When Virginia Raggi, Rome’s first female mayor, was elected in June, she represented the anti-establishment Five Star Movement’s highest aspiration — to show Italy how nonprofessional politicians could turn things around.

Yet three months later, the Five Star Movement’s shining moment has become a mess, and Raggi, 38, a lawyer with almost no political experience who ran as a clean-hands reformer, appears to be foundering.

維吉尼亞．拉吉今年6月當選羅馬第一位女市長時，她代表的是反建制五星運動黨的鴻圖壯志，要向義大利展示素人政治人物也能扭轉乾坤。

但時隔3個月，五星運動的光輝時刻已變成一團亂，而從政經驗幾乎是零，以清白改革者形象參選的38歲律師拉吉，似乎還在向下沉淪。

Garbage piled up in the streets through the summer. Five important officials have resigned, some tainted by investigations for malfeasance. By this month, things were so bad that the comedian Beppe Grillo, a founder of the movement, reversed a vow to stay out of politics and stepped in to shore up Raggi amid speculation of an early resignation.

On Monday, one of Italy’s leading newspapers, La Repubblica, published excerpts from a letter to Raggi, signed by about 70 City Hall managers in Rome, that lamented administrative paralysis and a lack of guidance. Residents, too, seem to be at the end of their ropes.

整個夏季，街道上垃圾堆積如山。5名重要官員相繼辭職，有些是因瀆職接受調查。本月，情況更形惡化，以致五星運動的創始人之一、喜劇演員畢普．葛里洛只好違背與政治劃清界線的誓言，在拉吉可能提前請辭下台的揣測聲中，介入政治以力挺拉吉。

義大利大報「共和報」周一披露一封致拉吉信的部分內容，這封信由約70名羅馬市政府主管聯名，大嘆行政癱瘓和群龍無首。居民也似乎快忍無可忍。

“Of course I voted for her — the rest of the politicians here are crooks,” said Isabella Vardelli, a market vendor in Rome. “But I am getting impatient. Maybe she is naive, maybe she is incompetent. Is it possible that they can’t start working?”

“I also wonder whether she really is as honest as she said she was,” Vardelli added.

羅馬的市場攤販伊莎貝拉．瓦德里說：「我當然是投票給她，這裡的其他政客全是壞蛋。但我的耐性也快沒了。她可能很天真，她可能無法勝任。但是不是可能他們無法開始做事？」

瓦德里又說：「我還懷疑她是否真如她說的那般誠實。」

Rome has never been an easy city to govern, and it has proved the undoing of any number of parties and politicians who have tried.

But Raggi’s early struggles have left analysts wondering whether the victory here, rather than helping the capital find some political stability, will reveal that the movement is riddled with many of the same flaws as the establishment it has railed against.

The troubles in Rome have become an open wound for the movement, rippling out from the capital and tarnishing its image on the national stage.

羅馬從來不是能夠輕鬆治理的城市，事實也證明，嘗試過的眾多政黨和政治人物都嘗了敗績。

但拉吉的初期困境已讓分析家懷疑，她在羅馬勝選，不僅無助於首都找回部分的政治穩定，還暴露出，五星運動和他們痛批的建制一樣，充斥著相同的缺點。

羅馬的問題已成五星運動一道裂開的傷口，從羅馬如漣漪般外擴 ，重創它的全國形象。

“Rome is an example of the limits of the Five Star Movement, and of the city of Rome per se,” said Sergio Fabbrini, the director of the school of government at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome.

“Winning the elections in Rome, paradoxically, was a defeat for the movement,” he said. “It’s showing how disorganized and divided they are.”

羅馬國際社會科學自由大學政府學院院長塞吉歐．法布里尼說：「羅馬是五星運動能力有限，羅馬本身也有其限制的例子。」

他說：「在羅馬贏得選舉，矛盾地，成為五星運動的挫敗。它說明他們是如何雜亂無章和分崩離析。」

“The world has always been messy,” President Barack Obama said in 2014 after a string of doom-and-gloom news events. “In part, we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through.”

As a number of people similarly commented in the wake of recent videos of police violence against African-Americans, these episodes have been happening for a long time; it’s only lately that smartphones have facilitated their widespread visual documentation.

2014年，在一連串令人悲觀失望的新聞事件發生後，美國總統歐巴馬說：「這世界總是一團糟，在某種程度上，我們到現在才注意到這一點，因為社群媒體發達，而且我們能夠看到別人所經歷困境的私密細節。」

許多人針對近日美國警方暴力對待非裔族群的影片發表類似看法，但這類暴力事件已發生好長一段時間，直到近年出現智慧手機，才促使各地人們用畫面將它們記錄下來。

Social media, too, has begun to play a prominent role in broadcasting tragedy. The shooting of Philando Castile was streamed as it happened on Facebook Live, which figured in another violent video since then. The app Periscope has also live-streamed its share of grisly and objectionable content, including the rape of an Ohio teenager and a suicide in France.

The effect on audiences can be traumatic. Historically, traditional mass media has also shown graphic images and horrifying videos like terrorist attacks or the 1991 Rodney King beating while barraging audiences with related content. For some people, it may not matter through which medium they consume their news: A video is a video and an article an article, whether it’s on a TV screen, laptop or newspaper.

社群媒體也開始在傳播悲劇事件上扮演重要角色。非裔男子卡斯提爾被警察槍殺的過程在發生當下透過臉書直播，臉書直播也在其後另一部暴力影片上占重要位置。應用程式Periscope也直播恐怖且令人反感的內容，包括美國俄亥俄州一名青少年被強暴和法國一場自殺案的過程。

這可能使觀眾承受心理創傷。從歷史角度來看，傳統的大眾媒體也會播放讓人不舒服的影像與駭人影片，如恐怖攻擊或1991年非裔美國人金恩遭警方毆打的過程，並以相關內容轟炸觀眾。對某些人來說，透過哪一種媒體取得新聞並不重要，影片就是影片，文章就是文章，不論在電視螢幕、筆記型電腦或報紙上都一樣。

But there are several reasons to suspect that the emotional impact of such intimate social-media images or internet-derived news is different, and perhaps even longer-lasting in some cases, than that from old-media sources.

Contact with violence through any media can lead to what is called vicarious traumatization — and may, for some people, be more upsetting than an unmediated experience.

不過，有幾個理由讓人推測，此類私密的社群媒體影像或網路衍生出來的新聞，對觀眾情緒的衝擊與傳統媒體不同，有時候影響的時間可能也比傳統媒體更久。

透過任何媒體接觸暴力都可能導致所謂「替代性創傷」，而且對某些人而言，可能比不透過媒體經驗暴力更難過。

A 2013 study in the journal PNAS compared the acute stress symptoms of those with “direct exposure” to that year’s Boston Marathon bombing (being present at the site or in the Boston-area lockdown, or knowing someone in either of those circumstances) with those who had only media exposure. People who were exposed to six or more daily hours of bombing-related media exposure reported higher levels of acute stress than those with direct exposure.

“Unlike direct exposure to a collective trauma, which can end when the acute phase of the event is over, media exposure keeps the acute stressor active and alive in one’s mind,” the study concluded. “In so doing, repeated media exposure may contribute to the development of trauma-related disorders by prolonging or exacerbating acute trauma-related symptoms.”

2013年美國國家科學院院刊刊出一份研究報告，比較了「直接接觸」同年波士頓馬拉松爆炸案與僅透過媒體接觸者的急性壓力症狀。「直接接觸」是指身處爆炸案現場或波士頓封鎖區內，或認識某個在現場或封鎖區的人。結果顯示，每天與爆炸案相關媒體報導接觸達6小時以上者，感受的急性壓力高過直接接觸者。

研究結論如下：「直接接觸集體創傷，創傷能在事件的急性階段結束後停止，但透過媒體接觸會讓急性壓力源在心裡保持活躍生動。這麼一來，重複的媒體報導會延長或加重急性創傷相關症狀，導致創傷相關疾患。」

說文解字看新聞

（文／張佑生）

「媒介即訊息」（The Medium is the Message）和「媒介即按摩」（The Medium is the Massage）是傳播學者麥克魯漢（Marshall McLuhan）半世紀前的名言，主張媒體傳播的不僅是內容，更潛在改變了人類的思維邏輯。麥克魯漢的理論有助於理解紐時報導所論及，大眾媒體（mass media）與社群媒體（social media）對受眾的影響。

影響之一是替代性創傷（vicarious traumatization）。這個心理學名詞源自同理心失衡（empathic strain），旁觀者不斷看到災難新聞畫面，生離死別的悲悽，容易產生強烈的情緒波動，進而反芻，將他人的不幸與自己情緒作連結。

除了媒體，新聞的定義也跟以往不同，《時代》雜誌1992年元月號將率先標榜新聞現場直播的CNN創辦人泰德透納選為年度風雲人物，評語是History as it Happens（非happened），昭告突發即時新聞的興起。

即時串流（live streaming）是現今媒體的王道，延伸閱讀（related content）是一定要的。智慧型手機讓各種視覺記錄(visual documentation）的散播更為便捷。