«Understanding the conditioning mechanisms of society is essential to defend oneself from manipulation»: Marcello Foa explained this to the audience of teachers and students of the Academy of Fine Arts of Sassari in this morning's lectio magistralis.
The meeting organized by Gian Luca Beccari, professor of media phenomenology, was inspired by the latest books by journalist, writer and former Rai president Marcello Foa entitled "The (in)visible system - Why we are no longer masters of our destiny" and the antecedents "The sorcerers of the news".
The starting question of the reflection and detailed research that Foa has been carrying out since 2006 is whether the bombardment of information favored by the development of technology (mobile phones and smartphones above all) is neutral or instead is used by monopolies and oligopolies to guide politics, the economy and company .
"There is a network of supranational organizations that act as guardians of dams, influencing life and reducing the democracy of nations forced to stay within an ever narrower highway of democracy without detours," explained Foa. And he emphasized the large multinationals that have a GDP higher than that of many nations.
Many of the manipulation techniques to control citizens date back to the Cold War between the USA and the USSR which was also "psychological warfare", as Eisenhower defined it as early as 1947.
To avoid manipulation, an interdisciplinary and holistic reading is needed, which takes into account the complexity of the events, which goes beyond the images used to unleash emotions rather than to explain reality, or even to distort reality.
