[ abstract book Stigmamente ] AIMAC 2022 Mexico: Social impact of infohybrids and effects the mythopoiesis processes in the Covid Occidental Society and Cultural Industries.

 

Abstract del full paper presentato al Congresso Internazionale AIMAC 2022 Mexico, 

 16th International Conference on Arts and Cultural Management

Social impact of infohybrids and effects the mythopoiesis processes in the Covid Occidental Society and Cultural Industries. 

Autori Mariella La Forgia*, Madia Ferretti**, Luigi Starace***

* IUSVE – Istituto Universitario Salesiano Venezia, PH.D. Marketing e comunicazione , m.laforgia@iusve.it 

** Ph.D. Uomo e Ambiente, Università degli Studi di Foggia 

*** Università degli Studi di Foggia, Medicina e Chirurgia, 

Brief autobiographical note on the authors 

Mariella la Forgia, graduate in Marketing and Communication. From 2001 to 2013 was teacher at the University of Foggia, from 2014 to 2018 at Ca' Foscari University (Venice) and from 2019 at IUSVE University(Venice). Research studies are cultural marketing, museum management and communication.

Madia Ferretti, graduate in Anthropological Philosophy and PhD in Man and the Environment, From 2003 to 2012 was research fellow at the Universities of Foggia, Bari, Rome and Bologna. After the teaching qualification, from 2015 she is a tenured teacher of Humanities and Communication in High School of Graphics. 

Luigi Starace, scientific journalist. Past editor in chief of IJPC - Italian Journal of Primary Care. From 2009 to 2012 media consultant for SIPS - Italian Society of Social Psychiatry. Co-author of postmodernity’s chapters in italian psychiatric manuals: Manuale di Psichiatria Contemporanea (2019, Alpes Ed.) and Psichiatria sociale in Italia (2020, Pacini Ed.) _________________________________________________________________________________ 

Abstract

Social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic substantially impacted individuals’ daily habits. According to WHO studies a global pandemic fatigue state was overspread. In spite to search a resilient way for good feeings, there were a high escapism to “other or new” realities looking for suitable narrations in mediatic, virtual or gaming worlds. Within such a context, digital technology provided a source of alternative forms of connection and entertainment. 

The emergence of COVID-19 was a worldwide phenomenon was an example of a remarkable increase in biological/neuronal and informational exchange. The emergence of Covid-19 exasperated the flow and because of this fast reontologizasion the the human being needs a new mythology to show him the right directions to go. A wide body of multidisciplinary literature has thus investigated the reference heuristic model, considering it similar to osmotic processes, whereby two compartments are connected by an extended exchange interface / surface.

One of the “new other” Infosphere’s space is certainly the Netflix platform or better to say Netflixverse: one of the most cultural industrial bursted in pandemic times. Tv series and films (edited by the same platform or not) become virtual cultural products, instead of being “only” entertainment ones. This shift, which was supposed by several authors to increase and develop in a middle term evolution, is in part already completed. This high acceleration leaded a new strategic approach from cultural industries which need to realize a massive flux of narrations for the global but sectorial public. 

A new phase that we call “hybridation-immersion” is now going on the mental global screen. Due to recent research we suppose that in the Infosphere they become a hybrid system, a neogenesis of elements of both creating a new independent one. For example the characters of video games, anime etc. that generate avatars not only in playful contexts, or even sex dolls equipped with sophisticated artificial intelligences capable of simulating empathic conversations.

 “During the last decade or so, we have become accustomed to conceptualising our life online as a mixture between an evolutionary adaptation of human agents to a digital environment, and a form of post-modern, neo-colonization of the latter by the former. This is probably a mistake. ICTs are as much re-ontologising our world as they are creating new realities. The threshold between here (analogue, carbon-based, off-line) and there (digital, silicon-based, online) is fast becoming blurred, but this is as much to the advantage of the latter as it is of the former. Adapting Horace’s famous phrase, “captive cyberspace is conquering its victor”. The digital is spilling over into the analogue and merging with it.[...].Basically, the increasing digital re-ontologization of artefacts and of whole (social) environments suggests that soon it will be difficult to understand what life was like in predigital times (to someone who was born in 2000 the world will always have been wireless, for example) and, in the near future, the very distinction between online and offline will become blurred and then disappear. To put it dramatically, the infosphere is progressively absorbing any other space.” (http://www.philosophyofinformation.net/publications/pdf/alitfioiool.pdf ) 

Our research focuses on the shift as told both from a psychosocial and marketing perspective, since they are usually fused in the so called neuromarketing studies. How social media launch and lead a new wave of myths, that we call “infohybrids” and where mythopoesis happen. There is still a collective imagination? There is a collective conscience? How do the so called social brain works? We provided a web questionaire: SerieQuest#1 for studying and answer to those question. 

Keywords: infosphere, infohybrids, new media, mythopoiesis