In February 2017, a young girl from Gaza steps onto the podium of the world’s largest international student festival. She is 6000 km away from home, in Norway. Here, hundreds of young people from hundreds of different countries have come together in the name of dialogue, intercultural cooperation, and peace. At this moment they are all gathered to listen to this one young girl. Here is what she says to them: – I am angry. I was born as a refugee. I am angry. I was born in a conflict area. I’m angry because I grew up in an uprising
Category: Resilience
Is happiness mandatory?
Pursuing happiness has been a long-lasting quest throughout the history. In ancient Greek, the original concept of happiness, “eudaimonia”, referred to the good life. Aristotle already suggested that happiness is the only thing that human beings desire for its own sake, unlike wealth, honor or health, for instance. And it is actually, as we can easily observe that we tend to seek richness, honor or health in order to be happy. Whereas, in the eleventh century, the Sufi thinker and philosopher Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali wrote the Alchemy of Happiness, a manual of spiritual instruction. In Roman Catholicism,
Cyberbalkanization
In this article, I will try to go through a topic that has been gathering a lot of attention in the last years, and that personally fascinates me: the study of Internet echo chambers, and how information is spread through them. A study by the Anti-Defamation League focused on the instant messaging app Telegram as a source and safe haven for echo chambers. Telegram, a cloud-based online social networking, and messaging app count more than 200 active users, and hosts around 221 thousand between groups and channels. Some are private, some public and some require a digital “key” to access, rendering
Watch this Italian, killing thousands of people with his apparently delicious pizza!
Ok now that I have gained your attention, I have to admit that this article does not really contain the story of an Italian serial killer. Because there is no one, no one that I know for sure is killing thousands of people with pizza!. Anyway, this title is a typical example of click-baiting journalism, this is how fake news starts: a catchy headline, ready to be spread on the internet by people who will never read or verify its content. Fake news is a neologism to describe a well-known practice of bad journalism, which is over the centuries influenced our
Attention Economy: marketing in the Social Media Era
Time is the most precious resource that we own, everyone wants a piece of it: owners, friends, family and Facebook. Time is anyway a discussed topic even in the science, and a lot of scientists in modern physics claim that it is possible that time itself neither exists nor it is nothing more than a human convention. But still, we live in that human convention, so time is regulating our lives and relationships from work to the most friendly times. Clocks everywhere; smartphones, city buildings, churches, working place, and everywhere. So now we have to manage it very carefully, we need
Hyperleaders, politics in the social network era
The advent of the internet brings a significant shift in the leadership concept in modern democracies. With a big disillusion for the regular parties and politicians, the engagement of the electors and of the possible political followers and activists are more and more related to the social media parameters rather than the political contents that a certain leader can push. To make a point, the ideological battle is not ended, but regarding a smaller part of the audience than the majority which is nowadays is less guided by the commitment to a particular idea or party. Most people look at the
Community Radio, a tool to reduce inequalities and pursue social justice
Before the advent of television and then on the internet, the first mass communication system was the radio. The first mass-media that lives until today because of its unique characteristics advent of new technologies and integrated with them. A voice through the air is not invading as it can fit in our rooms without interrupting other possible activities. But, it can immediately catch our attention when we hear a particular topic or song. Radio was the first medium to give the news to the citizens, in particular during the wars time. Coming to be a social ritual and a powerful divulgation
Live long and prosper: star trek’s approach to positive peace
Is there a society where conflicts are always managed in a peaceful way, where humans can live without the struggle for food and water, where diversity is not feared but it is always looked with interest. Discover the universe it is their main target, basic needs are within everyone’s reach, money does not measure the value of a person because there’s none. Gender role is abolished, women and men seat together as equals, racism it is not even considered by humanity that embraced space travels and has to face diversity in outer space. Meeting new species and civilizations requires an open