Description
This article identifies a mismatch between how the traditional and social media are narrating the current conditions of international relations and the perspective of scientific, analytical, and rational reflection on the discipline provided by the field of study. Alignment is lacking in multiple ways: international relations theory and IR studies broadly speaking have now taken into account emotional responses from the public and the shift in the way international politics is presented in the media. But if the discipline does not also envisage the acquisition of an active role in shaping modes of narration, it may lose touch with reality, which is becoming increasingly fast, digitalised, standardised and aggressive. Perceptions are less considered, although they count as a critical factor in the generation of unstable and unpredictable scenarios. This qualitative research offers critical reasoning concerning the fact that the willpower seems to have abandoned decision-makers, while at the same time society is drifting towards an era of perpetual rage and discontent. Historically, anger has sparked different reactions that often could not be foreseen even by scholars and political leaders. International studies should therefore intervene in critical areas, taking action in order to understand the real roots of this rage and trying to reduce its impact. If the discipline wants to be ready for the future, it has to use its knowledge to develop strategies that can not just predict the future more effectively, but also direct its trajectory. As a starting point for this, the article explores two possible examples: rediscussing the presence of politics as a theme and modes of political debate on social networks, and reconsidering long-established processes such as elections, which were once the weapon used by democracy to protect itself from autocrats, but now seem to have become autocrats’ tool to destroy that same democracy.
