Global Issues and Binary Visions of Contemporaneity. Media and Security, Migration and Political Violence: What Holds them Together?

Undoubtedly, the attack on the Twin Towers can still be considered the first global shock, which brought into focus the question of the relationship between different cultures in a fluid and interconnected world, placing everyone under a constant and generalized veil of suspicion. The fear of the different, of the foreigner, soon became a mass phenomenon, a newsworthy topic in the media space, a kind of collective trauma, a public monster continuously narrated and re-imagined. The following socio-political reflection will attempt to critically and interdisciplinarity analyze two ‘big questions’ of contemporary society (often resolved through holistic and binary communication): is there a link between terrorism and migration? What is the role of the media in the knowledge of these phenomena and the level of security perception around them? The effort made by the author was to go beyond the current ‘communicationism’ which tends to reduce the question of migrants to the sphere of communication, isolating the latter from other fundamental dimensions and at the same time to offer new perspectives for investigating and understand the complex issue of human mobility, without forgetting the role played by the new information technologies and the tortuous nature of the path for the protection of the freedom and dignity of the person.