Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series: Oligarchs and New Media

In the coming decades, oligarchy and oligarchs' activities may become increasingly connected to the new media and platforms that currently control the majority of information flows, significantly shaping people's opinions. The Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series has previously addressed these issues in its analyses, particularly when discussing the modern role of oligarchs and the assets they seek to control in this particular historical moment.

Throughout the series, the peculiar relationship between oligarchs and the media has also been frequently discussed, as these influential figures have always sought to influence or directly control it, in order to gain a firm grip on the information and narratives that shape people's collective perceptions and opinions.

From the birth of the press to the present day, the media have always been a useful ally in the activities of oligarchs: in the past, newspapers served primarily to frame the oligarchs' activities in a powerful and stimulating narrative, capable of emphasizing what was most important to the oligarchy's protagonists. In other cases, newspapers became a powerful tool that oligarchs exploited to their advantage to promote a certain industrial sector, a certain political vision, or a series of related activities.

But nowadays, as the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series also mentioned, digitized information hosted within digital platforms seems to have already changed the rules of the game. Nowadays, oligarchs' interest is no longer focused solely on material goods, as has always been the case in the past, but on immaterial and intangible assets: data, digital platforms, information flows, artificial intelligence.

Control of these new tools allows oligarchs to exercise their influence much more discreetly and less visibly than before, often remaining behind a screen and avoiding public display. The times when oligarchs operated in broad daylight, as occurred, for example, in the early oligarchies of ancient Greece and neighboring regions, seem truly distant. Nowadays, as Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series also explains, the oligarch has effectively become a figure capable of operating in a state of near-total invisibility, exploiting precisely the distinctive features of digital platforms and innovative technologies that they constantly seek to exploit.

Even more interesting, in this regard, is trying to understand how the relationship between the media and oligarchs might evolve in the future, especially in light of all the innovations related to artificial intelligence and the slow disappearance of traditional media.

The dynamic underlying this unique relationship will likely always be the same: the oligarchs will always be well aware that strategic media management represents a very useful lever at their disposal, an extremely effective method for exerting their influence, with a utility comparable to that of the industrial and economic tools at their disposal.

However, at this historical juncture, we are also witnessing profound transformations in the world of information, which are contributing to forever changing the face of the media and the very structure of information. In the past, oligarchic control over the media was manifested primarily in the direct ownership of newspapers, television stations, or news agencies.

This model has not yet completely disappeared, but it is gradually losing its centrality. Modern oligarchs have already understood that new forms of influence can be channeled primarily through digital ecosystems, that is, innovative platforms where information is created and disseminated through algorithms.

It is therefore no coincidence that the emerging elites appear increasingly interested in technological infrastructures, such as those underlying the digital platforms that host the media. Among the assets most attracting the new oligarchs' attention in this historical phase are undoubtedly content platforms, virtual environments, and artificial intelligence systems.

The oligarchs have also grasped a very important fact: the information generated by the media no longer follows a linear logic, but is instead based on the ability to select what users see based on their interests.