The Humble Charisma of a White-Dressed Man in a Desert Place: Pope Francis’ Communicative Style in the Covid-19 Pandemic

The context of deep uncertainty, fear, and “social distancing” characterizing the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a need for cultural anchorages and charismatic leaders who may conjointly and effectively support human beings, strengthen their identity, and empower social commitment. In this perspective, the charismatic leadership of Pope Francis, which is widely shared not only within the religious world, may play a crucial role in facing emergency with existential reasons and psychological resources. The general aim of this work is to shed light on the communicative features of the charismatic leadership of Pope Francis during the pandemic emergency; in order to better understand his effectiveness, we analyzed both the core issues and his multimodal body signals in the global TV event of the Universal Prayer with the Urbi et Orbi Blessing. The multimodal and discursive analyses of the homily enabled us to define the “humble” charisma of the Pope, which is based upon on authentic and informal presence, manifested emotional signals (and, in particular commotion) showing features of equity and familiarity. From a discursive point of view, the common and overarching affiliation is constructed through a multiple focus on the “we” pronoun, which is constructed through socio-epistemic rhetoric. The results show how this integrated methodological perspectives, which is multimodal and discursive, may offer meaningful pathways detection of effective and persuasive signals

An Underactuated Active Transfemoral Prosthesis With Series Elastic Actuators Enables Multiple Locomotion Tasks

Robotic lower limb prostheses have the power to revolutionize mobility by enhancing gait efficiency and facilitating movement. While several design approaches have been explored to create lightweight and energy-efficient devices, the potential of underactuation remains largely untapped in lower limb prosthetics. Taking inspiration from the natural harmony of walking, in this article, we have developed an innovative active transfemoral prosthesis. By incorporating underactuation, our design uses a single power actuator placed near the knee joint and connected to a differential mechanism to drive both the knee and ankle joints. We conduct comprehensive benchtop tests and evaluate the prosthesis with three individuals who have above-knee amputations, assessing its performance in walking, stair climbing, and transitions between sitting and standing. Our evaluation focuses on gathering position and torque data recorded from sensors integrated into the prosthesis and comparing these measurements to biomechanical data of able-bodied locomotion. Our findings highlight the promise of underactuation in advancing lower limb prosthetics and demonstrate the feasibility of our knee–ankle underactuated design in various tasks, showcasing its ability to replicate natural movement

“Do not Make to eat to Troll!”: The Dark Side of Web

Post-modernity is characterized by virtual phenomena, such as trolling, which undermine the relationship of trust and the image of the Self. Just in anonymity, these special Internet users pursue their provocation goals. At the individual level the phenomenon of trolling involves the splitting between real identity and virtual identity with socially unacceptable behaviors. The research aims to analyze fake profiles and their interactions with quali-quantitative methodologies, through Emotional Analysis, from which it is possible to extract a dataset, useful for the promotion of a digital social culture, in which the Net is the place where it develops connective intelligence

Affective Detection of ‘Brain Drain’ Through Video-Narrative Interview

The present study aims at monitoring the emotional side of the so-called “brain drain” by means of emotional expressions automatically detected during a narrative interview. Skilled people or people with higher education to reach another Country, generally following a job offer with better conditions of reward or life, theorize the brain drain phenomenon as the abandonment of a Nation. This definition, albeit complete, does not seize the complexity and evolution of the huge migration phenomenon—especially as regards the subjectivity of economic migration experiences. The present study proposes the analysis of the emotional experience of mobility embodied in the face of interviewees. A sample of 11 participants was selected, including four women and seven men, by means of chain mechanisms or avalanche. The method was based on the automatic analysis of brain drains’ facial expressions during a narrative interview video-recorded using Skype. The results obtained by means of the software refer to the emotions felt by each participant considering gender and permanence duration; they can also be considered as a first endeavor to understand the emotional impact of “brain drain” narrative recalling of their experience aimed at understanding their actual well-being. In this sense, this mixed-methodology, which is both narrative and automatic, can be referred to as “positive technology” since it may give real-time feedback on participants’ emotional states to the researcher/psychologist

‘Immigrants, hell on board’: Stereotypes and prejudice emerging from racial hoaxes through a psycho-linguistic analysis

Social media platforms provide direct access to an unprecedented amount of content and can amplify rumours and questionable information. Moreover, when polarisation is high, misinformation can easily spread. Some studies have indicated that fake news and false information can spread faster and furtherthan fact-based news, as it may be based on more stereotypical and less complex content. This research aims to examine racial misinformation. ‘Racial hoaxes are becoming a popular discursive strategy to disguise racism’. The main characteristic of racial hoaxes is that they are born out of the ideology of ethnic prejudice. Therefore, it is essential to shed light on these hoaxes’ socio-psychological characteristics to understand how to recognise, analyse and resist them. Based on these theoretical considerations, this research aims to analyse one hundred Italian news articles containing racial hoaxes collected in 2020 and 2021. For this purpose, a content analysis was conducted to code the psycho-linguistic features of subject description and mode, including stereotypes and components of journalistic attitude such as discrediting forms and affective lexicon. The analysis indicates that racial hoaxes have socio-cognitive features, stereotypes and evaluative forms of prejudice that can potentially lead to greater media reinforcement of false stereotypes because they are strictly associated with familiar and concrete linguistic forms

The Intergenerational Memory Of Cultural Heritage As A Means Of Promoting Citizens' Sense Of Community

Community psychology increasingly emphasizes the importance of cultural heritage, especially in local communities. This study suggests that the reconstruction of autobiographical memory associated with cultural heritage can become a resource for consolidating a sense of community. Therefore, we have highlighted the link between memory recall and a sense of community through which it is possible to observe how memory recall can be a means of giving positive meaning to one’s membership. The study focuses on San Cesario in Lecce in southeastern Italy, an Apulian local community known for its archaeological industrial heritage, i.e., its distilleries. The participants of the study were 29 citizens of San Cesario of different gender and age, who were interviewed. The transcription of the interviews was followed by a content analysis in which the evoked dimensions of the sense of community and the types of memory, such as place or autobiographical ones, were noted. The results showed that intergenerational memory of cultural heritage can be a way of renewing the meanings associated with feelings of belonging to a local community, but also a way of recovering conflicted and ambivalent memories in order to promote psychosocial empowerment. © 2023, University of Salento. All rights reserved

The Uncertain Texture of Discourse on the Dangerous Psychopath

The topic tackled by this work concerns the links between two sense-making practices–the medical-psychiatric one and the legal one–in which the relationships between language, cognition and society are traced by discursive modulation of the “certainty/uncertainty” axis, which characterises the processes of sensemaking activated in representing reality and in the socially shared aspiration of truth. The binding nature of this system is even more evident when, like in this work, two totally different epistemological worlds and communicative registers meet with particular reference to the “mentally ill” perpetrators and victims of crimes