A study by two Italian psychology professors I unearthed on the Internet throws light on the effect Silvio Berlusconi's influence over the nation's media can have on the minds of ordinary Italians.

It appears to suggest that the former prime minister's image is deeply engrained in the psyche of Italians and this may give him an electoral advantage.

Through his Fininvest holding company, the former prime minister controls Italy's biggest private broadcaster as well as publishing and film assets. His brother owns the national daily Il Giornale and his wife funds the newspaper Il Foglio.

The psychological study, by University of Padua professor Sara Mondini and University of Trieste professor Carlo Semenza and published in 2004, examines the case of a 66-year-old housewife who had been suffering from a degenerative brain disease for three years.

She could barely recognise the face of her husband and two children and consistently failed to recognise relatives and friends. Shown pictures of 15 famous people, including Hitler, Mussolini and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, the woman recognised only one: Silvio Berlusconi.
She was unable to provide any information about the 14 other famous people but in the case of Berlusconi she could say he was a very rich man, a television owner and a politician.

“It may be important to underline the fact that testing occurred at around the time of the 2001 Italian general election when media coverage of Berlusconi was at its peak,” write Mondini and Semenza.

The woman was still able to recognise him six months later, despite further significant deterioration of her cognitive skills. By then, she was unable to recognize pictures of her own daughter and son, her cousins and neighbours and had serious problems in recognizing them in person.

Mondini and Semenza conclude that repeated exposure to Berlusconi may have turned his face into a non-living, but very well recognisable, icon. This is supported by the fact that during the latter stages of the study, the woman was able to recognise pictures of Jesus Christ on the cross.

“This telling effect of Berlusconi’s pervasive propaganda constitutes an unprecedented case in the neuropsychological literature,” the authors write.

The issue of tackling organised crime has not been especially prominent in the Italian election campaign but to ex-pat Italian residents of Duisburg in north-western Germany, it’s an emotive topic. The industrial city in the Ruhr valley made international headlines last summer when six Italians were gunned down outside a pizzeria in an apparent feud between members of the Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta.

On a recent trip to Duisburg, Reuters correspondent Iain Rogers visited the sight of the shootings.

A stone’s throw from the central station on the ground floor of an ugly tower block, the restaurant is now an empty shell. It’s dark inside and eerily quiet. The sign above the door set back from the busy road has been ripped down, wires hang from the ceiling and dust-covered chairs are strewn across the floor. Old menus and photographs of Italian dishes litter the area near the entrance. A couple of hundred metres down the road, Italian-born Renato Venier runs an ice cream cafe.

Venier, 41, hails from the north-eastern Italian town of Codroipo in the Friuli-Venezia Guilia region and has lived in Germany for 28 years. Sitting at a corner table, he reflects that organised crime is a big problem in Germany, which he blames on an influx of southern Italians.

He’s voting for Silvio Berlusconi in the election but he doesn’t believe either the conservative former prime minister or his rival on the left, Walter Veltroni, has what it takes to tackle organised crime.

“It operates above politics and the rule of law. There is too much money and power involved,” he says.

Both main candidates broached the mafia issue at the weekend, after 12 convicted mobsters were released from prison in Sicily because of a technicality ahead of an appeal. Berlusconi declared his political group “incompatible” with organised crime, while Veltroni spoke out against the mafia and an Italian justice system plagued by delays.

In Duisburg, Venier is unconvinced.

“As long as the same people are running the country there’ll never be a solution,” he says. “They don’t want to solve it as it suits them the way things are.”