The citizen-user and the crowd-mediated politics of the Five Star Movement

This thesis described the trajectory of the Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S, 2005- 2014) from the perspective of the citizens who, as Internet users, participated in in the political enterprise. Citizen-users, enabled and empowered by Internet and mobile technologies, shaped and sustained the identity and evolution of the movement that became the M5S. The case study selected for this research, the M5S, is exceptional due to the magnitude of its success; but its features (Internet-centered and fluid ideology) are becoming more common among political organisations in Western democracies. The goal of the thesis is to assess the impact of the Internet on the political process, through its connecting, mobilising, organising, and to characterise the shape of political talk among citizens. This is achieved by applying quantitative methods, including network analysis and natural language processing, on 10 years of user-generated data collected mainly from four sources: the blog of the Movement’s founder, the M5S official forum, Facebook and Meetup.com. The thesis finds that the online discussion fora fostered diversity without fragmentation, and contributed on at least one occasion to shape the policy agenda of the M5S. Furthermore, the meetups of the Movement maintained their capacity to attract and mobilise users, and their territorial distribution clearly correlate with local results of the M5S in two elections, suggesting a positive impact of Internet-enabled mobilisation. Finally, given the votes received in the 2013 general election, the political communication generated over the Internet offset the low attention dedicated by TV news broadcast to the Movement during the electoral campaign. As Internet and mobile technologies are routinised, it is easy to see how their importance in political organisation and deliberation will grow. By studying the application of ICTs in the case of the M5S, this thesis offers insights into their use in practice, as well as pointing to possible democratic risks if online deliberation is non controlled to guarantee its fairness and openness but instead steered by the leadership, turning a deliberating community of citizen-users into a noisy crowd

Digital Rights in Australia

Australians are some of the world’s greatest users of social media and mobile broadband, and our nation is in the top ten globally for internet use. At a time when our use of these technologies is increasingly redefining aspects of our personal and professional lives, Digital Rights in Australia explores urgent questions about the nature of our rights now and into the future. The analysis covers rights issues in four areas: privacy, profiling and analytics; government data-matching and surveillance; workplace change; and freedom of expression and speech regulation. It explores the ethical and legal challenges we face in using digital, networked technologies and the debates we are having about how to best manage their transformative impacts. Crucially this study examines the major role of private, transnational digital platforms in reshaping the way we work, study and conduct business, our interactions with government and with each other. The program of research which generated the Digital Rights in Australia report has three aims: • to assess the evolving citizen uses of digital platforms, and associated digital rights and responsibilities in Australia and Asia, identifying key dynamics and issues of voice, participation, marginalisation and exclusion; • to develop a framework for establishing the rights and legitimate expectations which platform stakeholders––particularly everyday users––should enjoy and the responsibilities they may bear; • to identify the best models for governance arrangements for digital platforms and for using these environments as social resources in political, social and cultural change. This report draws on three sources of data: a national survey of the attitudes and opinions of 1600 Australians on key rights issues; focus group discussion of related rights scenarios; and analysis of legal, policy and governance issues, illustrated by case studies. The core findings are grouped in chapter order.University of Sydney Sydney Research Excellence Initiative (SREI)

Cambiamenti ambientali indotti dalle variazioni climatiche oloceniche e dall’uomo nell’area dell’abitato antico di Pontecagnano

L’abitato antico di Pontecagnano (vii-iii a.C.), sorge su un alto morfologico di natura travertinosa, che in antico emergeva di pochi metri dal settore NO della pianura alluvionale costiera del Fiume Sele. I lavori per l’ampliamento dell’autostrada A3 SA-RC hanno intercettato livelli archeologici rappresentativi di ampie porzioni del territorio urbano e periurbano dell’abitato antico e messo in evidenza un record archeostratigrafico che va dal Pleistocene Superiore ad oggi. Lo studio geomorfologico ed archeo-tephro-stratigrafico di dettaglio, corredato da analisi paleoambientali, ha consentito di delineare gli aspetti salienti dell’evoluzione del paesaggio e degli ambienti nel corso dell’Olocene. Le modifiche dell’ambiente e del paesaggio sono state prevalentemente indotte da condizionamenti antropici sul sistema idraulico e forestale e sull’organizzazione del territorio soprattutto per il periodo di vita dell’abitato, dove si coglie un importante bonifica. Nei periodi precedenti e successivi alla vita dell’abitato i cambiamenti ambientali sono stati indotti da variazioni climatiche e dai prodotti delle eruzioni dei vulcani napoletani.The ancient settlement of Pontecagnano (7th-3rd centuries B.C.) was built up on the travertine plateau overlooking the Sele river on the NW sector of the alluvial-coastal plain. Motorway construction works brought to light archaeological remains of an ancient urban and suburban settlement. Archaeostratigraphical records dated between the late Pleistocene and today have been elucidated. The geomorphological and archaeo-tephro-stratigraphical study, coupled with palaeoenvironmental analysis, allowed us to outline the evolution of the environment during the Holocene. The environmental changes have been mainly induced by human activities, during the 7th -3rd centuries B.C., by land reclamation. During other periods of the Holocene the environmental changes can be attributed to climatic variations and, secondly, to the impact of the distal products of Neapolitan volcanic eruptions on geomorphic systems

Ten golden rules for optimal antibiotic use in hospital settings: the WARNING call to action

Antibiotics are recognized widely for their benefits when used appropriately. However, they are often used inappropriately despite the importance of responsible use within good clinical practice. Effective antibiotic treatment is an essential component of universal healthcare, and it is a global responsibility to ensure appropriate use. Currently, pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to develop new antibiotics due to scientific, regulatory, and financial barriers, further emphasizing the importance of appropriate antibiotic use. To address this issue, the Global Alliance for Infections in Surgery established an international multidisciplinary task force of 295 experts from 115 countries with different backgrounds. The task force developed a position statement called WARNING (Worldwide Antimicrobial Resistance National/International Network Group) aimed at raising awareness of antimicrobial resistance and improving antibiotic prescribing practices worldwide. The statement outlined is 10 axioms, or “golden rules,” for the appropriate use of antibiotics that all healthcare workers should consistently adhere in clinical practice

Replication Data for: Social capital, Internet capital and the recruitment networks of political movements: A theoretical and empirical approach

This paper presents the analysis of the recruitment network of Italy's Five Star Movement. A recruitment network with 8132 nodes is drawn among users comparing the date users joined Meetup.com and the date users established mutual Facebook friendships. This paper provides empirical evidence that social capital is significant in explaining the structural differences in the social networks of members but not the territorial success of the diffusion. The paper proposes a theoretical network model to explain the role played by social capital in the diffusion process and by the Internet in bridging possible deficiencies in the endowments of social capital. Replication document.</a

Opinion polling for the next Italian general election | wikidata.org/wiki/Q54437087

Opinion polling for the next Italian general election collected from Wikipedia. Code and details on GitHub: github.com/ScrapeOpen/Opinion-polling-for-the-next-Italian-general-election

Replication Data for: Mapping online political talks through network analysis: a case study of the website of Italy’s Five Star Movement

Understanding relations among online users involved in political discussions can help us understand similarities and differences with corresponding offline interactions. Online communities generally demonstrate too high a level of homophily among users to be illustrative. But online political discussions do not necessarily prevent diversity of opinions. The discussion Forum of Italy’s Five Star Movement provides an interesting case study because of the diverse political orientations of participants and the wide range of discussion topics. I apply network analysis to map in detail the relations among the Forum’s users to unravel network characteristics and actor behaviours. After harvesting 86,943 discussions and 461,297 comments published by 84,203 unique users, I capture features of the network topology to understand: whether users participate in various discussions; if discussions fragment in multiple threads showing assortative mixing tendencies; and if comments concentrate around few discussions approaching a power-law distribution. This paper aims to improve understanding of the argumentative political discourse, but has also applications for political institutions interested in enhancing computer-mediated public reasoning

Local participation and not unemployment explains the M5S result in the South

The abundance of economic data and the scarcity of social data with a comparable level of granularity is a problem for the quantitative analysis of social phenomena. I argue that this fundamental problem has misguided the analysis of the electoral results of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and its interpretation. In this article, I provide statistical evidence suggesting that — in the South — unemployment is not associated with the exceptional increase in the M5S support and that local participation is a stronger predictor of support than most of the demographics