyond purely economic issues (Gills, 2010), once it became uncontroversial to think that matters of this importance could not be left solely to ‘financial experts’ with bounded rationality (Bryan et al., 2012). In this milieu, succeeding in disseminating one’s interpretation of the crisis became a vital political objective (Boin et al., 2009), since it could mean either the obsolescence or the rise to centrality of an intellectual position (Campbell, 2002). When doubts are widespread, and actions have unpredictable consequences, narratives become ever more necessary (Ricoeur, 1980). It was, thus, a Gramscian moment, a potential turning point in the common-sense self-understanding of our societies. Whilst this was occurring, the use of social media rapidly expanded and new forms of disseminating knowledge were becoming ubiquitous, across wider audiences and with ever more amicable and user-tailored content (Brooks, 2012). This gave abundant opportunities to intellectuals and organisations that attempted to explain events to an attentive public. Our need for a narrative to unify experience and the mounting distrust of traditional institutions (Aupers, 2012; Rantanen, 2012) presented threats and opportunities to experts, intellectuals and policymakers alike. It is in this context that think tanks – frequently at some middle point between functioning as experts, public intellectuals, political actors and lobbyists – get involved unstable climates of opinion and become interesting to observe.1 This fascination stems in part from the murky character of think tanks, often hovering at the edges of advocacy, academia, economic interests and politics, which allows them to move between diverse claims of expertise, styles of public performance, public relation strategies and intellectual tools across time. Hence, their relevance as producers of knowledge depends on a complex and ever-changing bundle of resources, in different 1

To be sure, public intellectuals, economists (Lawson, 2009), central banks (Abolafia, 2010), political parties and governments (‘t Hart and Tindall, 2009) have had a role at least as prominent in discussing and shaping our reading of the crisis.

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volumes and proportions, which can become both assets and constraints. To mention just a few these include: links with academia; media outlets and political parties; perceived cognitive autonomy; sources of funding; institutional history; media presence and engagement in social media (Rich and Weaver, 2000; McNutt and Marchildon, 2009). Thus, think tanks that try to become relevant to the public debate must skilfully learn to garner, use and occasionally dispose of their resources in a rapidly shifting environment, being institutions that are deeply sensitive to what happens outside of them; particularly as the overt objective of most of them is to inform and affect policymaking and the public debate. We will briefly explore these issues while taking into consideration the constrictions – most obviously, sources of funding and previous intellectual positioning – these organisations face when acting in the public domain. But before this, an overview of the literature on these institutions is needed.

On British Think Tanks2 Studies on British think tanks have been, until recently, rather scarce, and often restricted to political science, with an accent on their role and effectiveness in shaping public policy (James, 1993; Tesseyman, 1999). Apart from a few more recent contributions (e.g. Bentham, 2006; Denham and Stone, 2004; Pautz, 2012a, 2012b), most research has been dedicated to their rise to prominence during the 1970s, and very few (with the exception of Medvetz’s (2012a) book for the case of the U.S.) focus in much depth on intellectual change from an internal perspective, preferring to dwell on their impact on policymaking and the public debate from the perspective of historical transformations in government and society at large. Interest in the subject in the field of sociology, like the phenomenon itself, is relatively new, but seems to have begun in the U.S. The early literature centered on the debate between elite theorists and pluralists. The former linked think tanks with pressure groups, concerned with masquerading vested interests as sound research, while the latter believed them to be only one actor amongst many in a crowded, pluralistic public sphere (Abelson, 2002, 2012). Critics of elite theory focus on its 2

Concentrating on the U.K. implies, lest we forget, focusing on a country with freedom of speech and democratic institutions that was drastically affected by a crisis beyond its direct control. That affects enormously how think tanks operate, as this inquiry would bear very different results in, for instance, China (Stone, 2007).

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mechanistic description and lack of nuance when it comes to intellectual content, while criticisms on pluralism theorists concentrate on their neglect of power relations where they exist and their overuse of the accounts think tanks give of themselves (for instance, assuming too hastily their purported independence). Most studies nowadays (e.g. Abelson, 2012; Medvetz, 2012b) regard this discussion as outdated, preferring to draw insights from both perspectives. Nonetheless, there might be something worth salvaging in the distinctions operating in the debate itself, since it embodies the tensions that are at the base of their role as intellectual institutions: their double character as political/economic and intellectual actors. In Britain, academic interest in these institutions started in earnest with Desai’s (1994) article and Cockett’s (1995) book ‘Thinking the Unthinkable,’ both of which explore the influence of new-right think tanks in the rise of monetarism and their role during Thatcher’s premiership. Both have the advantage of a longer historical perspective of these institutions (tracing their origins as far back as the 1930s), and persuasively expound the conditions that allowed a group of investors and thinkers to give birth to these organisations. Cockett gives a fascinating account of the intellectual history that led to the rise of market liberalism and the undermining of the post-war consensus (Muller, 1996) through the lenses of these institutions, mainly addressing three: the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA, 1955), the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS, 1974) and the Adam Smith Institute (ASI, 1978). Similarly, Desai, and more recently Jackson (2012) and Mirowski and Plehwe (2009), gives, broadly speaking, a Neogramscian account that understands the prominence of new-right think tanks in the 1970s as the “seizing of an opportunity” in the context of an organic crisis of capitalism. That is, these new-right think tanks, according to these authors, managed both to successfully promote their explanations of Britain’s economic woes and to preclude the rise of other views. This was followed by Denham and Garnett’s (1998) seminal work “British think tanks and the climate of opinion.” With a broader focus, these authors give an historical overview of British think tanks, dividing them in three waves: a first wave, which includes Political and Economic Planning (1931, now the Policy Studies Institute) and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR, 1938), mostly technocratic and policy research-oriented institutions in the context of post-war Keynesianism; a second wave, closer to Cockett’s think tanks, more vocal in their aims and directly targeting the public debate, and lastly, a third wave that comprises responses from the left to the second,

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e.g. the Institute of Public Policy Research and Demos (1988 and 1993), specific policy area think tanks and offshoots of earlier institutions, such as Politeia (1995) and Civitas (2000), both founded by former staff of the IEA and CPS, albeit with more breadth and a weaker anti-statism. This third wave is by far the most populous and diverse and it is debatable whether or not newer institutions still belong to it. The authors borrow the concept of the “climate of opinion” – quoting the IEA’s mission statement – and, stressing the ambiguity of that notion, criticize Cockett’s work. Their complaints focus on his overstatement of the new-right think tanks’ sway3: for them it is the needs of governments, which desire external certification for their own policies, rather than their own agenda, that grant a think tank its semblance of influence. Think tanks themselves have a vested interest in exaggerating their impact and depicting public debate as a “battle of ideas” (Krastev, 2001). Governments might also be concerned with portraying think tanks as authoritative and independent, since it allows them to attain a halo of neutrality when invoking their research. Likewise, political parties might benefit from having a stock of experts and policies – in the form of a “revolving door” and a “recycling bin” (Stone, 2007) – ready to back their policies. Media organizations might also want to inflate the influence of think tanks inasmuch as they provide information and research to enforce their own biases, or, conversely, to quote think tanks of different political standing in order to seem balanced (even if this means over-representing minority views). For these reasons, Denham and Garnett (2004) warn about the risks that these institutions can entail for a pluralistic-democratic debate. In a later text, Denham and Garnett (2004) propose the concept of “intellectual fellowship,” that is, a loosely connected network of experts and political actors pushing for a particular set of ideas.4 This idea of “fellowship” allows them to understand think tanks as a reservoir of human capital and policy proposals to be used when the time is right, while stressing the fact that think tanks can effectively articulate a body of like-minded people in order to maximize their visibility and strengthen their links to other institutions. This is especially useful in understanding their functioning in relation to policy impact, as a peculiar aspect of British think tanks is that they operate within the “Westminster model” 3

Oliver (1996) contests this, claiming that, if one changes one’s focus from political institutions to media and surveys, one notices changes in public opinion regarding free-market ideas. 4 This concept is reminiscent of other forms of intellectual grouping, such as the “thought collective” (Dean, 2012), the “epistemic community” (Haas, 1989) and the “discourse coalition” (Hajer, 1993).

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(Denham and Stone, 2004), that is, a closely-knit set of institutions and people that decide over policy,5 as opposed to a larger and more diverse public sphere, as in the U.S. Stone’s (2007) contribution is relevant in this respect. She attempts to debunk what she believes are three myths surrounding think tanks. First, that they are “bridges” between different domains of society (e.g. science and policy), since declaring them as “autonomous” of either part of what they ‘connect’ obfuscates their actual purposes and overstates their purported independence. Second, it is not clear that they serve the “public interest” (Jacques et al, 2008), as they often have very close relations to pressure groups and donors and many seek to influence either the media or a very narrow elite (rather than ‘the public’). Thirdly, that they “think”: many, according to Stone, are either recyclers and re-packagers of previous research (“recycling bins”), a reservoir of ideas and intellectual capital to be used according to circumstances (“garbage cans”), or bodies that grant scientific validation to previously held views.

Recent Approaches in the Sociology of Think Tanks and Intellectuals More recently, Medvetz’s (2012b) book comes as a timely contribution to the field, as it challenges the tendency in the literature to favor typologies and tautological definitions; for instance, that a ‘true’ think tank is independent and thus any non-independent research institute is not truly a think tank (Stone, 1996). Against this, he proposes a model based on the Bourdieusian concepts of “field” and “capital” (Medvetz, 2008). Think tanks are understood as complex institutions that “juggle with” a diverse array of capitals pertaining to different fields (i.e. academic, political, media and economic) in order to perform a “balancing act” between a disparate set of aims and resources (e.g. academic credibility, political influence, media presence, funding). But how is it possible for hybrid organisations to thrive without being defeated in every field by more focused competition? Their comparative advantages lie in the fact that these contrasting capitals allow think tanks to adjust themselves by invoking different resources when necessary. Medvetz states that think tanks are not a distinct ‘thing’ that fits neatly into any one field, and are therefore not precisely definable, but actors that 5

Let us remember that the first body in the U.K. to be called a think tank, the Central Policy Review Staff (1931, disbanded by Margaret Thatcher), depended directly on the State.

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constantly alter their position through shifting their capitals (both in terms of volume and structure), thus altering the boundaries of the fields they act upon. For instance, a media-savvy think tank might want to garner political capital to influence the policymaking process more directly, or the exact opposite; a think tank with strong political links might seek media exposure in order not to be seen as ‘obscure.’ This dynamic tends to get blurred by the rigid typologies of the earlier literature. This has two corollaries. First, a think tank’s efforts to accumulate a certain type of capital (e.g. economic) might weaken its ability to gather others (e.g. academic). This means that, according to Medvetz, the best strategy is most often to position itself on the middle ground, acquiring greater volumes of every sort of capital without generating disequilibrium; that is, trying to remain at an intermediate point between academia, economics, politics and the media, Medvetz’s four fields. Secondly, it follows that the same factors that undermine a think tanks’ cognitive autonomy can operate as “curious sources of flexibility and power,” inasmuch as they afford plasticity in the face of uncertainty. In Medvetz’s view, the rise of these organisations began in earnest with the advent of the first critiques of technocracy and academia – from both left and right – which gathered momentum around the 1960s. Accusing early, more academic, think tanks of being detached, untimely for the policymaking process, self-interested and esoteric, the equivalents of Denham and Garnett’s second-wave think tanks sought to undermine their credibility in the U.S. (Medvetz speaks particularly of institutions like the Heritage Foundation). In the process, Medvetz claims, they blurred the boundaries between science and politics, made it difficult for more autonomous intellectuals to thrive (Misztal, 2012) and produced vast volumes of highly degraded forms of socio-scientific knowledge, in the sense that it generated reports and interventions whose purpose was not to advance knowledge, but to garner visibility while pushing for a particular political or economic outcome. One of this theory’s most salient advantages is that it avoids the pitfalls of over-determinism without portraying think tanks as completely autonomous agents. Its finest accomplishments, in my opinion, are problematizing “credibility” beyond “expert authority” (Pierson, 1994) and understanding that generating knowledge or impacting the policy agenda are only two of the possible aims of these institutions. Nonetheless, I wish to expand Medvetz’s model by drawing more heavily on Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital (Swartz, 2013), that is, a particular form of capital which mediates the conversion of other forms, generally grouped around a ‘symbol’, ‘name’ or ‘brand’. The reason for this is that,

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if we take a think tank’s flexibility to the extreme, it is difficult to understand why there is continuity in the face of radical uncertainty, particularly in crises where the ‘doxa’ of several fields might have shifted. For instance, it is perfectly possible to imagine an outcome of the crisis that de-legitimized completely the idea of a self-regulating free market and that cut dramatically an organization’s sources of funding (and for a moment it seemed that would be the case); but even so, new-right think tanks did not simply change their assets according to what happened around them. Their flexibility has a limit, and without a concept that serves as an anchor, it is difficult to assess continuities and changes.6 On this point I would wish to draw some insights from positioning theory (Baert, 2012) to elaborate on some of the main concepts discussed above. Thought initially for the study of public intellectuals,7 positioning theory is based on the interrelationship between an agent who places him/herself through an intervention (publications, social media and press appearances in the case of think tanks), the context in which the said positioning takes place (the aftermath of the crisis) and others who are positioned through the intervention and who, in turn, position the agent (funders, policymakers, intellectuals, publics and other think tanks). This perspective highlights the continuous process of acting, seeing and being seen in the public domain that any intellectual intervention entails. Positioning theory also provides the concepts of ‘label’ and ‘team membership.’ The first underlies the importance of signifiers that convey and package a set of assumptions on a position (the very name of the think tank acting almost as a ‘brand’) and the second represents an alliance of different positions that condense into intellectual alliances (or fellowships) of greater or lesser cohesiveness. Both concepts, I believe, are useful for understanding the relationship between policy experts within these institutions and how the think tank itself becomes a name that can be mobilized and ‘in the name of which’ experts speak, in an incessant practice of balancing a disparate set of resources, publics and aims. Moreover, I contend that in this interplay between the content of an intellectual intervention, the milieu in which it is uttered, and how an agent – in this case institution – is positioned by others, one can begin to unravel 6 In this sense – and although I do not wish here to enter into the long discussion on whether one can apply the concept of habitus to organisations (Swartz, 2008) – Bourdieu’s ([1972] 1977) idea of “regulated improvisation” might be useful for further studies on institutional/intellectual change. 7 It must be noted, however, that a caveat has to be introduced when applying positioning theory to think tanks, as this approach, as Baert (2012) uses it, applies mostly to public intellectuals. Hence my use of the concept of ‘team.’

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the process of performing an intellectual intervention that pushes a particular narration of our times. One of the advantages of this approach is that it clarifies why actors might refrain from changing their position too often while being open to the possibility. Firstly, because the task of positioning oneself in the public domain is itself cumbersome and lengthy. An intellectual might require several statements before he/she is recognized as occupying a position in the public debate. Secondly, the repositioning process might foster demands for justification. If such changes are too frequent, or their reasons are not deemed convincing, the intellectual in question might lose credibility and arouse suspicion. That is why it matters whence, and in what context, a declaration is made and how it relates to previous interventions. In view of this, in the following paragraphs, I wish to expound a brief deliberation on the interplay between the concepts of ‘team,’ ‘label’ and ‘intervention,’ particularly considering the issue of the intellectual independence of think tanks and their interpretations of the crisis.

‘Labels,’ ‘Teams,’ Critical Junctures and Intellectual Independence The 2013 Global Go-to think tanks and civil society report (McGann, 2014) claims there are 287 institutions recognizable as think tanks in the U.K., fewer only than the U.S. and China. Although one might argue over the definitions employed, this gives an image of the number of these organizations operating under that name. In the last few decades and through the rapid process of expansion, across the political spectrum and in a growing number of policy areas, they have arguably (Misztal, 2012) displaced the political involvement of universities and academics, while also growing in political relevance, having a very peculiar role to play within political parties as sources of programmatic ideas and expertise. For example, Pautz (2012b) has shown how concepts as dear to the current Conservative Party as “Compassionate Conservatism” and the “Big Society” were originally taken from the work of a think tank, Policy Exchange (Norman, 2006, 2009), and how the rise of New Labour in the early 1990s (Pautz, 2012a) was intertwined with the policy prescriptions of a selected number of these institutions, closely linked to particular sectors of the Labour Party. What is more, Pautz again argues that their role tends to be more important precisely in moments where an ideological re-examination is necessary.

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My aim here is not to assess their political relevance or their clout in pushing one view or another, amongst other reasons because this influence is impossible to measure. Nonetheless, it is difficult to argue that their actions do not span a growing number of policy areas for a reason. This is in line with Medvetz’s (2012a, 2012c) warning that think tanks can, in the long run, undermine the influence of more narrowly focused actors. They accomplish this by relying on several of their assets for every intervention and every issue they push: becoming, for instance, much more mediasavvy and politically connected than most university academics and with a halo of expertise that no aspiring politician can attain on his/her own. In the process, Medvetz (2012a) and Misztal (2012) argue, they risk undermining intellectual independence in the public domain, since, while operating in several of these fields and policy areas, they bring logics that are foreign to each of them individually (e.g. political interests to academia, economic pressures in politics). In the context of the crisis, think tanks – and this is most likely the case – would thus interpret events according to the heteronomous forces of the fields in which they operate (their closeness to politicians, their links with donors). There is, no doubt, some strength in that argument. Nonetheless, I wish to argue that the ‘independence’ of policy experts within think tanks should not be thought of in absolute terms. One reason for this is that the cohesion and interrelation of different policy experts working for the same institution has been under-theorized. If a think tank ‘intervenes’, it is only because someone has done so ‘on its behalf.’ Moreover, it is worthwhile remembering that, although experts in a think tank might have a very fixed idea of what ought to be done in the face of the crisis, the actual content, medium and the policy areas that they focus upon depend on a series of constraints (e.g. funding, research programs) and affordances (e.g. particular policy areas, mediums, contacts). This is in part because the greatest asset of a think tank, its name – what makes it different from others – constrains interventions, but also collects them. This involves a constant equilibrium between expanding the networks of an intellectual team while maintaining a certain identity, all while attempting to maintain a halo of intellectual independence that allows a think tank to move away from a closed political niche. Although, certainly, the degree of internal intellectual flexibility will vary amongst institutions, my hypothesis is that observing this variability from the perspective of positioning theory would allow for a more nuanced appraisal of their reactions to the crisis.

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Thus, although on some levels the interventions and readings of the crisis would be more or less predictable, the ‘how’ is an open question. Predictably, we have seen, for instance, that institutions such as the New Economics Foundation and Compass – which are, broadly speaking, against neoliberal policies and austerity – have tended to frame the economic crisis as the result of market de-regulation and the aftermath of the crisis as the lost opportunity to reform an unequal system that will collapse again. Meanwhile, they have shifted from appealing to political actors to the media, from social media to local events, through several mediums and fashions (e.g. books, TED talks, public lectures, etc.). Conversely, neoliberal think tanks, for instance the Adam Smith Institute8 and the IEA, in tandem with conservative discourse, have tended to shift the blame from bankers’ irresponsibility towards government profligacy (often without denying the first but stressing the second). This, nonetheless, says little about their silences, the issues they choose or ignore and the alliances they engage in to push these views. Carstensen (2011), in a similar discussion, employs the concept of the bricoleur to highlight the necessity of understanding political actors not as monolithic enforcers of a paradigm, but as inventive agents that operate with the materials at hand. This does not necessarily mean that these actors are completely flexible at the level of the ideas and paradigms that inspire them, but it does entail a certain degree of flexibility in how they push them, in this case, collectively. Certainly, think tanks are not universities and cannot offer their members the type of intellectual flexibility generally associated with academic life (whatever its own limitations). They are certainly not neutral conveyor belts between science and policy (Smith et al., 2013), but neither are they entirely over-determined, especially at the level of ‘what they do.’ Their independence is an empirical question, associated with the form of the links within and without the institution and the form of positioning that the members of an institution wish to attain. This is why I believe we have to consider again exactly what form of constraints a policy expert faces, in full consideration of the continuous process of positioning an organization in the public domain.

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Madsen Pirie (2012), the head of the ASI, has written a book where he expounds the history of his institution while claiming the influence of its interventions in steering the blame for the last crisis away from the market itself.

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CHAPTER SEVEN BETWEEN DIAGNOSIS AND PROGNOSIS: MEDIA ‘INSTRUCTION MANUALS’ ON ECONOMIC CRISIS KAROL FRANCZAK UNIVERSITY OF LODZ

Introduction One of the main tasks facing the media, as well as the experts and professionals who contribute their opinion therein, has become explaining complex issues and providing wide audiences with clear and comprehensible descriptions of the social reality. This is done, inter alia, by generating ideologically useful narratives and mobilizing interpretative schemes to facilitate an understanding of the issues in the current media agenda. Since 2007, one of the most important topics that has generated media activity and stimulated the public presence of the symbolic elites has been the global financial crisis. This phenomenon is not limited to events from the realms of reality, but is largely sculpted and aided by discourse. While observing actions and comments from current media productions which are attempting to explain the problems of the world’s economy, it is difficult to avoid the impression that these productions are forcing narrowly defined views upon their audiences, and persuading those same audiences that their interpretations, which even make claims of impartiality, are correct. Over the past few years, Polish media efforts to explain the financial crisis have often taken the form of what can be called media ‘instruction manuals’ – guides, reference works, ‘essentials,’ whose actual function is the symbolic and engaging impact on the public discourse, or – in other words – to manipulate readers or viewers into adopting a certain point of view. The aim of this chapter is to evaluate a publication which meets the criteria for an ‘emergency instruction manual’ – ‘NiezbĊdnik Inteligenta

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[Essentials for the Intelligentsia] of the Polityka [Politics]’ weekly, published in January 2012 with the motto ‘Capitalism quaked, or how the crisis began and how it will end.’ This collection of articles was intended to provide a broad description of events which have captured the attention of worldwide public opinion since 2007. The first phase of these events is usually identified with the collapse of the mortgage industry, the breakdown of the real estate market, and the fall of investment banks and other financial institutions in the United States. The second phase is linked with the so-called Eurozone debt crisis, namely the problems of the European Union countries (including Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy) with managing public debt and maintaining fiscal discipline. The Essentials can be regarded not only as a response to the events in America and Europe, but also as a reaction to the growing interest in the transformation of the current – and in the general opinion ‘crisis’ – economy and the political implications of these economic changes.

Research Material Printed media – despite the increasing competition from internet-based news outlets – still corresponds with mainstream public opinion, and has a significant impact on a wide audience of readers. Polityka is an influential, opinion forming weekly, which is considered an important element of the Polish media sphere. The strong position that it has developed over the years can certainly help it take part in shaping the current discourse and profiling the topics discussed in Poland. The weekly is considered to have a liberal-leftist bent, but compared to media publications with a more clearly defined political profile (left- or right-wing), the team of Polityka define themselves as a magazine of the “centre.” In addition to regular weekly issues of the magazine, the editorial team of Polityka – like a number of other titles in Europe – prepare irregular publications in a handbook format (such as psychological guides, historical ‘helpers’ and ‘essentials’). The analyzed collection of texts is part of the Essentials for the Intelligentsia group and has been developed as an information pack containing 33 articles by various authors, mostly journalists affiliated with Polityka’s economic department or the magazine’s columnists who write occasionally about the economy or in conjunction with other social fields – such as politics or culture. Most of the texts have a problematic – from the point of view of genre purity – status of reports, whose task is to provide balanced, unbiased information about these phenomena. In a report, it is more difficult to notice a distinct association or an emotional imposition of an author’s

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views, which does not mean that such text is always committed to impartiality. The reports were supplemented by interviews with experts, professionals and intellectuals, chosen as reliable and important sources of knowledge about the crisis. These experts include: Anita Shlaes, Nouriel Roubini, Naomi Klein, Robert Shiller, Richard Florida and Marek Belka (former Prime Minister, President of the National Bank of Poland).

Theoretical and Methodological Background The texts present in the Essentials for the Intelligentsia collection can be treated as an indicator of the development trends of today’s journalism and expert discourse. Analyses taking the form of temporary cognitive syntheses have become one of the many components of the syndrome of a ‘knowledgeable society,’ an entity probably a lot more real than the ritually conjured ‘knowledge-based society.’ By ‘knowledgeable,’ I propose to define the practice of persistent transmission and dissemination of expert knowledge in the public discourse, in which experts from the fields of ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ provide recipients with widely understood descriptions of reality (Franczak, 2013). These can also be ideologically useful narratives about the crisis, in which economic knowledge generated in the media shapes the evaluation of the economic processes. The exponential growth in media discussions of the crisis in the public sphere and the simplified methods of its interpretation should be critically examined. In their place, distance is suggested in relation to the patterns of defining the crisis and the methods of explaining its origin that dominate in the media, as well as finger-pointing, preferred solutions and concealed ideological references to these statements. An important strategy of the ‘knowledgeability’ can be the so-called ‘framing’ of public affairs and activity of social life participants. The analyses in this field have been developed for more than thirty years in various research areas, known collectively as framing analysis (see e.g.: Benford and Snow, 1988; Benford, 1993; Gamson and Modigliani, 1989; Entman, 2007; Snow, Vliegenthart and Corrigal-Brown, 2007). The findings in this area can be considered as an important methodological instrumentation needed for examining interpretative schemes present in the media (media frames) and different forms of collective action (collective action frames), for example, the activities of new social movements. This research brings a number of arguments to help us to distance ourselves from the patterns of defining the crisis that are currently dominating the media and the explanations provided by symbolic elites, as

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well as the analyses of its origins and sources, formulated moral judgments, and preferred ‘corrective policies.’ According to researchers representing the framing analysis milieu, ‘framing’ entails selecting certain elements of the perceived reality and constructing such a narrative which gives a biased outlook on the relationships between these elements. Usually, it allows one to build and promote a particular interpretation of objects, events or processes of the social reality (Entman, 2007). The practice of ‘framing’ allows the highlighting of some ideas at the expense of others, and enables schemes that are likely to provoke at least some portion of their audience to think or act in a certain way. From this perspective, the media can shape not only about what recipients think, but also what people think about those very issues discussed (Entman, 2007: 164-165). The action of ‘framing’ has three main functions: (1) defining the problem (often accompanied by an analysis of the causes and a moral judgment of people or factors identified with the source of the problem), (2) promoting the chosen method of repairing a problematic situation (such as remedies for overcoming the financial crisis) and (3) motivating potential supporters (especially in the case of interest in collective actions, such as the activity of new social movements) (Benford and Snow, 2000: 617).

Analysis of the Material The scope of framing practices in Essentials for the Intelligentsia is gradable and can be applied to three basic dimensions. First, we can talk about issue-frames. In the examined materials, they relate mainly to the category of (1) the American financial market crisis that was to turn into a global economic crisis, (2) the Eurozone debt crisis, and (3) the impact of the crisis reality on the economic and political situation in Poland. Secondly, it refers to the framing of historical events or moments – in the context of the financial crisis in the U.S., it is, for example, a series of events in 2007 and 2008 – including partial nationalization of the banking sector and agencies guaranteeing mortgages, or the more extensively discussed collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. After all, analyses concern broader frames that exceed a single issue or topic, such as the “frame of costs and benefits” (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes and Sasson, 1992: 385), which in the examined materials has been sometimes used to understand the consequences of anti-crisis changes.

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The texts collected in the Essentials illustrate well that at the level of the media, two main goals of the frames are of crucial importance:1 (1) identification of the problem, for which diagnostic framing is responsible (in the Essentials, these are respectively the chapters: “How did the crisis start?,” “How did the crisis reach Europe?,” and “Poland in crisis”), and (2) articulation of an alternative vision of the world, usually limited to a suggestion of how to solve the diagnosed problem (prognostic framing) (chapter “Remedies for the future”), and determining who is to bear the brunt of reforms and suggested solutions. Importantly, there is a close relationship between diagnostic and prognostic framing – identifying specific problems and their causes enforces a range of possible (“reasonable”) solutions and recommended strategies of action (Benford and Snow, 2000: 616). The layout of the crisis ‘instruction manual’ is supplemented in the publication of Polityka by attempts to indicate those responsible for causing the economic collapse – “authors of the crisis” (in the chapter “Who’s who in the crisis”) and – usually ignored by framing researchers – identifying the “victims,” defining who or what will likely be the “losers” of the reparation policy (in the chapters “Societies in crisis” and “The crisis in the heads”). This element is linked with the description of the groups or social worlds that fell ‘victims’ of the crisis, such as the characteristics of the ‘precariat’ class and a discussion of the history of the Occupy Movement.

Diagnosis In the Essentials, identifying the origins of the crisis in the U.S. and the Eurozone is usually done through the formulation of short-term static diagnoses, rather than undertaking long-term procedural considerations (CzyĪewski, 2007: 54-67). In their explanations, journalists and experts ‘pick’ selectively from a set of chosen elements, between which relationships, not always logical, are constructed. It is important that the message seems coherent and clearly corresponds with the intellectual position of the editorial team. Journalists and experts are looking for the origins of modern economic problems mainly in the crisis phenomena of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Immanuel Wallerstein calls focusing on short-term events – after Fernand Braudel – “focus on dust” and the “blame game” (Wallerstein, 1 The third one – motivating potential supporters, especially in collective actions – is mainly related to the activity of new social movements.

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2009: 385). He advises that addressing temporal dimensions is of greater importance: medium-term cyclical fluctuations (including “hegemonic cycles”) and long-term structural trends. Unfortunately, explanations referring to long-standing, procedural considerations are rare in the Essentials. There are no in-depth analyses of neo-liberalism and neoconservatism, nor of the history of speculation as the main method by which to make money, which could be considered from a long-term perspective. It is difficult to find texts that would combine economic knowledge with historical, anthropological, sociological, and psychological research. This is probably because journalists and experts must meet the requirements of the modern practice, in which articles are subordinated to the rules of media production – attending to the most distinctive themes, comprehensibility and accessibility of the text, leaving limited chances to deepen the analysis. As a result, the domination of the – as Pierre Bourdieu called it – “expert fast-thinking” (Bourdieu ([1996] 1998) prevents symbolic elites from presenting a complex interpretation of the crisis. Diagnostic framing is also a method for determining the entities or phenomena responsible for the crisis (“authors” of the crisis). Answers to basic questions (who or what caused the crisis? where should one look for the guilty party?) are usually patterned and related to an indication of structural (systemic) factors or non-structural ones (e.g. human agency) (Snow, Vliegenthart and Corrigal-Brown, 2007; CzyĪewski, 2005). This distinction has its origins in the findings of the so-called attribution theory and models to explain the behavior of individuals formulated on its basis (Jones, Kanhouse, Kelley, Nisbett, Valins and Weiner, 1972). When publicly explaining the causes of the crisis, structural factors relate to emphasizing the systemic conditions, such as the organization of financial markets, regulation of the economic sector and the organization of public finances. Non-structural factors highlight the responsibility of specific individuals or groups, while assigning them certain fixed predispositions (such as intellectual laziness). Focusing on non-structural conditions often entails blaming specific entities and their decisions, which are treated as the source of the crisis. The general trend in Essentials is to explain the crisis by referring to structural factors. However, it is only seemingly a cognitive advantage. First, the systemic conditions in question are intellectually unsophisticated, they often appeal to common sense. Secondly, one who explains the causes of social phenomena faces a difficult choice: to use structural or non-structural factors. In search of an accurate explanation, persistent work would be desirable, combining the potential impacts of both these

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sources and investigating their mutual relationships. Such effort, however, is rarely undertaken. Wawrzyniec SmoczyĔski follows the trail of structural factors in the text about today’s financial markets and their impact on the genesis of the crisis in the United States (Catch Us If You Can, pp. 42-44). He stresses the responsibility of states that have contributed to the present state of the world of finance by their decisions. From his perspective, the major sins of public administration include: the release of foreign exchange in 1973, the sale of bonds to private investors, and the rise of the public debt market, the growth of the derivatives market and investment funds sector. The result was to be the independence of markets and the loss of control over the entire financial sector, from which the administration itself benefited. In accordance with the general tendency, the focus on structural factors also dominated the discussion of the causes of the crisis in the Eurozone (Wawrzyniec SmoczyĔski’s text No end of the world in sight, pp. 29-30). It is the very structure of the single currency project that is responsible for the problem – in the journalist’s opinion, Member States do not comply with the OCA: they still have a different economic structure and different levels of development, too static and inflexible labor markets, moreover they lack a single common budget. The consequence of giving up the implementation of common requirements was to be asymmetrical development and structural imbalance. However, the biggest weakness of the system is – according to SmoczyĔski – the lack of fiscal union. Independent fiscal policies have affected the levels of budget deficit and debt, which led directly to abuse and a risk of insolvency in some countries. Description of the structural conditions of the crisis in the Eurozone is completed by a report on the health of European banks (text “Fear the banks,” pp. 34-36). It concerns issues such as the diagnosis of a difficult financial position and the risk of insolvency. The difficult situation of the banks was said to have been caused by a risky game being played regarding the market of state debts. According to this logic of explanation, Greek bonds are compared to ‘junk’ subprime loans in the United States, and Greece itself to the infamously bankrupt Lehman Brothers. The biggest structural problem was and is the ratio of banks’ size to the financial capacity of the Member States of the Eurozone. SmoczyĔski cautions that the necessity of the nationalization of large companies would lead to ruin of the real economy and public finance disaster. Focusing on structural elements (mostly anonymous financial markets) does not mean abandoning the discussion on the impact of personal factors. It is well illustrated by the attempt to characterize the mechanisms

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of the so-called ‘speculation bubble’ in the U.S. real estate market. The focus is then on the behavior of the main actors – bankers, speculators, owners of financial institutions, economic experts and credit agency employees. This is accompanied by condemning their “crisis-generating” vices: greed, money-grabbing, irrationality, stupidity and incompetence. These explanations of the crisis are accompanied by a rich use of metaphor. Also in this area – contrary to the general trend – the authors of the Essentials are much more likely to focus attention on non-structural factors and stigmatizing the dispositions of acting entities (using language such as: “risk-taking,” “crazy,” and “[having a] penchant for fraud”). The employed metaphors are often based on associations with (1) gambling and casinos (“[financial leverage] turned speculation into gambling astronomical sums,” “the derivatives market has become a kind of bookmaker [for bets] on the future”), (2) mental pathology (“the finance sector has been seized by the madness of the crowd,” “If the financial markets have a personality, they lost their mind and operate on the verge of a nervous breakdown”), (3) fraud and crime (“frauds of Wall Street,” “shadow economy,” “shadow banking”), (4) mechanics (“financial engineering,” “financial engineers of Wall Street”), and (5) medicine (“injection into the heart had the effect”). The choice of metaphors that are used to write about the crisis, are not without alternative. In the analogous period, in the German public discourse journalists of the weekly Die Zeit used – other than gambling – references to fighting and confrontation (“banks were attacked,” “regulation is a death sentence for a living economy”), religion (“apocalypse,” “prayer time,” “sinners,” “guilt,” “atonement”), imagery of environmental and natural disasters (“toxic waste,” “acid rain,” “earthquake,” “cyclone”), and disease (the economy is a “sick body,” the financial system suffers from a “cold” or “pneumonia,” banks are “bloodstream of economy”) (Fuchs and Graf, 2010). Associations with the forces of nature and the indisposition of the body weaken the possibility of blaming specific entities. Diseases and natural disasters cannot be predicted, they appear suddenly and unexpectedly, often caused by a “force majeure”. Based on this approach, the current situation is not painted as solely the responsibility of entities, but of external factors – someone who is ill cannot be blamed for it. Compared to Die Zeit, the imagery of the Essentials of Polityka to a lesser extent places the responsibility on abstract factors comparable to the forces of nature. References to disease are rare and rather serve as analogy from which we need to distance ourselves.

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Indication of the non-structural factors is also noted in the text about the economies of “peripheral countries of the Eurozone” (Wawrzyniec SmoczyĔski, Peripherals ablaze, pp. 31-33). Responsibility for ‘crisisgenerating’ actions is placed on Greek politicians, their penchant for lies and their careless financial policies. Stigmatized also are representatives of public administration, including tax inspectors and employees of the education system accused of corruption. These charges are also levelled against ‘regular’ entrepreneurs and ‘ordinary citizens’. Greeks are portrayed as a people who avoid the basic obligations of citizenship. Negative behavior is suggested in terms of a whole group, it is projected onto all the members of Greek society. Common cultural characteristics – habits, norms, and values – are made to be representative of ‘them’ on the whole. It insinuates such things as a propensity for deception, lack of responsibility and loyalty to the state. The text does not limit the scope for drawing conclusions; instead, all Greeks are seen to be to blame. If this method of referring to non-structural factors is compared with the discussion of the crisis in the U.S., what is surprising is the absence of any criticism of American borrowers in the Essentials – clients of financial institutions and mortgage agencies. The editorial team seem not to notice retail debtors and the irrational risks that they often took. Distribution of guilt seems paradoxical – the ‘cultural carelessness’ of the Greeks secures their inclusion among the ‘authors’ of the crisis, while the problematic behavior of U.S. citizens (greed, lack of credit prudence, incurring debts beyond measure) does not prevent them from being placed in the ‘victims’ category. Journalists of Polityka follow the patronizing cliché which allows them to condemn and discipline the stereotypical Greek ‘carelessness’ and ‘tendency towards extravagance,’ and to use structural explanations protective of ‘ordinary citizens’ (it is the system’s fault, and not the people’s) when referring to other peoples (such as Americans). Concluding the description of diagnostic framing, it is worth mentioning the description of the crisis in Poland. The text by Witold M. Oráowski (Not so green, pp. 62-65) is dominated by the defence of the “green island” frame, effectively imposed in 2009 by the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk. It is worth a reminder that the message of the metaphor of the “green island” (which stood for a positive GDP) was enhanced with a clear visual frame – a map of Europe displayed at various public appearances with a distinctive green “head of the class”. The Polityka publicist adopts a sense of satisfaction from the ruling party politicians and gives an account of the reasons for this success. He points mainly to structural factors – flexibility of the Polish economy, financial stability (guaranteed by the relatively strict supervision of banks) and

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membership of the EU (including the transfer of means to increase the level of investment). The image of Poland that emerges in the Essentials is a ‘pre-’ if not even ‘non-crisis’ reality.

Prognosis Strategies for crisis framing also include attempts to formulate projects to change the world, mainly by proposing solutions that would help with mobilization towards getting out of the current economic collapse and avoiding similar situations in the future. Prognostic framing, however, is given far less space and attention in the Essentials, as the materials focus primarily on the diagnostic elements. Proposed ideas for repair can usually be classified as short-term or long-term (Snow, Vliegenthart and CorrigalBrown, 2007). Each proposal involves an attempt to determine the instance responsible for the change. The projects of proposed solutions are also accompanied by practices identifying entities that would bear the burden and consequences of the proposed solutions – the “victims” of corrective actions. In the proposed ways out of the crisis, the authors of the Essentials strongly distance themselves from short-term solutions – starting and implementing government bailouts, nationalization or privatization, tax cuts, cuts to social services, maximizing consumption or changing the criteria for the granting of loans. In their proposals, they talk about longterm solutions – the need to move away from the neo-liberal philosophy, the need for a comprehensive reform of the financial system – to establish controls over markets and the reliable repairing of public finances. They emphasize the theoretical helplessness of modern economics, which cannot cope with the intellectual challenges of the times of crisis. At the same time, they see a major paradigm shift in the economy as a chance to avoid future crises. Some writers refer to the vision of the collapse as a “self-correction of capitalism” – “creative destruction” for the elimination of the weak entities and the strengthening of the strong ones that will elevate the economy to a higher level. Others – like Edwin Bendyk – perceive the crisis as a symptom of the great transformation that will bring a revolution in the fields of innovation, political designs and new green technologies, and will enable the connection of anti-crisis actions with climate policies and environmental protection. The prognostic element of framing is complemented in the Essentials by a description of real and potential victims of the crisis. The range of reflection is very wide: from discussing the situation of the ‘precariat’ and the ‘Occupy Movement,’ interest in the fate of bankers and international

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financiers, and the announcement of the death of the modern homo oeconomicus, to pointing out established concepts and ideas that disappeared with the crisis, such as the ‘confidence’ of the social order, discourse of experts, neo-conservatism, neoliberalism and the ‘Washington Consensus’. To identify the ‘victims’ of the crisis, the Essentials use “injustice frames” – constructs indicating the ‘lost’ social environment in terms of determining the area of harm and assigning the victim status, and then strengthening the process of victimization. Such frames attempt to justify the need for some form of political or economic change. The diagram below proposes a working version of a chart presenting the above-described conditions responsible for the diversity of frames, and the application thereof, in an initial and simplified shape, to the crisis framing processes in Essentials for the Intelligentsia. The layout of subsequent columns is defined by the two main objectives described above.

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Eurozone

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Framing the Financial Crisis in Essentials for the Intelligentsia (January 2012) Diagnostic framing Prognostic framing Defining reasons Indicating “authors” Suggesting solutions Indicating “victims” Short-term Long-term NonStructural Short-term Long-term People, Ideas and static procedural structural factors solutions solutions groups notions diagnoses reflection factors Certainty of Speculation Emergency Market History of Financial Alan “Precariat,” the future, bubble, programs, regulation, speculation, sector, Greenspan, the neocollapse of tax repair of analysis of markets government, “outraged,” conservatism, Lehman reduction, public neodictate, greedy experts, neoBrothers, adjustment finances, liberalism shadow bankers, “ordinary” liberalism, growth of of credit reform of (slightly) banking speculators consumers “Washington derivatives market capitalism Consensus” Different Politicians, levels of Change in the corrupt Structure of development, structure of “Precariat,” Joint officials, Emergency the – static labor Eurozone, the European greedy programs Eurozone markets, disintegration “outraged” project citizens lack of fiscal of the zone (Greece) union Conditions to avoid crisis in the future – using: “Pre-crisis” reality, defence of the “green island” frame, (1) flexibility of economy (deregulation, reducing “There is no doubt – the slogan of the green island is bureaucracy, simplification), (2) financial stability largely true” (Witold M. Oráowski, pp. 63), “Poland has (strengthening public finances and the banking sector), (3) fared excellently so far” (Witold M. Oráowski, pp. 65) membership of the EU

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Conclusion The main benefit of using research into the framing of the public life in the fields outlined above is the chance to have an in-depth analysis of the process of social definition of the crisis (or rather crises) in the Polish media, and an investigation of the mechanisms of social perceptions of this category. Such intention stems from the observation that there is a huge public demand for broadly understandable descriptions in the areas of chance, risk, threat, and uncertainty, among which economic problems are prominent. This problem seems all the more important since it applies not only to the actors in the media sphere, but also researchers from the field of social sciences. Analysis of academic symbolic elites present in the Essentials shows that they often support a certain interpretation of the crisis, or a perspective which views economic problems without the sufficient dose of detachment or scepticism which would allow for a more balanced assessment. Not only is the multilateral overview of reality not pursued, but many representatives of the symbolic elites brutally force through their selected interpretations, thus becoming important players in the fight for assigning public meanings to the issues discussed in the media. These issues are part of a broader debate on the function of the symbolic elites in today’s world, and their importance to the construction of the image of social problems in the public discourse. The undertaken issues are combined with a reflection on the current methods of generating professional and expert knowledge. In recent social theory, knowledge production and its circulation and reproduction have become central themes, and the power – for some, even tyranny – of experts is considered to be a symptom of current development trends in modern societies. Experts, advisors and consultants have replaced academics and scientists today. Today’s experts do not aspire to be intellectuals, and intellectuals have a chance to appear in the media mainly as a source of only quasi-expert knowledge. What is more, the ‘knowledgeability’ practiced by the symbolic elites in the media ‘instruction manuals’ is only seemingly an elitist activity. Journalistic and expert knowledge is far from sophisticated, complex and original, it is rather a pseudo-expert reflection, doomed to suffer from simplification, bias and predictability. Provisional attempts at explaining reality (also economy) involve journalists and professionals using general rules of interpretation, allowing them to immediately address current topics present in the public agenda at that moment. Journalists and experts make use of universally legitimate resources, as well as easily available, allegedly unproblematic and generally understandable formulas, often with

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a basis closer to everyday reflection than any in-depth social and economic research. Techniques they use are sometimes simplified popular science templates. The employed interpretative patterns are not, as one might think, for a better understanding of the social processes being discussed, but rather a common sense measure of ‘coping’ by journalists and experts handling sophisticated and complex mechanisms, which must be effectively organized and the box quickly ‘ticked’ in the media ‘instruction manual’ to give an impression of professionalism. The belief that the reader receives a rich package of information, sufficient to form a well informed and balanced opinion on important social issues, seems to be based on illusion. The discourse of symbolic elites offers a rather simplified cognitive map that allows one to form a working idea of the chaotic reality, and often a way to direct and partially release one’s own emotions (such as frustration, anger, or rage). Answers to the readers’ questions (such as who or what is responsible for the crisis?) are given efficiently, accessibly, and mostly with a high degree of certainty. Dissatisfaction with the economic situation is easily ushered towards objects suggested by journalists and experts (such as international financial institutions), or stigmatized social actors (such as participants in global markets or irresponsible policies). This knowledge and the accompanying practice of framing are crucial for the development of modern public opinion. Interpretative patterns provided by experts in various fields allow them to have a say in deciding what exactly the subject of discourse becomes, and to draw the audience’s attention to selected aspects of publicly discussed issues, giving an articulation of ideas that helps recipients to take a stand on the matter. For the reasons discussed above, the analysis of mediators who determine the flow and transmission of knowledge between economy, science, politics and media, should be taken very seriously.

References Benford, R.D. (1993) “Frame Disputes within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement”, Social Forces 71(3): 677-701. Benford, R.D. and D.A. Snow (1988) “Ideology, frame resonance, and participant mobilization”, International Social Movement Research 1(1): 197-217. Benford, R.D. and D.A. Snow (2000) “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment”, Annual Review of Sociology 26: 611-639.

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Bourdieu, P. ([1996] 1998) On Television, New York: New Press. CzyĪewski, M. (2005) Öffentliche Kommunikation und Rechtsextremismus, àódĨ: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu àódzkiego. —. (2007) Langfristige prozessanalytische Betrachtungen und kurzfristige statische Diagnosen bei der Kriegsdeutung: Ein Vergleich, pp. 54-67 in C. Glunz, A. Peáka and Th.F. Schneider (eds), Information Warfare. Die Rolle der Medien (Literatur, Kunst, Photographie, Film, Fernsehen, Theater, Presse, Korrespondenz) bei der Kriegsdarstellung und –deutung, Göttingen: V&R Unipress. Entman, R.M. (2007) “Framing Bias: Media in the Distribution of Power”, Journal of Communication 57(1): 163-173. Franczak, K. (2013) “Uwiedzowienie” sztuki: problem intelektualizacji wspóáczesnych dziaáaĔ artystycznych” [The Problem of Intellectualisation of Modern Artistic Work], Kultura i SpoáeczeĔstwo 1: 43-58. Fuchs, D. and A. Graf (2010) The Financial Crisis in Discourse: Banks, Financial Markets, and Political Responses. SGIR International Relations Conference, Stockholm [unpublished]. Gamson, W.A. and A. Modigliani (1989) “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach”, American Journal of Sociology 95(1): 1-37. Gamson, W.A., D. Croteau, W. Hoynes and T. Sasson (1992) “Media Images and the Social Construction of Reality”, Annual Review of Sociology 18: 373-393. Jones, E.E., D.E. Kanhouse, H.H. Kelley, R.E. Nisbett, S. Valins and B. Weiner (1972) Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behaviour, New York: General Learning Press. McCombs, M. (2004) Setting the Agenda. The Mass Media and Public Opinionl, Cambridge: Polity Press. Polityka (2012) “NiezbĊdnik Inteligenta. TrzĊsienie kapitalizmu, czyli jak zacząá siĊ kryzys i czym siĊ skoĔczy” [Essentials for the Intelligentsia. Capitalism quaked, or how the crisis began and how it will end], 1. Snow, D., R. Vliegenthart and C. Corrigal-Brown (2007) “Framing the French Riots: A Comparative Study of Frame Variation”, Social Forces 86(2): 385-415. Wallerstein, I. (2009) Reply to the questionnaire, pp. 385-388 in J. Kutyáa, M. Penkala, S. Sierakowski, M. Sutowski and A. SzczĊĞniak (eds), Kryzys. Przewodnik Krytyki Polityczne, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej.

CHAPTER EIGHT CRISIS AND THE INFORMATION ECONOMY: RE-READING HERBERT S. SCHILLER MANDY D. TRÖGER UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN

“The subject matter of my work is not a tiny academic squabble.” —Herbert Schiller, cited in Mosco (2009: 87)

Twenty-first century work on communication finds itself part of a long intellectual and academic tradition. This paper lays open the work of U.S. economist and communication scholar Herbert S. Schiller, one of the founding fathers of what Dan Schiller calls the “radical” and others call the “critical” political economy of communication.1 Schiller’s work, though written from within the U.S. context, was inherently internationalist in its outlook. At its core stood the analysis of the “allencompassing and all-powerful impact of capitalism on mass communication” (Lent, 1995, ed.: 4). Herbert Schiller, similarly to Dallas Smythe or Kaarle Nordenstreng, used the academic and public arena to express his restless indignation with how international capitalism affects the “haves and have nots” (Schiller, 1986: 8) regarding information on a national and global scale. Respectively, Vincent Mosco identified Schiller as one of the two representative figures who “have arguably exerted the most influence on the field in the [North American] region” (Mosco, 2009: 84). His insightful and thought-provoking analysis of international communications, and his 1

Vincent Mosco (2009: 24) defines political economy of communications as “the study of the social relations, particularly power relations that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources, including communication resources;” stressing on its core elements, which are a concern with social change and history, social totality, moral philosophy and praxis.

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quest for academic integrity can serve as a guiding line for current scholarship, as his work can be held up as a long-standing critique for emancipation. With this agenda as its premise, this paper first gives a brief account of the emerging field of the political economy of communication and Herbert Schiller’s central place within. It then discusses central themes of Schiller’s work relating to the “information economy”, such as the role of transnational capital, communication technology, consumerism and labor. Particular attention is given to Schiller’s Information and the Crisis Economy (ICI) (1986). Published in 1986, ICI focuses on the shifting role of information as the key element to a newly developing politicaleconomy defined by transnational capital. As such, it offers an illuminating account of the forces that drove the development of the communication infrastructure nowadays known as the “internet.”

On an Emerging Field In 1969, Herbert Schiller’s Mass Communication and the American Empire (MCAE) caused an upheaval among communication researchers. In it, Schiller deconstructed the U.S. military-industrial-commercial complex that pushed a pro-capitalist agenda onto the international sphere. Schiller documented, as he saw it, the unique historical moment of fusion between the U.S.-centric global empire and the expansion of transnational communication networks.2 He specifically looked at the ways in which telecommunication networks, the newly emerging satellite system and communication technologies were used to expand and maintain the sphere of U.S. socioeconomic and political influence. The force of, and controversy around, Schiller’s argument lay in the connection he drew between the national political economy of the United States and international communications, as well as the overtly radical critique he formulated in the process. Schiller’s work was exceptional in U.S. communication research in that it broke with the academic, methodological and Western-centric ideological norms of its time; all of them greatly defined and legitimized by Cold War rationales. Though working from within the U.S. academy, Schiller’s approach was inherently internationalist and deeply concerned 2

More recently, other historians interested in network building expanded Schiller’s argument and showed that throughout history communication networks have internationally been fundamental elements of empire building (see Yang, 2009; Siefert, 2011).

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with “how the distribution of information-communication resources had historically contributed to the stratification of information haves and havenots” (Maxwell, 2003: 2). He took a clear stand against U.S. foreign policy objectives that interlocked with transnational capital, and the rhetoric and research in their service. Not surprisingly, Schiller’s work was initially ignored and disregarded in the U.S. mainstream communication field (Lent, 1995, ed.: 141-142). It found, however, a growing international readership, precisely because U.S. political economic power over international communication networks had significant implications for the rest of the world, and so did the scholarship that developed in its service. It was especially the “theorists of empire” whom Schiller (2000: 105-128) criticised for their participation in upholding a U.S.-centric status quo (see also Schiller, 1989: 135ff). In the 1960s and 70s, Schiller found himself among a small group of other (international) scholars such as Dallas Smythe, George Gerbner and Karle Nordenstreng who diverged from the dominant approach to “communication-as-domination” (Simpson, 1994). Working at the margins of the field, their research, though different in emphasis, method and approach, formed a small but growing opposition to the dominant proWestern, pro-capitalist model of media and modernization. Debunking notions of the ‘free flow of information,’ ‘information society’ and ‘communication revolution,’ these scholars searched for the vested interests behind popular buzzwords closely related to the so-called ‘information economy’3 that occupied academic and public discourse. Political and social activism was a key element to Schiller’s work, not least because real life experiences outside of academia had substantially and ‘by chance’ influenced his career choice and advancement (Lent, 1995, ed.; Maxwell, 2003). He later recalled that his work during the U.S. military occupation of Germany had been “real-life education” bringing him “the sheer luck to be in a position to witness the relationships that formed the power structure around him” (quoted in Maxwell, 2003: 16). It had encouraged him “to question American moral authority in areas of political economic organization” and generated an awareness for the

3

Schiller (1986: 52) defines “information economy” as “a new group of information activities (…) that generate, process, transmit, store, retrieve, and disseminate information for a variety of specialized users. Manufacturers of satellites, computers, and peripheral equipment, along with data processing companies, data bank producers and transmitters, and software/hardware firms now constitute a large and growing component of the national economic activity of the US economy.”

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“many places that might not accept (U.S.) assumptions and would have other ways of organizing their societies” (Lent, 1995, ed.: 153). By the 1980s and 90s, a new generation of critical U.S. scholars, such as Vincent Mosco, Janet Wasko, Dan Schiller, William H. Melody and others, joined the emerging subfield of the political economy of communications; they, again, took their own different approaches towards it (Schiller, 1999b; Mosco, Wasko, 1988, eds). The work of Edward Herman, Thomas Guback, Robert McChesney and others added the dimension of media ownership analysis (Maxwell, 2003: 2; McChesney, 2008, 1993). Their connecting and overarching interest, however, resembled Herbert Schiller’s deep concern for “the ways ruling groups used, and abused, information and communication resources to retain their positions of power within the capitalist system” (Maxwell, 2003: 2).

The “Information Economy” Throughout his career, Schiller looked at a variety of interconnected issues intrinsic to communications, arguing “the separation of culture, politics, and economics is now absurd. Electronic communication provides a common denominator for an ever-growing share of the production of all goods and services” (Schiller, 1986: 81). In Culture Inc. (1989) he stressed the long-term consequences of the increasing private or corporate take-over of public institutions in the United States and abroad.4 Measuring the validity and success of cultural and public institutions according to market criteria took these criteria “into new areas of social interaction” (Schiller, 1986: 122). This brought privatism to the very core of “quintessential social [not private] expressions of community” (1986: 42). The creation of human services (such as education, culture and health care) in the private context was a mere feat of “disordered imagination” (1986: 42). It closely related to the information infrastructure in place and the messages it provided (Schiller, 1989: 66110). In Information and the Crisis Economy (ICI) Schiller gets to the heart of the issue. Focusing on the shifting role of information as the key element to a newly developing political-economy defined by transnational capital, Schiller points out that the private appropriation of public property has become “the general patterns applied to the entire information generating

4 In Communication and Cultural Domination he shifted the focus on the cultural component of imperialism (see Schiller, 1976).

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sector” (Schiller, 1986: 35).5 As a consequence, the “progressive reduction of processes to a common dependence on the new information technologies and the market principles” (1986: 78) has forced public institutions, customarily producing, preserving, and disseminating information, “to become privatised or lose their function in the information process” entirely (1986: 34). Understanding the reasons behind this process of privatisation, however, required an understanding for the development of the information infrastructure within which it operated. This needed, first, a comprehension for the far-reaching consequences of a communication system driven by market rationale, and, second, a critical analysis of the supposedly democratising effects of the ‘information age.’ The latter, according to Schiller, was, regardless of humanist rhetoric applied in its services, inherently antidemocratic (1986: 22ff).

Communication and Power Contrary to celebratory conceptions of ‘the communication revolution,’ Schiller emphasised that the newly evolving international communication system served, first and foremost, the purpose of maintaining, albeit in new ways, “relationships that secure the advantages enjoyed by a small part of humanity and the disadvantages that afflict the large majority” (1986: 24). Instead, having been “conceived, designed, built, and installed with the primary objectives being the maintenance of economic privilege and advantages,” new global communication infrastructures indeed aimed to prevent the kind of social change that would overturn and eliminate this privilege (1986: 16). Making this argument, Schiller took special pains to underline the close connection between the growing commercialization and commodification of information, the international information order and transnational capital. He stressed “the interrelatedness of the world economy and the motor force of its dynamic, supplied by the transnational corporate system [TNC]” (1986: 62) found its impetus through the inherent need of TNCs’ cross-national data flows. Already in MCAE, Schiller had documented how the “free flow of information,” though rhetorically presented as an issue of human rights and individual freedom, has since World War II “been a doctrine stoutly 5

This was not least because in 1978, the US Supreme Court had ruled that “corporate speech” is entitled to the same protection as individual speech under the First Amendment (see Schiller, 1989: 47ff).

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defended on behalf of the international marketing objectives of general media interests” (1986: 56) to break down barriers to the export of their products. While MCAE documented the systemic uses and functionality of the military-industrial-communication complex, exemplified by the anticommunist strategies in U.S. foreign policy and related military action, the focus in ICI shifted to the long-term consequences of TNCs left to their own devices. The result was an information order inherently connected to that of private capital interlocked with U.S. foreign policy interests. Schiller stressed that the necessity of TNCs to produce, distribute and access markets and commercial information regardless of national boundaries, was the driving force behind the development of new information systems (Schiller, 1989: 111ff). It made TNCs global players and gave their need for unimpeded international communication strong political impetus in questions of information system regulation (see also Schiller, 1982). In consequence, the new and expanding information sector of the economy was led by business rationale, not by public accountability. Though this process was nothing new, since “information production has [always] been controlled and has led to social stratification based on unequal access” (Schiller, 1986: 102), it was the increasing centrality of information in all spheres of life that had changed. On the one hand, information’s increasing prominence throughout the economy “as the uses of information multiply exponentially by virtue of its greatly enhanced refinement and flexibility” made information itself a primary item for sale. Information as a commodity became one of “the primary factors in the sweeping changes occurring in the economy,” next to the drive of capital to cut costs and rationalise production to meet economic crises (1986: 33). Thus, the movement toward the privatisation of national communication structures, alongside the growing strength of private transnational communications: …can be expected to produce information systems adhering to market, ability-to-pay criteria. Information and data may be of a quality hitherto unimagined in richness, but their availability will be affected by a selection process unfailingly tied to the wealth and income of the user (1986: 91).

The far-reaching consequences of this process, however, went well beyond that of the economy. Capitalist rationale, being intrinsic to the ways in which the communication infrastructure and its technology were built and produced, Schiller (1989: 111) argued, affected every aspect of sociocultural life. This was because information also shifted into a role of “a primary factor in production, distribution, administration, work, and

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leisure” which made the question of “how information itself is produced and made available” (Schiller, 1986: 102) a crucial determinant affecting the organization of the overall social system. Basic information freely available to the general public was increasingly disappearing, while the stockpile of social information was being privately appropriated and sold to those who could pay for it. Since U.S. corporate information conglomerates operated globally, the privatisation of information systems proceeded internationally (1986: 91; 1989: 113). On the local level, with “the cultures of the home, the factory, the office, the school and the street” utilising these technologies, it meant that they too were “adopting commercial modes and networks that integrate and ‘rationalise’ human consciousness, no less than industrial production” (1986: 78). With the rationalisation of the human mind according to market criteria, communication technology served the capitalist enterprise. The latter not simply being an economic system but a social one.

Technology, Culture and Consumerism Looking at the distribution of power in the production of information, Schiller took a clear stand against the notion that communication technology was neutral or agenda-free. Instead, Schiller argued that because “[t]echnology has never been autonomous of the culture in which it developed” (1986: 79), it constituted an inseparable part of the socialcultural-economic context within which it was created and put into use. In spite of the communications industry’s ability to generate and transmit enormous volumes of information, the technical feasibility of two-way communications, and the proclaimed diversity of new information technologies, Schiller argued (1989), it still worked in a political economy tied to the military-industrial complex (see Schiller, 1976). The explicit aim of the “communication revolution,” having been activated and accelerated to maintain U.S.-centered economic benefits, was to reinforce market-driven advantages “derived from a world system of power” (Schiller, 1986: 22). The most important “inevitability” following this privatization process was “the imposition of market criteria” (1986: 9) on communication services and technologies. It follows that “[i]t is not a question of ‘either-or’ … good technology use or bad technology use” (1986: 22). There was no ambiguity or dualism; rather the insistence on this premise was “uninformed by history or, more likely, too well informed by special interests” (1986: 22). Such notions disregarded that the entire communication infrastructure was subject to little or no public accountability.

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By stressing this point, Schiller aimed to debunk notions that new media technologies per se were liberating and democratising tools, fostering social change. Though change did occur in the social formations of societies around the globe, selling it as democratising merely appeased potential conflict with the rhetoric of participation.6 Change occurred, first and foremost, based on the market, creating a sociocultural climate based on market ideologies.

Consumption is the Message Schiller (1986: 99) stressed that communication technology carried “the message of consumption through its advertising-supported media channels” into every corner of the globe. This was not simply an issue of getting and spending but a process that extended the values and assumptions of corporate-cultural conglomerates internationally. The promarket culture sphere fostered a “way of life and a set of beliefs, that tie human well-being to the individual possession (i.e. property, individualism, and consumerism) of an ever expanding array of purchasable goods and services” (1986: 97-98). In The Mind Managers (TMM), Schiller argued that despite “many disconnected commercial enterprise offering diverse products [they] nevertheless carried similar meanings” (Maxwell, 2003: 57). This underlying “similarity in the message flow” related “to basic systemic values” (Schiller, 1973: 81). Schiller identified these shared ideological ties as the five “myths”: individualism, neutrality, unchanging human nature, human progress occurs without social conflict, and media pluralism (1973: 8-31). Closely tied to this were techniques of information delivery and program production practices for the U.S. and non-U.S. markets. Since the creation and exploration of markets depended, first and foremost, on the acceptance of “unquestioned but fundamental socioeconomic arrangements,” transnational capital – in spite of intracapital differences – shared in the community of this common interest (1973: 5). Here, advertising-based media production pushed the promarket sociocultural sphere, in that its messages were rooted in the capitalist enterprise. First determined and then “reinforced by, property 6

Similarly, in The Mind Managers (1973: 123, 105), Schiller argues that survey research and polling (as a methodological foundation for mainstream communication research) used a “deceptive guise of neutrality and objectivity” to foster the “illusion of popular participation and freedom of choice” while, in fact, it was a method of social control in that it categorized people to manage them and to organize knowledge, which “in itself [was] an act of social policy.”

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ownership, division of labor, sex roles, the organization of production, and the distribution of income,” these messages and their social arrangements, “established and legitimised over a long period of time,” created their own dynamics and produced their own “inevitabilities” (1973: 5). In the long term, they created “a cultural-communications atmosphere in which the dialog is purged at the outset of critical discourse,” disallowing imagination and the formation of significant alternative modes of social reality (1986: 40). Schiller tracked the consequences of this process by looking at the United States. In its “media-pervasive environment,” current practices and institutional changes, according to Schiller, deepened, “at an alarming rate, the gulf between popular understanding and global realities” (1986: 41). The reliance on corporately created and sponsored information, education and entertainment excluded, minimised or misrepresented important social conflict within and outside the United States. “Americans are sealed off surprisingly well from divergent, outside (or even domestic) opinion,” while being misinformed by an information apparatus that was “almost completely dominated by transnational capital and permeated with its perspectives,” pushed commercially-saturated messages and celebrated the benefits of privatised behavior (1986: 109, 110, also 41). Making this argument, Schiller shifted the “blame game” for misinformation from the individual to something that was endemic to the entire information infrastructure.

Consuming Labor Internationally, the consequences were no less serious. Using powerful global communications networks, TNCs were now able to penetrate formerly inaccessible national markets by connecting local banking, industrial, transport, and tourist sectors to its metropolitan informational circuits. This brought the advertising-supported media messages of the world business system into national and local communities. Though “feeding and thwarting human expectations,” it was only local elites who could embrace the prevailing “myths” of property and consumerism, while the overwhelming majority of national populations was excluded (1986: 99; 1989: 111ff). This disparity was widened by several developments. On the one hand, high tech capitalism was now structurally and operationally thoroughly international; labor, however, remained local, nationally effective at best (1986: 105; 1989: 113, 144). On the other hand, with capital’s capability to relocate if its demands were not acceded to, the new communication infrastructure, according to Schiller (1986: 96),

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“facilitated an enormous shift in the balance of power between capital and labor, to the advantage of the former.” It constituted a new power of transitional capital, as it “overturned the already less than rough balance exerted by formerly strong, national labor movements” (1986: 104). Another factor, Schiller argued with reference to the U.S., was that “[t]he white collar worker and open collar professional have been imbued from earliest schooling with an individualist, anti-labor organisational ethic” (1986: 104). Added to the ways in which new technologies were being utilized to restore patterns of home and piecework, the labor force was atomised further, which interfered with its organisation. Schiller warned, however, of the dialectic consequences of this development; it promoted what transnational capital feared the most: “future massive political instability” (1986: 99). In their complete dependence on unimpeded international communication, TNCs needed a relatively secure world system. Though barely acknowledged, labor movements in the developed market economies had been powerful economic and political stabilisers for the market system at large. On the economic side, mass purchasing power had been sustained and broadened, which had mitigated the intensity of cyclical crisis. On the political side, organised labor had extinguished radical and revolutionary forces during capitalism’s most exploitative period of growth. Schiller argued that throughout the twentieth century, “organised labor has (largely) been a conservative force, often, if that is imaginable, as opposed to radical restricting of the social order as capital itself” (1986: 105). The end result was systemic stabilisation, and the break-up of labor by high tech capitalism could, indeed, have been promoting this radicalising force. Schiller predicted, however, that in spite of the increasing privatisation of the public sector and the commercialisation of informationcommunication complex, the state’s power in the developed market economies would be increasing as well. Divested as much as possible of its welfare function, the state’s role shifted towards social control, surveillance, and coercion (1986: 101). Aimed at checking any signs of popular discontent, “[s]urveillance, intervention, and marketing are the near-certain outcomes of the utilization of new communication technologies, domestically and globally” (1986: 23). With the most up-todate communication instrumentation, the state would aim to maintain a social equilibrium while strengthening its coercive capability to handle “potentially unruly domestic groupings and perceived (fabricated?) International adversaries” (1986: 101). Schiller pointed in particular to the growing potential of the National Security Agency (NSA) in this process.

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Conclusion: From the ‘Empiricists of Empire’ to Digital Capitalism A plethora of work is currently being published on the rise of the internet and digital information and communication technologies (ICTs). Though celebratory in many cases, a growing mass of critical scholarship centers on issues of network control and ownership, surveillance, the commodification and privatisation of information, labor and technology and so on (Castells, 1997; Lovink and Zehle, 2005, eds; Webster, 2006; Graham and Marvin, 2001). Many of the arguments are implicitly based upon earlier observations made by Herbert Schiller. Two overall conclusions can, therefore, be drawn from past and current research. First, the democratising potential of the internet and ICTs, if existent at all, are not a given. Secondly, on the participatory level, the internet does allow for different forms of organisation, resistance and meaning-making; it does not, as such, establish or enhance democracy. Though digital media technologies allow for more diverse and (possibly) more equal access to information and knowledge production, their potential remains limited to the political, economic and cultural contexts out of which they emerged and in which they function (Schiller, 1999a). Taking the work of Herbert Schiller to the next level, Dan Schiller, in Digital Capitalism, points to the system building enterprise of the internet and reminds us that “[t]he emergence of the Internet had nothing to do with free-market forces and everything to do with the Cold War military-industrial complex” (1999a: 8). Dan Schiller emphasises that the Internet cannot sufficiently be understood and studied if seen merely as the outcome of laissez-faire capitalist maneuvering, technological development or the push for democratic change. Rather, seen in its historical, political and economic context, it was U.S. centered interests, within which corporate power interlocked with the political and academic sphere, that helped establish a communication system that expanded digital capitalism into the global sphere. Put differently, what we know nowadays as ‘the internet’ or ICTs did not simply emerge out of the blue; they are the outcome, not least, of U.S. government regulations that privileged certain interests, and left out others. These political economic interests shaped and, indeed, are inherent in the very network systems that are now put into broader use (Schiller, 1982). This, of course, does not exclude the possibility of (re)adaptation from a user perspective. However, pointing to the history of system development historicises current debates such as those of net neutrality. Many scholars and activists push for such regulatory legislation, and follow Gerbner’s insights that “[t]he structure

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of freedom is organised diversity whether it pleases or not” (Lent, 1995, ed.: 101). What we need to include in the picture, however, are the very limits inherent in the communication systems in question. Schiller’s work, furthermore, shows that the argument that ‘new’ media (technologies) can serve as enlightening tools, remedying societal ills, has accompanied any old ‘new’ media (Schiller, 1969: 1-30). Several scholars have documented how, in the United States, this idea gathered particular impetus in public and academic debates with the popularisation of the telegraph and telephony, and around the regulation of broadcasting in the early twentieth century (Danielian, 1939; McChesney, 1993). Schiller points out, however, that since post World War II, this argument has been reformulated and pushed by U.S. communication researchers. It helped attain clear U.S. foreign policy objectives, closely interlocking with U.S.-centric transnational capital, both aiming to expand a narrowly defined version of capitalist democracy (Schiller, 1969: 60ff). The fostering of democracy via technology transfer became a key concern to U.S. communication research and was later taken up by scholars looking at global networks from a variety of perspectives (see Harasim, 1993, ed.). Nowadays, with the largely unchallenged spread of global capitalism, western-centric communication networks (diversified and locally maintained but centrally controlled) and western research and rhetoric that developed in their use throughout the Cold War dominate how we talk about ‘new’ media and communication technologies. This is an important point that deserves emphasis. It allows us to place current dominant ideas into their historical context, and to trace the formative ideologies behind them. Herbert Schiller concluded that in order to appreciably develop the social potential “in some of the new [communication] instrumentation,” it needed a “different social-cultural-economic context” (Schiller, 1986: 25). This process of emancipation and democratization did not develop out of nowhere, but required, on the one hand, the recognition for struggle and, on the other, the support of various resistance movements (Maxwell, 2003: 57-58). “Only after sweeping change inside dozens of nations, in which ages-old social relationships are uprooted and overturned, can the possibility of using new communication technologies for human advantage begin to be considered” (Schiller, 1986: 25). ICTs can help in the formation of this kind of resistance. However, presenting communication technologies as agenda-free instruments and loudly proclaiming their potential benefits for the individual prohibits a systemic analysis of the power structures governing their creation, implementation and use within the capitalist system at large. Again, this does not exclude forms of adaptation and struggles for regulatory and

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social change. In fact, they are needed. The importance lies in the acknowledgment that any resistance to the current international information and communication order necessarily touches “the exposed nerves of the transnational corporate order” (1986: 59) itself. With the power relations of global capitalism being intrinsic to international communications and vice versa, questioning the legitimacy of one challenging the other.

References Castells, M. (1997) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Vol. II: The Power of Identity, Oxford: Blackwell. Danielian, N.R. (1939) A.T. & T: The Story of Industrial Conquest, New York: TheVanguard Press. Graham, S. and S. Marvin (2001) Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition, London: Routledge. Harasim, L.M. (1993, ed.) Global Networks: Computers and International Communication, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Lovink, G. and S. Zehle (2005, eds), Incommunicado Reader, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Lent, J.A. (1995, ed.) A Different Road Taken, Boulder: WestviewPress. Maxwell, R. (2003) Herbert Schiller, Lanham, Boulder, New York et al.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2. McChesney, R.W. (1993) Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928– 1935, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. McChesney, R.W. (2008) The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas, New York: Monthly Review Press. Mosco, V. and J. Wasko (1988, eds) The Political Economy of Information, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Mosco, V. (2009) The Political Economy of Communication, Los Angeles: Sages Publications. Schiller, D. (1982) Telematics and Government, Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Pub. Corp. —. (1999a) Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. —. (1999b) “The Legacy of Robert A. Brady. Antifascist Origins of the Political Economy of Communications”, Journal of Media Economics 12(2): 89-101.

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Schiller, H.I. (1969) Mass Communications and American Empire, New York: Augustus M. Kelley. —. (1973) The Mind Managers, Boston: Beacon Press. —. (1976) Communication and Cultural Domination, White Plains, N.Y: International Arts and Science Press. —. (1986) Information and the Crisis Economy, New York: Oxford University Press. —. (1989) Culture Inc. The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. (2000) Living in the Number One Country. Reflections from a Critic of American Empire, New York: Seven Stories Press. Siefert, M. (2011) Chingis-Khan with The Telegraph: Communications in the Russian and Ottoman Empires, pp. 78-108 in L. Jörn and U. Hirschhausen (eds), Comparing Empires: Encounters and Transfers in the Long Nineteenth Century, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Simpson, C. (1994) Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960, New York: Oxford University Press. Webster, F. (2006) Theories of the Information Society, London: Routledge. Yang, D. (2009), Submarine Cables and the Two Japanese Empires, pp. 227-254 in B. Finn and D. Yang (eds), Communications Under the Seas: The Evolving Cable Network and its Implications, Cambridge: MIT Press.

CONTRIBUTORS

Erica Antonini is Assistant Professor in Sociology at the Department of Communication and Social Research of Sapienza University of Rome. She got a PhD in Sociology of Culture and political processes. Moreover, she participated in inter-university exchange programs with the New York University, the University of Amman and the Panteion University of Athens. She is a member of the editorial board of the journals “Comunicazionepuntodoc” and “Rivista Trimestrale di Scienza dell’Amministrazione”. She mainly deals with sociology of institutions and change, cultural, political and administrative phenomena, the process of European integration, the relationship between religion and politics, non-democratic regimes. Giovanni Ciofalo is Assistant Professor in Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome. He achieved his PhD in Sociologies of Everyday Life and Qualitative Methodologies, in the Department of Social Sciences and Communication of the University of Lecce. He teaches Cultural and Communicative Processes, Analysis of cultural industry, Laboratory of story and strategies of cultural industry, and Social Media management. His scientific interests concern communication, cultural consumption, media and cultural industry research. On these topics, he has published numerous volumes, book chapters and journal articles. He was Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication - University of Pennsylvania (2012) and at Gonzaga University, in Spokane (2014). Antonio Di Stefano is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome. He published a volume (in Italian) on Bourdieu’s micro-theory of power (2013, Rubbettino Editore), while another book on the social foundations of cultural taste is forthcoming. More generally, he is particularly interested in studying the potential relationship between Bourdieu’s theoretical proposal and the functioning of social media environment.

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Giada Fioravanti is currently a PhD Candidate in Sciences of Communication at the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome. She published a volume (in Italian) on Bryan Singer’s authoriality (2014, Sovera Edizioni). Her dissertation project sets out to investigate the social and cultural mechanisms of happiness. Karol Franczak is sociologist, culture expert. He studied at the University of àódĨ, where he still works. His favourite subjects include contemporary sociological theories, problems of 20th century culture and art, intercultural communication, rules and strategies of public discourse. His text PrzeszáoĞü w austriackim dyskursie publicznym - przypadek „Heldenplatz” (The Past in Austrian Public Discourse – The Case of „Heldenplatz”) by Thomas Bernhardt was published in the collection PamiĊü Shoah: kulturowe reprezentacje i praktyki upamiĊtnienia (Memory of Shoah: Cultural Representations and Commemoration Practices) edited by Tomasz Majewski and Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska. He is also the author of the afterword to the reissued novel Kalkwerk by Thomas Bernhard (Officyna Publishing House, 2010). Marcos González Hernando is currently a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Cambridge, Fitzwilliam College. With a background in Social Anthropology, he has also received degrees from Universidad de Chile, Goldsmiths, University of London and the London School of Economics. He is particularly interested in the role of intellectuals in society, intellectual change and the concept of crisis in sociological theory. Silvia Leonzi is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome. She is member of the scientific board of the Doctorate Course in Sciences of Communication. Her teaching and research topics deal with the historical as well as social and media construction of memory, the ability of audiovisual media to depict Italian society, the communication of health, and the production and reproduction of narrative models through media products. She has published various volumes and book chapters (in Italian) on these topics. Marialuisa Stazio, during the last five years, has focused her research on the consumption, communication and everyday life processes, as productive fields of economic value, with a special reference to the forms of mediated communication where media-users’ activities play a significant role. Since the end of 1990s, she has investigated how cultural

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production could be an element of differentiation and of ‘competitive advantage’ in international marketplaces. Since the end of 1980s and uninterruptedly until today, her studies have been mainly focused on media communication, culture industries and the history of their systemic processes. She is author of numerous publications in all these fields and since 2012 is associate member to Institute for Studies on Mediterranean Societies (ISSM) of the National Research Council (CNR) in Naples. Mandy Tröger is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Communication Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Holding a B.A. in History from the Erfurt University (Germany) and a M.A. in American Studies from the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands). Her research interests lie on the political economy of 20th century media and communications, critical theory and transatlantic media/communication policies. Her dissertation project looks at the emerging media and press market in post-socialist East Germany. Mandy Tröger is born and raised in East Berlin, which is where she currently resides to conduct her thesis research.