Nowadays, in a global context in which information can be spread worldwide and easily controlled by an always increasing number of people, governments consider the role of public diplomacy crucial in order to design new communication strategy for promoting their culture, setting up long-term relationships with the public abroad, but also achieve some national interests. With the advent of globalisation, the classic governments vis-à-vis confrontation has been integrated with new practices; communication and engagement with foreign publics are in fact considered essential.
According to the Foreign Policy Centre and its report “European Infopolitik: Developing EU Public Diplomacy Strategy” ‘public diplomacy will be the new tool for International Affair in the global information age”. Therefore to support their image and culture abroad European countries are currently involved in many programmes, sometimes promoted directly and indirectly by governments, other times by independent institutions or No-governmental Organisations,
Alongside these countries there is Italy, which promotes many programs in order to relaunch Italian culture and language around the World; more than 80 institutions operates around Europe and the US protecting and, at the same time, promoting Italian culture and identity. These institutions are mostly concerned with cultural issues, or scientific exchange programs; they have been working for decades communicating with foreign publics; they present a country where higher education and preservation of arts and classic culture were part of the national tradition; a long tradition that finds its roots in the Italian Renaissance, considered by several as a crucial political and cultural historical period for the development of modern Europe.
However, considering Italy today, the image that comes out from the previous consideration is unreal and it presents a country that does not exist anymore. International broadcasting and Internet show a different face of the Bel Paese; Italian political class and its main exponent Silvio Berlusconi, in few years have been able to destroy and redesigned the Italian image in the world. Berlusconi leadership and his maintaining of power, despite all his standing trials (in the last weeks he was accused of paying for sex with an under age prostitutes) have shocked the foreign public opinion. For the public opinion, the contemporary image of Italy is mostly linked with the image of Berlusconi, and his related performances. Foreigners does not understand how is it possible in a western democratic country that Berlusconi is still on power and why Italian public opinion still support him. Reality shows that Italy is, maybe, the most corrupted country among the developed western democracy, and Berlusconi is the result of decades of mal governo (bad governance) within Italian politics and society. He reflects an image of a country where the relationship mafia/state are nowadays been confirmed by final condemn sentences against member of the Senato, Marcello Dell’Utri, Giulio Andreotti, and where the political class keeps in its hands unaccettable priviliges.
This is the real Italy, a county where traditional cultural values have been substituted by mass hedonistic values and wrong cultural models. The true problems of the country are hidden behind the mask and habits of his ambiguous President Berlusconi.
In conclusion, it can be said that because of the inopportune behaviour of its president, Italy has been furthering a negative image of itself. It results that any judgement on Italy’s public and cultural diplomacy is jeopardised by the magnitude of Berlusconi’s scandalous deeds. In other words, any positive outcome that Italian public and cultural diplomacy activities may achieve are anyway obscured by the prominent image of its President, which without any doubts does not seem to offer a good image.
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