The fragility of the Self and the vulnerability of the masses in the postmedia age. Ecologies of connection, the crisis of the alphabetic paradigm, and the tasks of inclusive pedagogy

Abstract

This theoreticalargumentative paper offers a pedagogical interpretation of the relationship between the fragility of the self and the vulnerability of crowds in the postmedia age. Its central claim is that collective disorientation, emotional contagion, and the lowering of reflective thresholds cannot be reduced either to individual weakness or to purely situational causes. Rather, these phenomena point to a broader transformation of communicative ecologies, forms of attention, and cultural devices that historically sustained alphabetic interiority. Drawing on de Kerckhove, Eco, Hayles, Landow, Latour, and Rivoltella, the essay argues that younger generations do not reject complexity; they process it through simultaneous, networked, and transmedia logics, often clashing with educational models grounded in the linearity of the page.
The pedagogical task, therefore, is to design formative environments able to turn connection into understanding, speed into discernment, and participation into shared responsibility.