Autori: Nicola Ferrigni, Marica Spalletta
Editore: Gangemi
Tipologia Prodotto: Articolo su rivista
Titolo della Rivista: Sociologia
Numero; Volume: 1
Numero prima e ultima pagina: 193 – 204
Codice ISSN: 1594-6061
Anno di Pubblicazione: 2018
Link: https://www.gangemieditore.com/dettaglio/sociologia-n-1-2018/8146/41
Abstract:
Since the day in which Pope Francis announced it (March 2015, 13th), the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy has been covered in depth on social media and especially on Twitter, which has quickly become one of the most meaningful tools through which people have expressed/shared happiness, emotion, hope but also have concerned/denounced doubts, worries, fears. Concerning the idea of “fear”, in particular, it tends to take shape in both the perspectives suggested by sociological studies: on one hand, as fear linked with a danger (that is an objective situation in which people are exposed to evils or harms), and as fear related to a risk (which consists of the odd of exposure to a danger, and blends with the individual awareness of uncertainty). Based on these premises, the paper analyses how the idea of “fear” takes shape in the Jubilee Twitter coverage, aiming to understand the reasons why tweeters fear an event like the Jubilee and the ways (texts and images) through which they express their fears. From a methodological point of view, we carried out a media content and sentiment analysis on the tweets posted in the 50 days before the Holy Door opening (December 2015, 8th). The research shows that, in tweeters’ awareness, the “Jubilee fear” tends to take different shapes, which refer to two typologies of reason in two different perspectives: on one hand, an “endogenous fear”, concerning the management of a “big event” like a Jubilee by the city of Rome and its political administration; on the other hand, an “exogenous fear”, first of all strictly related to terroristic attacks coming from IS. Focusing on this second perspective, the research also shows that today people use to share on the Net the fear related to terrorism and tend to express their awareness of fear preferring “strong tones” (aimed to denounce or satirical ones rather than worried ones). However, when terrorism perception shifts from the emotional dimension of risk to the rational dimension of danger, also people reaction changes: ending up asking #StopJubilee, tweeters say “yes”, but only in safeness conditions.