Technological and Digital Risk: Research Issues

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Cover Image: Odi et amo by Glenda La Rocca/glendalarocca.com

ISBN 978-3-631-81661-5 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-82709-3 (E-PDF)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-82710-9 (EPUB)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-82711-6 (MOBI)

DOI 10.3726/b17175

© Peter Lang GmbH

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Berlin 2020

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About the editors

The Editors
Gevisa La Rocca is an associate professor of communication at the Kore University of Enna. Her research interests are focused on mediatization, emotional and digital risks, and qualitative data analysis. She has published more than twenty research articles and book chapters.

Juan Martínez-Torvisco is a professor of social psychology at the University of La Laguna. His research interests are focused on environmental psychology and risk perception. He has published more than twenty research articles and authored at least ten book chapters.

About the book

Gevisa La Rocca/Juan Martínez-Torvisco (eds.)

Technological and Digital Risk: Research Issues

What are the borders of risk? How is the perception of risk related to new technologies and digital changing? This book discusses these topics, moving from theories to research data, looking for concrete answers now, or taking a picture of reality. The volume is divided into three main sections: Exploring the Edges of Risk, according to sociological, psychological and artificial intelligence perspective; Technological and Digital Risks, exploring social media, cyberbullying, hate speech, social bots on digital platforms; Risk in the Cities, working with risk and deviance, risk communication, environmental and nuclear risks. Inside, research data from Europe, USA and Mexico are discussed.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Editorial

Fabrizio Fornari

Preface

First SectionExploring the Edges of Risk

Gevisa La Rocca

Chapter One The Need to Take Risks

Juan Martínez-Torvisco

Chapter Two Technological Risk: From the Psychometric View

Tiziana Ramaci and Monica Pellerone

Chapter Three  Online Networking and Risks, Inside and Outside Organisations

Antonella Napoli

Chapter Four  The Human-Centered AI and the EC Policies: Risks & Chances

Second SectionTechnological and Digital Risks

Marzia Antenore and Elisabetta Trinca

Chapter Five Who Bot There Friend or Foe? Social Bots & Digital Platforms

Eva Torralba, Jessica Ortega-Barón and Sofia Buelga

Chapter Six Cyberbullying: Technological Risk among Adolescents

Mariangela D’ambrosio

Chapter Seven  New Perspectives of Emotional Deviance on Cyberbullying

Stefania Capogna and Maria Chiara De Angelis

Chapter Eight  The Digital World between Risks and Opportunities

Chapter Nine Hate Speech towards Migrants

Veronica Moretti

Chapter Ten Technology and Risk Perception on U.S. Campuses

Andrea Garavaglia, Maurizio Merico, Valeria Pandolfini, Chiara Pattaro and Francesca Setiffi

Chapter Eleven  Youth and Digital Media: Risks and Opportunities

Gevisa La Rocca and Cosimo Miraglia

Chapter Twelve  The Virality of Online Death Risk

Third SectionRisk in the Cities

Liliana Cori and Fabrizio Bianchi

Chapter Thirteen  Risk Communication in Highly Polluted Areas

Eva Leticia Ortiz

Chapter Fourteen  Perception and Communication of Environmental Risks in Big Cities

Marcella Giacomarra and Aldo Parlato

Chapter Fifteen  Rethinking Nuclear Safety for Climate Change Adaptation

Thea Giacobbe

Chapter Sixteen  The Impact of Criminal Risk Assessment on Urban Planning

Fourth SectionOur Risk-Scape

Gevisa La Rocca and Juan Martínez-Torvisco

Chapter Seventeen  Risk-Scape: Three-Dimensional Interpretation

About the Authors

Editorial

The Technological and Digital risk: Research Issues is the second volume produced by the international research group Rischio, comunicazione e società/Riesgo, comunicación y sociedad, born in 2017 and led by Gevisa La Rocca and Juan Martínez Torvisco.

The research group connects two Universities: Kore University of Enna and University La Laguna.

Each year the research group addresses a different aspect of the link between risk, communication and society. It invites all the scholars working on these topics to contribute to the expansion of knowledge.

In 2018 the international research group published a volume in Spanish, with the aim of tackling risk in a multidisciplinary manner.

In this volume, on the other hand, attention is paid to technological and digital risk and is a prelude to a new definition of risk.

The Editors
Gevisa La Rocca
Juan Martínez Torvisco

Preface

Fabrizio Fornari

New frontiers of Risikogesellschaft

I have gladly accepted the proposal to write a short preface to this volume, in which an articulated, analytical and precise reconstruction takes place – historical, empirical and theoretical – of what the editors of the same volume called Technological and Digital Risk.

It is undoubtedly a central theme not only to understand the current processes of transformation of social reality, but also to outline a path that is capable of linking theory and practice, spurring political action to rise to the level of a concrete historical-ethical view of the major issues affecting the contemporary world.

Moreover, it is the latter that requires cooperation between sociological imagination and experimental research, in the light of which knowledge orients itself, if not to solve the issues of technological and digital risk, at least to recognize them.

Having said that, defining the concept of risk tout court, despite its technological and digital variables, is not an easy undertaking at all. For this reason it is useful, in my opinion, as it should always be done in the presence of uncertain semantics and not sufficiently defined, starting from the recourse to the etymological dimension in which the concept to be investigated is inscribed; indicating etimos, in its Greek and original exception, a movement of approximation to “truth”.

Exactly, the term “risk” etymologically would seem to go back to the Byzantine Greek rhizikó, as a derivation of the Arabic rizq. According to philological sources of the XII century, the latter expression indicates the taxes to be paid in kind to finance public military expenses.

Moreover, as proof of the likelihood of this interpretation, the Greek expressions rizikon or rouzikon would also allude to forms of payment in kind aimed at the maintenance of soldiers, in particular that of soldiers of fortune – andres tou rizikon.

Hence the link with rizikon as “fate”, “destiny”, in the sense of the dark outcome that will result from the verdict of a battle, in a probable allusion to the Greek term riza, reef, as well as the term e-rysis, salvation.

The term “risk” would thus also evoke a substantially maritime metaphor, that of the reef; hence the involvement in the term risk of the Latin expression resecare, cutting, reducing, in a divisive and weakening act, a plenum or plena in ←9 | 10→parts. The reef, as stumbling block and as risk – the maternal form of the ship severed and unusable -, against which, e-rysis, salvation is placed. Provided that the ship is oriented with a look at the present. And one to the future. In both cases, to manage the unpredictable.