Lorenzo Mosca

The political use of the Internet: some insights from two surveys of Italian students

Interest in the Internets impact on political participation has grown over the last five years. The main claim of most social scientists is to consider the Internet as a new resource for political engagement. However, this claim has not always been backed up by empirical analysis. The aim of this article is to provide empirical evidence on a subject that previous surveys on the Internet have generally ignored: the influence of individual political characteristics on Internet use. The authors compare data from two distinct surveys, carried out in two different periods but which contain some common batteries of questions referring to political participation and Internet use for political purposes. One survey was carried out in 2001 and focused on students at the University of Florence. The second was carried out in 2002 and focused on the participants in the European Social Forum in Florence. The empirical results and interpretations offered are based on a sample of 397 students, extracted from the two databases. The focus of the research is on exploring whether and how the political use of the Internet is shaped by the political characteristics of users, in this case students. The findings of the two studies suggest that, firstly, the more students are engaged in different social and political organizations, the more they use the Internet to achieve political purposes; and, secondly, that different styles of Internet use (to retrieve alternative information, to discuss and to perform political actions) are associated with the political characteristics of users. In particular, the characteristics of offline participation are reproduced online: the Internet is appropriated and shaped by political practices of users.

Searching the net: Websites’ qualities in the Global Justice Movement

Notwithstanding a growing interest in online politics, the analysis of web sites’ qualities by social movement organizations (SMOs) has received little attention in social research. In creating their sites, SMOs often underline the capacity of new technologies to involve members and sympathizers in organizational processes and internal decision-making. However, web site design and management implies many choices among various goals, often in reciprocal tension: stressing organizational identity versus opening to the outside; increasing transparency versus reserving some sections to members; informing users versus mobilizing them; widening the debate to people with different opinions versus deepening the discussion in homogeneous groups. In this article, we focus on how the web sites of SMOs are fulfilling Internet potentialities, considering various aspects of their online presence. The empirical research was based on the analysis of 261 web sites of Global Justice Movement (GJM) organizations in six different European countries and at the transnational level. Diverse qualities of SMOs’ web sites can be explored empirically, focusing on a series of dimensions such as: information provision, identity building, transparency/accountability, mobilization, and intervention on the digital divide. In our analysis, we will use contextual characteristics (level of Internet access, GJM features) and organizational characteristics (structural features, territorial level of action, year of foundation) to explain the different qualities of the web sites.

Unconventional Politics Online: Internet and the Global Justice Movement

As with other communication technologies, the Internet influences the behaviour of individuals and organizations, intervening on the mode of interaction at the individual and collective levels. Even more than with other means of communication — such as press, telegraph, radio, television, telephone, fax, and so on — it seems that social scientists expect such important changes from the electronic revolution as to require specific concepts. E-participation, e-governance, and e-voting are all specifications of a more general transformation brought about by the new technologies, to the point of promoting an e-democracy, defined by increased opportunities for citizens to participate in politics, thanks to the Internet (Rose 2005). As with other technologies, the debate on their advantages and disadvantages has long polarized observers between sceptics and enthusiasts. From this point of view, the debate and research on the Internet has been intertwined with that on the various qualities of democracy with which this volume is concerned.

News diets, social media use and non-institutional participation in three communication ecologies: comparing Germany, Italy and the UK

ABSTRACT In the course of a three-year research project comparing social media and political participation across the European Union, we collected data on representative samples of internet users from Germany, Italy and the UK. Online users were surveyed just after the May 2014 European elections. The three countries have been selected as they differ not only in terms of institutional features but also in terms of the character of their media systems: ‘liberal’ in the UK, ‘democratic-corporatist’ in Germany and ‘polarized pluralist’ in Italy. Although previous studies have not put into direct relationship media systems with participatory patterns, we hypothesized that different types of media ecologies may generate peculiar incentives for non-institutional participation. Taking such differences into account, our paper sheds light on the linkage between digital media and unconventional participation across the three countries. Our hypothesis is that distinct news diets and different social media platforms may influence non-institutional participation in specific ways that reflect varying contextual characteristics. We assess the role of different news diets on unconventional participation, distinguishing our respondents according to their main sources of information (occasional, traditional univores, digital univores and omnivores). We then consider the association between the use of different social media (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) and non-institutional participation. Finally, we take into account the indirect effect of national contexts by running interaction models. Our findings show that news diets and social media use matter in the three countries, but that substantial differences are hard to find across them.

Freeing Software and Opening Space: Social Forums and the Cultural Politics of Technology

Since appearing in 2001, the social forums have formed part of a wider global justice movement characterized by the innovative use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Th e power of new ICTs such as the Internet to transform the speed, scale, and mode of organizing first became apparent in the mid-1990s with the early anti-Free Trade Campaigns and Zapatista Solidarity Networks.2 Activists soon began to employ e-mail lists, webpages, and collaborative software to communicate and coordinate within transnational networks such as Peoples’ Global Action and to organize mass anti-corporate globalization actions, including the November 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle. New ICTs have not only facilitated action-at-a-distance, they have also changed the way social movements organize, favoring decentralized, networked structures involving a widespread “cultural logic of networking”.3

2011: Subterranean Politics and Visible Protest on Social Justice in Italy

Subterranean Politics (SP) was the initial idea behind the studies presented in this volume — but what does this really mean in the Italian context? The idea was to go beyond the study of ‘civil society’ or ‘social movements’ in order to focus on all that was extra-institutional in the recent protests that have swept across Europe. Rather than look at particular movements or themes, we therefore decided to focus on protest. For us this general term is key to our understanding of SP as essentially all extra-institutional manifestations of politics, expressed by any one of a variety of informal or formal actors, but all united in some form of dissatisfaction with institutional politics and its outputs. Protest, in its most encompassing sense (protest denoting anything from a letter to the editor to a mass demonstration) was what we singled out as a common activity for SP, and forms the basis of our search for SP in Italy (see the methodology section below). Our work leads us to conclude that SP in Italy is to be found in the practices of democracy unfolding in what are, for the most part, familiar and long-established formal and informal groups, but groups which are at the same time challenged by new events. In labour marches, for example, trust in political institutions and even trade unions fell sharply between the beginning of the new century and 2011.

Ricercando nella rete: stili democratici dei siti web del movimento per una giustizia globale

Notwithstanding a growing interest on online politics in social research, Internet use for making social movements more democratic received little attention. When social movement organizations (SMOs) create their websites, they often underline the amazing capacity to involve members and sympathizers in organizational processes and internal decision-making. However, website design and management implies many choices among different objects being often in reciprocal tension: stressing organizational identity or opening to the outside; increasing transparency or reserving some sections to members; informing users or mobilizing them; widen the debate to people with different opinions or deepen the discussion in homogeneous groups. In this article we focus on how Internet potentialities are implemented in the websites of SMOs considering different indicators of democratic quality. The empirical research was developed on 261 websites of Global Justice Movement organizations in six different European countries and at the transnational level. SMOs (as other kind of organizations) embody democratic conceptions and practices based on different principles such as participation, delegation, deliberation, etc. Diverse democratic conceptions tend to be mirrored in their website and can be explored empirically focusing on a series of dimension such as: information provision, identity building, transparency/accountability, mobilization, and intervention on the digital divide.

Voting for Movement Parties in Southern Europe: The Role of Protest and Digital Information

Abstract In recent years ‘movement parties’ such as Syriza in Greece, the Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, Podemos in Spain and—to a lesser extent—Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal shook national party systems, breaking the consolidated dynamics of political competition. Despite growing interest in movement parties, there has been scant attention to the role of citizens adopting unconventional forms of action and using digital media in accounting for their electoral performance. To fill this gap, four original internet-based post-electoral surveys are employed showing that protesters and digital media users are more likely to vote for these parties, despite important country differences.

Movimenti sociali e sfide globali: politica, antipolitica e nuova politica dopo l'11 settembre

This article discusses the effects of the terroristic attacks of September 11 t h 2001 on social movements, in particular on peace activism. It presents the results of an empirical research carried out through structured questionnaires, administered to participants at the peace march (PerugiaAssisi) that took place on October 2001, that are compared with those collected among activists of the protest against the G8 in July 2001 in Genoa. September 11 t h had considerable effects on the conditions of movements development, focusing attention on the issue of peace, emphasizing the need for nonviolent strategies, stressing the urgency of a «politics from below». If the opposition to the war and terrorism became a common discoursive frame, there is still a tension an interpretation of the war as a consequence of imperialistic relations and a more nuanced cultural and ethical interpretation. In the field of the action repertoires, both the experiences in Genoa and the need to also symbolically differentiating the movement strategies from both «militaristic» and terrorist behaviors pushed towards a more decisive choice for non-violent tactics, without however excluding direct action as unconventional, disruptive forms of protest, such as occupations, go-ins end, more in general, acts of civil disobedience. With respect to the organizational structure, the local social forum represents experiments in deliberative democracy and the search for local solution to global problems. Efforts towards permanent coordination and intervention in national politics produced, however, tensions and competition within the movement. The attitudes of the peace activists confirm a criticism towards representative forms of democracy and a criticism of the «institutional Left», already emerged in Genoa - a criticism reflected in the mistrust of the center-left parties towards the aims and the forms of the mobilization against neoliberal globalization. The article concludes with a reflection upon the emerging characters of the movement for globalization from below, and therefore the need to adapt some concepts and hypotheses coming from the sociology of social movement.

EDITORIAL COMMENT: Researching online participation

Digital networks have been said to play an increasing role in the development of alternative political repertoires of action and campaigning, manifested through a variety of new and old social movements focused around lifestyle politics, global justice, culture jamming, environmental issues, new consumerism, and the like. The intense and creative use of the internet made by these actors to communicate and organize mobilization around the world may represent a good example of how ICTs’ democratic potential can be best used. ICTs could be used to redistribute power in society and to increase citizens’ feeling and capacity of becoming significant actors – individually or collectively – in political processes. However, this is an issue that is still unexplored and remains to be proven. Are ICTs actually contributing to the change in nature, and thus the structure, of political processes and power in society? How are new social and political movements contributing to this transformation? Some of these questions were addressed during the symposium ‘Changing politics through digital networks: the role of ICTs in the formation of new social and political actors and actions’ held in Florence in October 2007 and organized by the Department of Political Science and Sociology of the University of Florence in collaboration with Information Communication & Society and the Tuscany region. The symposium was extremely successful: almost forty people from all over the world submitted an abstract. Astonishingly, the scope of the symposium went well beyond ‘old’ Europe with applications by junior and senior researchers from Eastern Europe, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, Korea, Turkey and the USA. Twenty papers were finally selected and discussed in four different sessions: e-movements; e-public sphere, political judgment and deliberation; networked politics; identities, political cultures and new forms of participation. The eight articles included in this issue were presented and discussed in the different sessions. First, they illuminate different aspects of the ‘internetscape’ ranging from websites to email lists, from blogs to social networking tools (i.e. YouTube). Second, all contributions aim at disentangling and clarifying the complex interplay between material and immaterial processes, bridging online and offline