Winning hearts
Democracy works if changing of minds is possible - Media Ecology Newsletter #25
Thinking about persuaders
There are a thousand ways to get others to think something they were not ready to think. There are ways to get others to want and desire things they did not intend to want and desire. Ways that are based on knowledge of the most trivial, obvious, animalistic drives; ways that are based on fear, boredom, lack of imagination. They are called propaganda, usually.
There are also ways to rationally lead people to improve their understanding of reality. They are called education, very often.
And then there are ways that involve emotion, beauty, imagination and at the same time wisdom and reason. They are sometimes called novels, stories, biographies, movies. But they need to be the good ones. The kind of stories that make people laugh and cry and think.
Persuaders are those who know how to lead people to change their way of thinking. They are all at play in democracies. Persuaders can use all the above-mentioned schemes to make others change their way of thinking. But all of them are better than those who rely on the opposite strategy: prejudice. The strategy of making people believe that political opponents will never change their minds, that they are enemies, that they cannot be persuaded but only eliminated, shot down, coerced, blocked, delegitimized. It is the drift that kills democracy. Because democracy, however flawed, is based on the idea that one way or another eventually people can be induced to agree, by changing their minds from where they started, at least a little bit.
Those who hate, those who do violence to other people's ideas, those who despise, those who think you can't talk to opponents, are convinced that no one changes their mind and there is no use in discussing. They think that there is only a violent struggle to be engaged in and won. For them, there is not democracy. And this is the end of a democracy.
Anand Giridharadas' book, The Persuaders, can be a beginning of reasoning about all this. There is news that arouses surprise. There are ideas that raise questions. There are possibilities that seem to open up. But first of all, there is a misunderstanding that is being dissolved: it is not true that opponents cannot change their minds. A meeting point is possible. And from this possibility democracy restarts. And its superiority over other regimes.
Please read my post: Anand Giridharadas. The Persuaders. Social division based on prejudice is a disease of democracy
Welcome to the “media ecology” newsletter. The working of the news and democracies are interlinked. Full immersion in stories can change peoples’ minds. There are so many things happening that it is difficult sometimes not to desire avoiding the news. We should resist this instinct. But it doesn’t mean that all the news need to fit in our attention. How can we improve our news diet? I don’t know really, but the media ecology research is about getting closer to knowing a bit more about this matter.
Readings to share
Philippe Bihouix: « La technologie a trop d’impact sur la planète pour être la solution à la crise du climat ». Le Monde (subscribers). Bihouix is director of AREP. And he is co-author of La ville Stationnaire, Domaine du possible 2022. It is not about degrowth. But it is about a new interpretation of innovation in the context of sustainability.
Nathan J. Robinson: We Live In The Age of The Bullshitter, Current Affairs (free to read). Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Sam Bankman-Fried: what do they have in common? They talk the same way.
Alex W. Palmer: How TikTok Became a Diplomatic Crisis, New York Times (subscribers). TikTok is such a huge success that it has disrupted the disruptors. Who seem to think that enough is enough.
Podcasts in Italian, by me
L’altra metà del verso. Rai Radio 3
Media Ecology. Intesa Sanpaolo on air
Eppur s’innova. Luiss University Press
Ecology of screens
On the occasion of the International Conference Vivre par(mi) les écrans: entre passé et avenir, which was held in Lyon at the end of May, the newsletter of the International Research Group Vivre par(mi) les écrans and the Media Ecology newsletter agreed to signal, each to its recipients, the importance to them of the other's content, inviting them to subscribe to receive it and disseminate it among their contacts. So please visit Vivre par(mi) les écrans and subscribe to the newsletter.
This choice of collaboration stems from the common project of promoting, developing and sharing highly qualified knowledge aimed at creating tools for guidance, critique and intervention in the field of media ecology and our current and future living between(mite) screens, as well as fostering the social dissemination of the aforementioned knowledge and tools.
See you next time!