Berlusconi’s sense for the Internet

Now that Silvio Berlusconi is dead, his famous three i’s come to mind: internet, business, English. The road to relaunch Italy and create one million jobs. He had just “landed in politics”, as he liked to say, using a more suitable verb to describe someone who docks on an island with a yacht.

The three i’s were a dazzling intuition. Inside there was a modernity that did not belong to the politics of the time. Even if, it must be acknowledged, that slogan has remained only a slogan: for the various governments he has led, the Internet has never really been a goal but a problem to stem – to favor the television market and therefore the Mediaset networks -; this was seen by the systematic subtraction of funds from broadband with which to bring the network where there was none and by the blockage, which lasted for years, of public wifi for mysterious and never proven reasons to fight Islamic terrorism. And if by companies we mean new high-tech companies, i.e. startups, Italy remained completely out of the loop until a few years ago, accumulating a significant delay not only on France and the United Kingdom, but also on Spain and Portugal . As for English, the Palazzo Chigi site translated using the rudimentary automatic Google translator of the time made everyone laugh in 2001 and it wasn’t a good time.

More generally, Berlusconi’s relationship with social media has been chilly overall: for someone like him, who came from TV where he was objectively the best, the horizontal communication of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter has never been really easy. This fact that people could write to him directly without filters, insults included, didn’t suit someone used to moving among applauding crowds. In fact, despite having excellent advisors, such as Antonio Palmieri and Marco Camisani Calzolari, he has never become an influencer, he has never hoarded followers, something Donald Trump, for example, succeeded in the United States, who also followed a similar path.

Now at dusk we have instead found him at ease on TikTok, which is not by chance not a real social network, but a kind of personal TV. “Hello, guys, here I am” thus began his debut video, nine months ago. But the impression is that Berlusconi never really used TikTok: in fact, he didn’t follow anyone.