The only way out for our politics is to return to a strong, rocky thought, based on the natural order which rejects, with the force of rational argument, the “ideological bubbles”
The professor. Damiano Palano, political philosopher and director of the Department of Political Sciences of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milanpublished a very interesting in 2020 essay entitled “Bubble Democracy: the end of the public and the new polarization”.
The work highlights very well how, starting from the crisis of the masses of the 60s and 70s of the last century who began, in that period, to progressively lose their political centrality, a new subject emerged, the “public”, formed by the exterminated television stalls that today, with the overwhelming dominion of the social mediahas undergone a profound fragmentation in a plurality of segments without rooting within a common communicative sphere.
The expression “bubble democracy” therefore indicates that, after the democracy of the parties and the democracy of the public, a structure characterized by a myriad of largely self-referential “bubbles” has established itself. The consolidation of this reality impacts the very concepts of democracy and political representation: in fact, on the one hand, a strong cyber/polarization where everyone only hears the amplified echo of their own “reference bubble”, with a simultaneous prejudicial closure with respect to possible alternatives and on the other hand, thanks to the pervasiveness of social media in the lives of users, not only is it possible to put in place a personalized daily information, but it even goes beyond it by arriving at passive information that is offered to the user by artificial intelligence on the basis of the personal profile designated by the algorithm.
And even the parties are falling more and more in love with the idea of build their consensus on social media, in a sort, mutatis mutandis, of what Norberto Bobbio called, in another context but which is well suited to the current historical period, “democracy of applause”. The Italian legal system lacks an organic regulation of the phenomenon, beyond a few AGCOM decisions (such as resolution 05 April 2019, n. 109 adopted in view of the European elections) which, however, are not binding, leaving the solution of the problems to the self-regulation of the social networks themselves.
Even the recent one EU regulation no. 2065/2022 (so-called Digital Service Act) presents more critical profiles than those it resolves, especially for the fight against alleged disinformation which turns out to be a sort of hidden censorship: on the basis of which objective parameters can a piece of news be labeled as disinformation? We don’t want to resign ourselves to a proliferation of “bubbles”, to a democracy of the algorithm and then the only way out is to return to a strong, rocky thought, based on the natural order which rejects, with the force of rational argument, the “ideological bubbles” which permeate the system and which increase social conflict.
*Article by Daniele Trabucco, Structured university professor of Constitutional Law, European Union Law and International Law at the Higher School for Linguistic Mediators/«San Domenico» University Institute in Rome/Unudolomiti University and Higher Education Campus of Belluno. Associate of Italian and comparative constitutional law and doctrine of the state at the Free Academy of Studies of Bellinzona (Switzerland)/Centro Superiore Studi INDEF (Institute of Dynamuche Neurosciences «Erich Froom») and Filippo Borelli, lawyer of the Verona Court.
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