Natale, Simone and Ballatore, Andrea (2014) The web will kill them all: new media, digital utopia, and political struggle in the Italian 5-Star Movement. Media, Culture & Society, 36 (1). pp. 105-121. ISSN 0163-4437

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Abstract

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 Gianroberto Casaleggio in 2009, this movement succeeded in becoming the second largest party at the 2013 national elections in Italy. This article aims to discuss how elements of digital utopia 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 practice. The 5-Star Movement is compared and contrasted with other social and political movements 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 Germany. By adopting and mutating cyber-utopian discourses from the so-called Californian ideology, the movement symbolically identifies itself with the web. The traditional political establishment is associated with “old” media (television, radio, and the printed press), and represented as a “walking dead,” doomed to be superseded and buried by a web-based direct democracy.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Californian ideology; Gianroberto Casaleggio; cyber-utopia; digital sublime; digital utopia; Beppe Grillo; Italian politics; Italy Movimento 5 Stelle/5-Star; Movement new media; old media; web utopia;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > School of English, Media & Theatre Studies Faculty of Science and Engineering > Computer Science
Item ID:	4698
Depositing User:	Andrea Ballatore
Date Deposited:	15 Jan 2014 16:58
Journal or Publication Title:	Media, Culture & Society
Publisher:	Sage
Refereed:	Yes
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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