128 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superseded and buried by a Web-based direct democra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
The moral technical imaginaries of internet convergence in an American television network
How emergent technologies are imagined, discussed, and implemented reveals social morality about how society, politics, and economics should be organized. For the television industry in the United States, for instance, the development of internet “convergence” provoked the rise of a new discourse about participatory democracy as well as the hopes for lucrative business opportunities. The simultaneity of technical, moral, and social ordering defines the “moral technical imaginary.” Populating this concept with ethnographic and historical detail, this article expands the theory of the moral technical imaginary with information from six years of participant observation, interviews, and employment with Current TV, an American-based television news network founded by Vice President Al Gore to democratize television production. This chapter explores the limits of political participation and morality when faced with neoliberal capitalism
Regulating and Deregulating the Public Utilities 1830-2010
History can provide invaluable insights into important issues of the economic and social regulation of utilities, and offer lessons towards future debates. But the history of utility regulation – which speaks of changing, diverse and complex experiences around the world – was, unfortunately, sidelined or marginalised when economists and policymakers enthusiastically embraced the question of how to reform the utilities from the 1970s. This paper provides an overview of the three, overarching, `waves' of utility regulation from the nineteenth century to the present, documenting how, when and why the ways in which the roles of the state, the market and firms altered over time. It then contextualises and explains the main contributions of each of the papers included in this special issue of Business History, which cover energy, communications, water, transportation and other urban infrastructure regulation, across Western Europe, the United States and Australia
E-readers and the death of the book: or, new media and the myth of the disappearing medium
The recent emergence of e-readers and e-books has b
rought the death of the book to the centre of
current debates on new media. In this article, we a
nalyse alternative narratives that surround the
possibility of the disappearance of print books, do
minated by fetishism, fears about the end of
humanism, and ideas of techno-fundamentalist progre
ss. We argue that, in order to comprehend
such narratives, we need to inscribe them in the br
oader history of media. The emergence of new
media, in fact, has often been accompanied by narra
tives about the possible disappearance of
older media: the introduction of television, for in
stance, inspired claims about the forthcoming
death of film and radio. As a recurrent narrative s
haping the reception of media innovation, the
myth of the disappearing medium helps us to make se
nse of the transformations that media
change provokes in our everyday life
Financial Markets and Online Advertising: Reevaluating the Dotcom Investment Bubble
While the dotcom period is often dismissed as a false start in the history of the web’s commercial development, it is better conceived of as highly generative of modern structures of online advertising. Soaring investment markets and the developing online advertising sector entered into a pattern of mutual reinforcement that began in 1995 and intensified until the bubble collapsed in 2000, transforming the character of the web in the process. This article sketches the contours of this generative capacity, focusing on the production of demand for online advertising services. Taking the approach of critical political economy, this narrative is contextualized as an outgrowth of broader social trends, namely the increased importance and interconnection of marketing communications, media technologies, and finance within a changing capitalism
Effectiveness of probiotics in the prevention of carious lesions during treatment with fixed orthodontic appliances.
Administration électronique et protection des données personnelles: Livre blanc
Le gouvernement a engagé en novembre 2001 la généralisation des téléservices d'ici à 2005. Il a souhaité que soit ouvert un large débat public sur les moyens de préserver et de renforcer la protection des données personnelles dans le cadre de l'administration électronique. Il faudra arbitrer entre la facilité d'emploi, l'ergonomie des modes d'identification et leur niveau de sécurisation. Pour éclairer ces enjeux, le livre blanc s'attache à définir les idées directrices pour un développement efficace d'une administration électronique respectueuse des données personnelles. Il livre ensuite au débat public un ensemble de questions
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