Università Roma Tre

Nonviolent communication and the internet

The main objective of this course is to create a critical consciousness on the use of everyday communication tools, forms, and practices, from orality to digital media. In the first part of the course students will be introduced to the main paradigms, methodologies and works of the sociology and history of media. We will read and discuss passages from the manual written by Mario Ricciardi, "La comunicazione. Maestri e paradigmi" (Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2012). Students will have to write weekly responses on the assigned readings and engage in both online and offline discussions guided by the instructor. In the second part of the course, these prevalently Western theories and authors will be reexamined and criticized in the light of completely different approaches. We will introduce the concept of “nonviolent communication”, elaborated and practiced, between others, by the Mahatma Gandhi. Writers, intellectuals, social and political activists like Danilo Dolci, Aldo Capitini, Paulo Freire, Frantz Fanon, Houria Bouteldja, Lanza Del Vasto, Vandana Shiva and others will be the starting point for analyzing and finally deconstructing the aggressive and manipulative Western communication forms and techniques that dominate the present media scenario. This analysis will lead us to address critically our own everyday online interactions as to understand how the digital dimension can transform and manipulate our emotions, ideas, cognitive habits, etc. and guide our behaviors and actions towards specific commercial, political, and cultural objectives. At this point students will be asked to create and experiment with nonviolent forms of communication, both verbally and online. The final objective will be to create new communication codes and practices that can help students to discover and express their own creative potential and accomplish an autonomous capacity to communicate effectively and peacefully in the real world.