How to try to handle the diaspora on Facebook for future political mobilization: “The group is ready to be activated at the right time”
On Facebook there are more and more pages that publish emotional stories about Romanians who went to work abroad: the father who loses his connection with the children, the woman who does not feel home anywhere. Beyond nostalgia, experts point out that we are witnessing a pre-propaganda phenomenon: a subtle preparation of the diaspora for future political mobilization.
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“I went to Germany for two years, for 15 years I have not seen Romania, and now when I think about returning home, I do not know where it is really home.”
This fragment, published on the Facebook page The silence of wordsgives Mihai's story, an engineer who went to work abroad in 2009. The plan was simple: two years of sacrifice, money raised for a house and a quick return to the country. Today, after 15 years, Mihai has an apartment in Munich, a solid career and a consistent bank account, but has missed the childhood of his two children and has alienated from the Romanian family. The post has collected over 8,700 appreciations and thousands of distributions.
Such texts circulate massively in recent months on social networks. Stories written as small novels, with an emphasis on longing, on the unseen losses of migration and on the torn identity of the departed.
Other pages go on the same narrative recipe, even if the theme is not emigration. For example, a viral posting on the Romanian life starts with the phrase: “I go to bed at 23:00. If the child wakes up, you do it alone.” The story of a young mother ignored by her husband and supported by the mother -in -law is written as a novel, with dialogues, tension and a moralizing lesson at the end. Tens of thousands of reactions and hundreds of comments come to confirm the emotional impact of the text.
Even the entertainment pages are not bypassed. On the Romică Țociu and Cornel Palade page, a post with over 10,000 reactions present Călin Georgescu on a visit to a placement center in Brasov. A 9 -year -old draws a crying robot “Because he has no program to feel, but he still feels.” The next day, the center receives boxes with paints and the proposal of a collective mural. The story has a luminous end: the painted wall becomes viral, a symbol of a “healed pain”.
Such texts, either about migration, family or public figures, follow the same narrative recipe: it triggers emotions, creates identification and solidarity, and then leaves fertile ground for larger messages. Experts point out that these posts are part of a larger strategy, a form of pre-propaganda.
Emotion as a marketing strategy
“What we observe in these pages dedicated to the diaspora is a mechanism that successful brands have been using for decades. Harley-Davidson does not sell motorcycles, but the myth of freedom, and Nike does not sell shoes, but the myth of self-defense. Both build a symbolic world in which customers do not buy an identity to which they attribute, not a product,” Explain, for Adevărul, Andrei Tarnovski, strategist marketing.
In his opinion, the same model seems to be applied in the case of these posts, in a strategy that Jacques Ellul would have called pre-propaganda. “It starts from a truth: the real suffering of the emigrant, and a founding myth is built: that of the” noble diasporean “, the hero that has sacrificed for the other once and can do it again. The purpose is not an immediate action, but the creation of a common emotional matrix, a network of shared feelings Cemented, the group is prepared to be “activated” at the right time, when a political message will resonate not as an external command, but as a natural fulfillment of your own story “ he warns.
Recipes tested and financed massively
For his part, social media expert Cristian China-Birta, emphasizes that we are not dealing with simple viral texts, but with carefully coordinated campaigns.
“The idea is that some recurrent themes are resumed, topics that are already proven to work, topics that resort to people's emotions and we do not refer here only to those who are away from home, to the nostalgia when the grandmother was, we refer to the fact that the foreigners still steal us, for example, the phase with Vidraru, Topics that are validated that it works, several times, through repeated tests and are only a few of the dozen, if not hundreds of topics tested by those who do such campaigns.he says.
According to his statements, these are extremely well -coordinated campaigns, exactly as done in digital marketing. “Where several types of advertisements are tested, in essence, that these are some types of advertisements and it is seen, it is analyzed that works best.explains the specialist.
