Of Security and Liberty, of Control and Cooperation. Terrorism and the New Ecosystem of Communication

Abstract

The Interconnected Society – a global ecosystem of limited rationality founded on the interdependence of systems and on the processing of information and knowledge (a new paradigm) (Dominici, 2014) – reveals itself, in fact, not only as the underlying structure of digital capitalism and of the sharing economy (Dominici, 1998), but above all, in relation to the issues considered in this essay, as the ideal communicative habitat for criminal and terrorist organizations. Here they can both plan and carry out propagandistic initiatives capable of deeply conditioning individual and collective perception, fears, uncertainty, risk awareness and the social acceptance of risk, and in general, public opinion and the collective imagination, exposed, as never before, to the emotional flare-ups of the global media system. Public opinion(s), which are more and more easily conditioned, are in turn capable of putting pressure on politics, which is expected, despite having itself become weaker and weaker with respect to financial and economic powers, to provide solutions and to make choices of transnational relevance. The network and the ecosystems of complex connectivity have been acting for some time as the main lever for bringing this conflict, which displays facets today which are completely different from those in the past, towards a strategic, not to say crucial praxis, both on a micro and a macro plane: a communication plan scattering in all directions, going viral in real time.