How the internet changes in the time of the Covid19 pandemic

Abstract

Because of the confinement imposed by Covid19, the use of the internet has not only greatly intensified, but has profoundly changed. Before, the internet was primarily used for non-business purposes. Now we expect that the internet allows us to continue working even in situations where we have never thought to do it without sharing the same physical place. The demand to meet people on the net to talk, see each other, share affections has also grown, in a new way. In addition, many psychologists are working online, in the most varied intervention situations. One can think of a contingency, or that new contexts are being discovered, allowed by the interactivity of the network, which will be integrated into life and work even after confinement. Many stereotypes through which we have connoted the network since its inception seem inadequate today. For example, the real/virtual contrast; where virtual means not real, and thus false, deceptive, dangerous, especially if one thinks of the network as a meeting place. In this work we trace the history of some of these stereotypes. Relying on a model of psycho-social psychoanalysis, we analyze these stereotypes about the diffusion of the internet, as a neo-emotional dynamic based on the stimulus-response model that has its origin in a revival of the culture and policy of control in the USA during the 1990s. Furthermore, three research studies are proposed, carried out on the whole national territory in 1996, 1997 and 1998, when the New Communication Technologies spread in Italy. Research evidence shows how it was possible to explore uses of the network that are very different from those proposed by the literature that in the same period, meeting an international success, began to propose those stereotypes that we intend to question.