Project description
Literature against disempowering manipulative influences
The media and one’s environment can lead to disempowerment as they can exert negative influences over an individual’s life. All the while, a person’s immediate environment may imbed limiting beliefs and conformism. Although the empirical study of literature indicates that it has some prosocial effects, its potential impact on stimulating the sense of empowerment is not determined. The EU-funded LIFE project will examine if and how literary reading can increase awareness of disempowering manipulative influences from the individual environment and the media, and stimulate empowerment to mitigate their effects. The project will develop a new cross-disciplinary tool, empirically tested and validated in Italy and the United States, to measure literature’s potential effects on manipulation perception and the sense of empowerment.
Objective
LIFE examines if and how literary reading can be used to help raise awareness of disempowering manipulative influences exerted by one’s environment and the media and foster empowerment to mitigate their effects. It will develop a new cross-disciplinary tool to measure literature’s potential effects on manipulation perception and on the sense of empowerment. It will provide an ‘empowerment canon’ of expert-selected and empirically validated literary texts that can be particularly helpful in this task. The tool will draw from the disciplines of literary studies, psychology, sociology, and communication and will be empirically tested and validated in two diverse countries: Italy and the United States. The media and the environment can exert disempowering influences on one’s life. Indeed, the news, advertising, gaming and social media industries often propel insecurity, social division, consumerism and addictive behaviours, while one’s immediate environment may imbed limiting beliefs and conformism. While the empirical study of literature has been able to show some of literature’s prosocial effects, its potential impact on kindling the sense of empowerment is yet to be determined. LIFE tackles this challenge by researching how literature can help raise awareness of such disempowering manipulative influences and foster empowerment. LIFE will advance the emergent interdisciplinary research area of the empirical study of literature.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-AG-UN - HORIZON Unit GrantCoordinator
37129 Verona
Italy