14 research outputs found
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superseded and buried by a Web-based direct democra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