Marta Musso

At the origins of the political discourse of the 5-Star Movement (M5S): Internet, direct democracy and the “future of the past”

ABSTRACT The 5-star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) is a political party in Italy operating almost exclusively online. It was officially established as a political movement in 2009, and quickly became the second most important political force in Italy. Unlike traditional political parties, the Movement operates almost exclusively online, without any headquarters and non-digital types of communication (until recently, candidates were forbidden to give interviews on TV or to the press); Beppe Grillos blog (www.beppegrillo.it), used as an aggregator by early activists, is now the main “spokesperson” of the party; it is not just a tool of communication that replaces traditional party newspapers, but an integral part of the partys life and of its history. This research will first give an overview of the relation between the 5-Star Movement and the World Wide Web, particularly the blog. In second instance, through a deeper analysis of the blog posts from 2008 until the end of 2017, the paper will try to determine what is the main political discourse underlying the M5S on two key “ideological issues”: migration and the European Union, and how the partys positions have evolved over the years.

Coal, Oil, and Empire

There is by now a substantial literature on the relations between energy, governance, and international geopolitics. The correlation between imperialism and energy sources, particularly oil, is an increasingly popular academic subject, together with another favourite (and related) topic in the social sciences: the so-called “resource curse.” One aspect of the oil curse is, in fact, the linkage between energy supplies and national security in Western countries. Recent history has forced many analysts, sometimes in a chicken-and-egg circle, to investigate the degree to which oil has been a reason, or an excuse, for imperialistic practices in the post-colonial world. From the historical point of view, it is particularly interesting to analyse the role of energy systems in shaping global geopolitics and national orders, especially with regards to the transition from the age of formal empires to American dominance. Three recent books address these issues from different perspectives. Empires of Coal, by Shellen Xiao Wu, reconstructs how the interests of Europe and the United States towards China radically changed as coal went from commodity to the essential fuel for industrialisation. Coal and Empire, by Peter Shulman, shows how energy became an integral part of American national defence – not with oil at the beginning of the twentieth century, as much of the literature indicates, but with coal, a century earlier. Blood Oil, by Leif Wenar, leaves the past to concentrate on the present and the future, suggesting policies for democracies to gain independence from dictatorships for their oil supplies. All three works focus on the relations between energy and empire in different places and at different times, creating a complementary narrative of world energy during the past two centuries. Empires of Coal and Coal and Empire, in particular, provide innovative and important analyses of the specific role of engineers and technology in provoking changes in energy policies, and thus international relations. By focusing on coal, both works show how many of the issues that are now associated with the oil industry had been already experienced with coal. For example, the perception of the ambix, Vol. 64 No. 1, February 2017, 95–98

This is the future: A reconstruction of the UK business web space (1996–2001)

The Internet and the World Wide Web in particular have dramatically changed the way in which many companies operate. On the Web, even the smallest and most localised business has a potential global reach, and the development of online payment has redefined the selling market in most sectors. Boundaries and borders are being radically rediscussed. This article reconstructs the early approach of UK businesses to the World Wide Web between 1996 and 2001, a period in which the Web started to spread but it was not as engrained in everyday life as it would be in the following decade. While the fast and dispersed nature of the Web makes it almost impossible to accurately reconstruct the Web sphere in its historical dimension, this article proposes a methodology based on the usage of historical Web directories to access and map past Web spheres.