Occupation: Prime Minister

Article by Manuela Andaloro for Corriere dell’italianita’.

At the end of January 2020, I took a few months off to welcome the arrival of our third child. I was going to leave behind a familiar and comfortable reality, with a stable balance and foreseeable dynamics. After four months, I prepare to pick up where I left off and to gradually reopen myself to the world, but the world I left, is not the world I am about to return to, nor the world I lived in with my family and that I have seen change in these few months.

What should we expect from the “new normal” that awaits us and from life after lockdowns?

 A recent cover story from The Economist talks about a “90% economy”, in which significant bits of the pre-COVID everyday life simply won’t exist any more. At least, until a vaccine and/or treatment will be found or the virus will have disappeared on its own.

 After the lockdowns, the factories have reopened and the streets are no longer empty, but the result is a 90% economy, where the use of public transport has decreased by a third, and domestic flights are nearly all grounded. Consumer spending has decreased by 40% and the same goes for eating out. Hotel stays are one-third of what they used to be. People are overwhelmed by financial difficulties, uncertainty, the fear of social uprisings or a second wave of COVID-19. More companies are filing for bankruptcy, unemployment is soaring, GDP is free falling. On the other hand, deaths caused by air pollution – 1.5 million each year, according to WHO – dropped to almost zero and the benefits for the environment are countless. This affects all the countries that have opted for more stringent lockdowns but also reflects onto those that have not implemented any type of closing measures.

The economic, social and political after-effects of COVID-19 are leaving deep scars in the society and spread out with a myriad of ramifications, creating a domino effect.

In this context, the need for stability on the one hand and for a sustainable change on the other is strongly felt by the vast majority of the population. Something is moving: change is in the air and expectations among the people are growing.

The task of all those who believe in free markets and western democracies is to ensure that these expectations are channelled towards the right kind of change.

Eventually, this pandemic might even increase the sense of solidarity both at a national level and globally. Perhaps, this time – unlike the crisis of 2007-2009 – the desire for a change will not lead to a surge in populism.

In this challenging scenario, I see more and more great opportunities opening up. Politics is one of them, a subject for which I have a strong passion, like so many other women.

Abigail Spanberger, Virginia 7th Congressional District seat winner, addresses the crowd as daughter Catherine, 4, playfully crawls between her mother's legs during the election night party, Nov. 6, 2018. Looking on are Spanberger's husband, Adam, right, and daughters Claire, 10, and Charlotte, 7. Spanberger defeated two-term Republican Rep. Dave Brat. (Bob Brown, AP)

World leaders attend a family photo session at the G20 in Osaka. Kim Kyung-Hoon/Pool/Getty Images

But, like so many other women, I often find the rugged roads of politics hard to walk and the tools needed to be out of reach. If in the corporate world we speak of a “glass ceiling”, in the political circles we could define it as a concrete ceiling: it’s out there for everyone to see.

Formal equality of the sexes does exist but the facts on the ground are different: over the last two millennia, politics has been ruled by men according to a gender conception that has prevented equal rights so far. As a matter of fact, in Italy, women are 51% of the population but only 30% are involved in politics. Simply put, a big portion of the population is not being represented and has little relevance in public policies, even those that concern women directly.

Everywhere in the world women are under-represented: only 24.3% of all national parliamentarians were women as of April 2019 (UN statistics); out of the 193 Member States of the United Nations, only 15 have a female leader (Pew Research).

In Switzerland, my current country, female voters outnumber their male counterparts by 10% (Swissinfo). Yet, women remain a minority in cantonal and federal politics.

Women in politics are confronted with a male majority in virtually all respects, even if there are big differences between the political parties. For example, the share of men in Switzerland’s strongest party, the conservative right Swiss People’s Party, is twice as high as the share of female members. The same applies to the centre-right Conservative Democratic Party.

Both the centrist Christian Democrats and the Social Democratic Party state that their share of female members is around 40%, while the centre-right Radical-Liberal Party does not reveal its figures. Apart from the Greens, no other party approaches parity.

 A closer look at the number of female delegates reveals a similar picture.

 Alice Glauser, People’s Party’s parliamentarian for canton Vaud, thinks this is problematic: “The structures were created by men for men”.

 Also in Italy, the figures are well known and merciless. No female Prime Minister, or President of the Republic, ever. Until the first Conte cabinet, throughout the seventy years of the Italian Republic, over fifteen hundred male ministers were elected, against only eighty-three female ministers, half of which were without portfolio. Today, three out of five female ministers are without portfolio. Only 13 mayors out of a hundred are women.

In this social context affected by COVID and with such a fragmented political framework, I rejoiced when I saw – at least, in Italy – strong and successful initiatives taking place with the aim of shaping the future political order. They advocate for equal opportunities bearing a constructive and democratic vision.

The first one is called “Prime Donne” (Women first), a school of Political Studies supported by Più Europa Association and presented to the Chamber of Deputies. It is a training course for 25 women selected among over two hundred candidates. It’s just a drop in the ocean, but it’s a start.

Fabiana Musicco, the spokeswoman of the school, explains further: “We work on contextual data that are often not known to the public. We aim at exposing the under-representation of women and showing how their increased presence, for instance in municipal executive councils, has contributed to changing the policies. We are talking about the structure of political parties, access to the leadership, how electoral rolls are created. We also offer training modules on the so-called ‘soft skills’, that is, communication abilities. Political verbal communication – even that of talk shows – is ruled by a masculine, aggressive speech style; we want to disrupt these patterns. We also want to bring up new proposals for a better work-life balance”. 

The second initiative, Prime Minister, is a school of Political Studies for young women (aged 13 to 19) which intends to “inspire a new generation of women by introducing them to politics – understood as the art of interpreting and guiding society –, discussing democracy, activism, social justice and female leadership.”

 “We are trying to build a new piece of the world, a dimension where we can find happiness in the community, where we can discover new ways of thinking and living”, says Florinda Saieva, 42, from Sicily. “We want to inspire the youngsters, to discuss with them about democracy, institutions, justice, sustainable development; we want to reflect on the power of active citizenship as well as on the absurdity of gender stereotypes that continue to relegate women to secondary roles and on the need, instead, for new female leaders. This can be seen as a gender equality challenge and a generational challenge – this is why young girls are our priority. What’s more, this is also a challenge to promote the South of Italy, where boys and girls go through huge difficulties. We mean to stimulate the talent and sensitivity of these young girls, hoping that these very girls may be the Prime Ministers of tomorrow. We all desperately need a change and I believe that after the horrible moment we are going through, we will be ready to make it happen”.

In this difficult moment we are experiencing, it is essential to grasp and guide this change, now more than ever. We need to start building new structures and synergies made for an economic, political and social future that includes and leverages that 51% of the population, breaking up with the past and, finally, disrupting these obsolete and harmful mechanisms.

Manuela Andaloro

(info@smartbizhub.com)

Social Media between society and democracy. Tech giants, is this how you want History to remember you?

Article and Cover Story by Manuela Andaloro for FocusOn Mag, August 2019.

At the inauguration of Brazil’s new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in early January, a crowd of his supporters began a surprising chant. They weren’t cheering for Bolsonaro or his running mate or their party; instead, they were reciting the names of social media platforms. "Facebook!", "WhatsApp!" shouted the crowd.

They were crediting the platforms with their man’s victory, and they aren’t entirely wrong. During the campaign, a conservative pro-business interest group funded a massive disinformation campaign on WhatsApp (the popular messaging app owned by Facebook). False and damaging information about Bolsonaro’s left-wing opponent spread like wildfire in the run-up to the vote. This deluge, according to one Brazilian expert, played a role in Bolsonaro’s victory.

 Bolsonaro’s sympathizers and supporters are part of an increasingly dangerous worldwide trend. A troubling development, now familiar to many, is now evident: social media, once seen as a profoundly democratic technology, is increasingly serving the needs of authoritarians and their allies.

Many observers have noted that entrenched authoritarian states, like Russia and China, have gotten very good at manipulating these platforms to marginalize domestic dissidents and destabilize democracies abroad. What has gotten less attention is how authoritarian factions inside democratic states — far-right politicians and parties that are at best indifferent to democratic norms — benefit from the nature of modern social media platforms.

The American 2016 elections, those in Brazil in 2018, the ones in the United Kingdom in 2016 and in Italy in 2017 have demonstrated that social media are a tool that is unfortunately widely used for this type of activity.

Should we perhaps admit a rather painful truth? Has social media, perhaps, become an authoritarian tool in the manner in which they are currently being used?

How the far right gains an advantage using social media

The Journal of Democracy is one of the premier academic venues for analyzing the current state of democratic politics. Its most recent issue features an essay from Ronald Deibert, a political scientist and director of the University of Toronto’s tech-focused Citizen Lab, on the role of social media in modern politics. His conclusion?

“It seems undeniable,” Deibert writes, “that social media must bear some of the blame for the descent into neo-fascism.”

Ten years ago, Deibert’s view — now widely shared among journalists and scholars — would have sounded absurd.

The main characteristic of social media seem to be a vague democratic promise, but the rapid dissemination of information can be used against democracy through information overload and the dissemination of false news that leverage the fears of those who often have few means to understand the reality of the facts.

An always-on, real-time information tsunami creates the perfect environment for the spread of falsehoods, conspiracy theories, rumours, and “leaks.” Unsubstantiated claims and narratives go viral while fact-checking efforts struggle to keep up. Members of the public, including researchers and investigative journalists, may not have the expertise, tools, or time to verify claims. By the time they do, the falsehoods may have already embedded themselves in the collective consciousness.

A recent study found that conservatives were more than four times as likely to share fake news on Facebook as liberals. Another study, from researchers at the University of Oxford, found that conservative users were overwhelmingly more likely to spread “junk news” (defined as outlets that “deliberately publish misleading, deceptive or incorrect information”).

The University of Oxford’s Samantha Bradshaw and Philip Howard put out a report last year on the political abuse of social media platforms in 48 countries. They argue that in each of these cases, the use of tools like fake news and trolling undermine the health of democratic regimes and benefit authoritarians. The more anger there is out there, the more support is guaranteed to anti-democratic forces.

"Unfortunately, there is mounting evidence that social media are being used to manipulate and deceive the voting public—and to undermine democracies and degrade public life", they write. "Social media have gone from being the natural infrastructure for sharing collective grievances and coordinating civic engagement, to being a computational tool for social control, manipulated by canny political consultants, and available to politicians in democracies and dictatorships alike."

 A BuzzFeed analysis found that between 2012 and 2017, seven of the ten most popular articles about German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Facebook were false. Merkel is widely seen as a champion of European liberal values and inclusiveness, one of the major bulwarks against the far-right tide on the continent. Three of the seven false articles in the BuzzFeed list were attacks on her immigration record, all focusing on making immigrants seem like threats to Germany and Merkel unreasonably sympathetic.

Facebook’s role in Brexit and the threat to democracy.

In a recent viral and unmissable TED Talk that has garnered over two million views in just two months the journalist and Pulitzer Prize candidate Carole Cadwalladr has discussed one of the most shocking events in recent times: the very close vote in the United Kingdom in 2016 to leave the European Union. In her speech Carole mentions the "gods of Silicon Valley" for their role in helping authoritarians consolidate their power in different countries.

In her talk, Cadwalladr spoke to those whom she identifies as the chief culprits: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Twitter's Jack Dorsey.

"This technology that you have invented has been amazing but now it's a crime scene. And you have the evidence. And it is not enough to say that you will do better in the future because to have any hope of stopping this from happening again, we have to know the truth…because what the Brexit vote demonstrates is that liberal democracy is broken, and you broke it. This is not democracy: spreading lies in darkness, paid for with illegal cash from God knows where. It's subversion and you are accessories to it."

It’s not all bad, is it?

There are places where the democratic promise of social media, which has for example favoured the Arab spring or movements to counteract Orbán in Hungary and also Erdogan in Turkey, is not extinguished but they are the minority in relation to the damage that the social media platforms seem to be inflicting on the liberal order of democracies throughout the world.

Social media right now is functioning as a kind of parody of the classic “marketplace of ideas” mode of the public square. Instead of the best ideas winning out in free debate, there are so many bad ideas that the good ones simply get drowned out.

In August 2018, MIT Technology Review revisited its 2013 “Big Data Will Save Politics” cover, publishing a series of essays examining whether the technology had lived up to its promise. The overwhelming conclusion was that the magazine had been far too naive.

“Today,” editor-in-chief Gideon Lichfield writes, “technology feels as likely to destroy politics as to save it.”

M.

(Sources: TED, Umidigital, Uni Oxford, MIT, Vox, Journal of Democracy)

As published in Focus ON’s cover story, August 2019, download original article in Italian here.

Financial crises: when communication and the economy let you down

It was the summer of 2007 and I was reading a copy of the Financial Times. My interest was combined with apprehension and expectancy.

Interest in the reactions of the world’s financial leaders; apprehension about what was to be the start of one of the biggest ever economic and financial crises; expectancy with regard to the major players in the western world: how would they announce what was going on? Which signals, which strategies (as much in relation to business as communications) would be implemented by governments, the financial world and the press to counter the imminent impact and consequent media, economic and financial carnage?

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was reading the first chapters of a disaster that had been on the cards for some time.

Ben Bernanke, the then chairman of the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, confirmed that the subprime mortgage crisis would be contained. Bush was giving out confused signals and the world was witnessing a gargantuan but clumsy effort to save the American financial system from collapse.

Europe looked on with growing apprehension. Not long after, its own economy would find itself in the middle of one of the worst recessions since 1930, with GDP forecasts of minus 4% in two years, the sharpest contraction in the history of the European Union.

“In the UK, the Northern Rock bank was forced to apply to the Bank of England for an emergency loan and ended up being nationalised to protect its solvency (and the deposits of its customers). Those panicking customers queuing up outside branches of the bank hoping to withdraw their savings became one of the lasting images associated with the financial crisis in Europe.

September 15, 2008, the day the 150-year-old Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. (CNBC)

In America, in the summer of 2008, the investment bank Lehman Brothers went into receivership (Chapter 11) after 150 years of business and following the credit crunch caused by the largest mortgage bubble in the history of the world economy. The mortgage institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the insurance company AIG, were saved by the government the week before, with tens of billions of public dollars.

Collapsing share prices, bankruptcies, mergers and restructurings caused the loss of millions of jobs, and a severe loss of confidence in the system, triggering a fundamental change in the banking sector. They also highlighted serious errors, shortcomings and gaps in the Western world’s information and communication system, which had failed.” (source: Laura Prina Cerai, Senior Investment Advisor, Altrafin AG).

The pre-Brexit beating European financial heart.

Throughout all this, during the summer leading up to the credit crunch, I accepted a role in the financial sector in London, taking the opportunity to learn all about the developing dynamics from the then beating European financial heart. This experience lasted over four years and was extremely instructive, strong and positive from many points of view.

Much can be said about those years in relation to governments, banks, the financial sector, the general public and the world of journalism.

A lot can also be said about the failure of the communication models of the time and the political and business dynamics still in place today.

Psychology and thought-leadership.

(Credits: frames from the film “The big short”)

Strategic communication is vital for industry and governments. It has to aim to convey not only their goals, intentions and strategies to stakeholders and society, but also to educate the general public. Acting as unbiased thought-leaders to the extent possible on certain topics and movements and working to reduce false information, fake news, speculation: governments and industry have a moral duty to provide context and clarity. By working together and keeping communication channels open with the media and with influencers, creating information channels of mutual trust.

The financial crisis didn’t just have disastrous economic consequences, it also negatively impacted the public's faith in the financial world, tarnishing its reputation, and in the media.

(Credits: frames from the film “The big short”)

Many critics at the time wondered whether financial journalists had done enough to dig down to the roots of the impending crisis beforehand, and at the same time, whether they had perhaps contributed to increasing public mistrust and anger. What went wrong?

Recently, in an interview given on the 10th anniversary of the peak of the crisis, Bill Emmott, editor of The Economist from 1993 to 2006, confirmed in a subsequent interview with the panel "Follow the money: how the crash of 2008 changed journalism worldwide”:

“The press had given alarm signals, but those signals were drowned by the media, which had increasingly turned into cheerleaders of the boom. In other words, they had strongly believed, as former IMF chief economist Ken Rogoff commented, "This time it will be different", deluding himself. And, unfortunately, the press is always part of this process. So I think the press was partly but not solely responsible for the crisis. It was part of the atmosphere of the times.” (ref. Journalism Festival)

The ability that was most tragically and dramatically lacking during the 2008 crisis was the ability to communicate - specifically, communicate the nature of the problem, what was at stake in terms of risks, and so why, in America alone, it was necessary to spend $700 billion of taxpayers' money to solve the problem.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Roosevelt, among few others, had been a genius of public psychology. He knew when and how to use the presidential media. His first 100 days of government were dotted with the release of timely updates to his exultant public, explanations of what he was doing and why, in clear, simple and collaborative terms. Do today's historians still debate the importance of Roosevelt, a saint, a skilled communicator or a manipulator? A combination of all this? The impact of the man that history remembers as a " Great Communicator " still has effects on America today.

And today?

The lack of strategic communication experts, and the often little understood need to create clear, open and trustworthy communication channels between the public, stakeholders, experts and the media, seems to be increasingly evident as one of the causes of the current crises in governments and industry.

From lack of trust to fake news to populism.

How else can we explain why, after the pro Brexit vote, the two most popular questions on Google UK were "What is Brexit" and "What is the EU"? How can we explain the failure of a "European Union" that passes through culture, passports, and the joining of forces? How can we explain informative speculation, the success of certain populist campaigns and fake news? The damage to the reputation of certain companies and the image of entire sectors?

How can current information and communication models be adapted to meet the growing needs of a public - citizens, professionals, politicians and academia - that has access to ever increasing amounts of information and of stimuli but little light, clarity and perspective on many issues?

Genuine EQ and AQ for increased agile awareness.

In the light of digital transformation, the communication models that will be more easily adaptable and implemented on a large scale will be based on social skills and emotional intelligence. We will be increasingly open to what experts call "AQ", adaptability quotient, which will allow us to understand scenarios and dynamics, and will make the most successful leaders masters of communication and relations, allowing them to better understand the public, engaging its involvement and, in some cases, even complicity.

In this context, stability will increasingly lose importance, being replaced by leverage on agility. Today's business world requires communication models that are increasingly shifting from a top-down approach to one which fluctuates between top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top. Motivated, talented, highly communicative, high EQ and AQ individuals in key positions in companies are now essential to the new face of business.

Modern businesses are increasingly globalised and they drive change through different platforms. This is a key aspect from various points of view, not least that of reputation management, a factor largely neglected by the major financial and governmental players during the last financial crisis.

It will no longer be possible to implement global and efficient communication systems using conventional communication methods, and they will require careful planning.

Reputation management is an essential part of business. Everything a company says, does, or neglects to do contributes to its reputation and brand equity. We must always remember that an essential component is listening and that communication is not a one-way process, but a multi-directional one, remembering that listening to all stakeholders, including the media, is key to all-round strategic communication, from branding to reputational impact.

After all, as the famous executive consultant and author Peter Drucker says, the most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.

Manuela Andaloro

(info@smartbizhub.com)

 (As published in Focus ON’s cover story, article by Manuela Andaloro for Focus ON, 29th October 2018, download article in Italian here)