The Web will kill them all: new media, digital utopia, and political struggle in the Italian 5-Star Movement

This article examines the role of discourses about new media technology and the Web in the rise of the 5-Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, or M5S) in Italy. Founded by comedian and activist Beppe Grillo and Web entrepreneur Gianrobe rto Casaleggio in 2009, this movement succeeded in becoming the second largest party at t he 2013 national elections in Italy. This article aims to discuss how elements of digital uto pia and Web-centric discourses have been inserted into the movement’s political message, and how the construction of the Web as a myth has shaped the movement’s discourse and political p ractice. The 5-Star Movement is compared and contrasted with other social and political move ments in Western countries which have displayed a similar emphasis on new media, such as the Occupy movement, the Indignados movement, and the Pirate Parties in Sweden and Germ any. By adopting and mutating cyber- utopian discourses from the so-called Californian i deology, the movement symbolically identifies itself with the Web. The traditional political esta blishment is associated with “old” media (television, radio, and the printed press), and rep resented as a “walking dead,” doomed to be superseded and buried by a Web-based direct democra cy

Il Movimento 5 stelle: dalla protesta al governo

Il Movimento 5 stelle ha soltanto poco pi\uf9 di 8 anni di vita. Come \ue8 riuscito a conquistare in cos\uec poco tempo consensi elettorali tanto elevati? E come si pu\uf2 spiegare la fedelt\ue0 e l\u2019ampliamento del suo elettorato, dopo le frequenti critiche cui \ue8 stato sottoposto da parte di molti osservatori? Questo libro cerca di capire cos\u2019\ue8 oggi il movimento fondato da Beppe Grillo, quale \ue8 il profilo dei suoi elettori e quanto \ue8 cambiato dalla sua nascita. Considerato per lungo tempo come un fenomeno effimero, una \u201cfiammata\u201d destinata presto a consumarsi, il M5s \ue8 invece diventato nel 2018 la forza di maggioranza del nuovo governo, sia pur in coabitazione con la Lega di Salvini. Un\u2019alleanza destinata forse ad aprire una nuova fase nel rapporto tra cittadini e politica e a rappresentare, dopo gli anni di Berlusconi, un deciso e significativo mutamento nel quadro politico italiano

Class, Religion and Electoral Behaviour in Italy : An Analysis of Trends over Time

In the last decades Italian party system have undergone an important process of transition, that led it into Second Republic. The presence of new parties, together with their different connection with social cleavages have been regarded as main characteristics of this transition. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how religion & class stratification influence voting choices before and during this period. In particular, we deal with the interplay between these two social divisions. Comparing survey data about Italian First & Second Republic, we find meaningful differences. In the last elections, religion based voting seems to be affected by the collapse of Christian Democrats (Dc) as well as by the change between Catholic Church & its believers. On the other hand, the working class show to vote similarly for different parties, while political organisations such as unions lose their relevance in structuring political identities. However, despite these findings, we notice differences also within Second Republic\u2019s elections

The Three Perspectives of the Left and the Gradual Loss of Its Electorate

La terza prova elettorale del Partito Democratico in consultazioni politiche si presentava sotto i peggiori auspici, gi\ue0 a partire da qualche mese prima della data del voto, il 4 marzo 2018. Una crisi di consensi che non conosceva di fatto soluzione di continuit\ue0 dal referendum costituzionale, tenutosi il 4 dicembre 2016. Da allora, nel successivo anno e mezzo il declino dell\u2019appeal elettorale pareva essere costante, e a nulla sembravano portare i tentativi di rianimarlo, con le dimissioni di Renzi da capo dell\u2019esecutivo e l\u2019avvento di Gentiloni al suo posto, nella speranza di riaccendere la fiducia degli italiani nei confronti del Pd e del suo governo. Un elettorato smarrito in ogni senso, sia dal punto di vista numerico che nella percezione del proprio partito, del quale molti non comprendevano pi\uf9 n\ue9 quale fosse la proposta politica n\ue9 l\u2019idea di societ\ue0 cui fare riferimento. I problemi riguardanti il centro-sinistra italiano non parevano peraltro molto differenti da quelli delle medesime aree politiche del resto d'Europa.Several months before the new Parliamentary Election, the prospects for the Democratic Party (PD) already looked unfavourable. Since its loss in the constitutional referendum (held on 4 December 2016), the decrease in its electoral appeal over the subsequent year-and-a-half had seemed unremitting, and attempts to revive its fortunes \u2013 with the resignation of Matteo Renzi as Prime Minister and his replacement by Paolo Gentiloni in an effort to rekindle a sense of confidence in the PD and its government \u2013 came to nothing. PD voters seemed lost \u2013 both from the numerical point of view and from the point of view of their perceptions of the party; for many of them no longer understood what was distinctive about their party\u2019s outlook or the type of society it was aiming to achieve. The problems involving Italian PD are actually very similar to those of the whole European Left

Presentazione del volume di G. Passarelli e D. Tuorto "La Lega di Salvini, estrema destra di governo"

Discussione in occasione della presentazione del volume di G. Passarelli e D. Tuorto "la Lega di Salvini Estrema destra di govern