Facebook, Tartaglia, e le minacce del Governo

Nicola Bruno mi ha intervistato ieri per il Manifesto per parlare di Facebook, la censura dei contenuti pubblicati su Internet, e gli eventi di attualita’ politica degli utlimi giorni – l’intervista e’ pubblicata sul Manifesto del 15/12/2009: «Facebook che istiga all’odio? Mi sembra solo un’esagerazione che dimostra una totale mancanza di cultura digitale. Quello che succede online non è altro che la fotocopia della vita politica di un paese. Ci possono essere espressioni forti, ma per lo più più si tratta di semplice condivisione estemporanea di opinioni, come nelle chiacchiere da bar. Non c’è bisogno di nessun oscuramento». […]

New article published: Political Protest Italian Style

The article I co-authored with my colleague Alberto Pepe, from UCLA, has been published in the December Issue of First Monday: “Political protest Italian–style: The blogosphere and mainstream media in the promotion and coverage of Beppe Grillo’s V–day” First Monday, Volume 14, Number 12 – 7 December 2009.

Here is the Abstract:

We analyze the organization, promotion and public perception of “V–day”, a political rally that took place on 8 September 2007, to protest against corruption in the Italian Parliament. Launched by blogger Beppe Grillo, and promoted via a word–of–mouth mobilization on the Italian blogosphere, V–day brought close to one million Italians in the streets on a single day, but was mostly ignored by mainstream media. This article is divided into two parts. In the first part, we analyze the volume and content of online articles published by both bloggers and mainstream news sources from 14 June (the day V–day was announced) until 15 September 2007 (one week after it took place). We find that the success of V–day can be attributed to the coverage of bloggers and small–scale local news outlets only, suggesting a strong grassroots component in the organization of the rally. We also find a dissonant thematic relationship between content published by blogs and mainstream media: while the majority of blogs analyzed promote V–day, major mainstream media sources critique the methods of information production and dissemination employed by Grillo. Based on this finding, in the second part of the study, we explore the role of Grillo in the organization of the rally from a network analysis perspective. We study the interlinking structure of the V–day blogosphere network, to determine its structure, its levels of heterogeneity, and resilience. Our analysis contradicts the hypothesis that Grillo served as a top–down, broadcast–like source of information. Rather, we find that information about V–day was transferred across heterogeneous nodes in a moderately robust and resilient core network of blogs. We speculate that the organization of V–day represents the very first case, in Italian history, of a political demonstration developed and promoted primarily via the use of social media on the Web.

beppe grillo enters italian politics

Comedian/blogger Beppe Grillo has announced today on his blog that he wil be entering Italian politics by running to become a candidate of the Left wing party Partito Democratico. His decision has startled many, given his views and actions, which have often been labeled as ‘anti-politics’, causing a wide array of reactions from his supporters (as of today his blog post has gathered more than 2,300 comments) and politicians. Amongst the issues he wants to tackle on his political agenda, free information, free wi-fi, and his now famous ‘clean parliament’ campaign.

has Internet use changed the number of friends you have?

A forthcoming study by Hua Wang (USC Annenberg School for Communication) and Barry Wellman (University of Toronto) “Social Connectivity in America” has looked at how social networks of friendship have been changing from 2002 and 2007 and how this is related to different levels of Internet use.

The study was prompted by fears that Americans have been becoming increasingly disengaged from public life and disconnected from their peers as exemplified by the work of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam’s on social capital “Bowling Alone” (2000), who blamed television as the main culprit for the breaking up of the texture of American social and political life.

What Wang and Wellman find – via an analysis of two American national surveys of Internet adoption and use, from the World Internet Project – is that networks of friendship amongst adult Americans aged 25-74 remain abundant and in fact they have been growing between 2002 and 2007. In addition, they found that this trend was similar amongst non-users of the Internet, light-users, moderate users and heavy users – dispelling the initial idea that the more time you spend online the more likely you are to become socially isolated and even develop depression. In fact, the study also found that heavy users of the Internet were particularly socially active, having the highest number of friends both online and offline. Continue reading “has Internet use changed the number of friends you have?”

Beyond Objectivity: Global Voices and the Future of Journalism

[live blogging] My friend and colleague Lokman Tsui (@lokmant) is talking today at the Berkman Center about his current research:  Beyond Objectivity: Global Voices and the Future of Journalism.

Global Voices is “a community of more than 200 bloggers around the world who work together to bring you translations and reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media”. Why does this matter? The title of Lokman’s personal blog says it all: “Global Voices, One World”. Strangers can gather and discuss (the news) and form a public. Now with the Internet you have strangers you can connect to potentially everywhere. Habermas’ public sphere of coffee houses, Anderson’s notion of ‘imagined communities’ capture well this agora formed by online communities. Looking at how the Internet is destroying journalism is a one sided interpretation. The Internet offers new opportunities, a globalisation of culture. Continue reading “Beyond Objectivity: Global Voices and the Future of Journalism”

Italy as seen by the Italian blogosphere

Vittorio Zambardino writes today in La Repubblica about a recent research study carried out on the Italian blogosphere: what are Italian bloggers writing about? The article presents very interesting graphs, which show the top tags used in 2009 and the topics Italian bloggers write about.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the top tag in 2009 was Silvio Berlusconi, which is followed by two current affairs related tags: the economic crisis and the Abruzzo earthquake – which are followed by Facebook in fourth place. In the top 15 most used tags we also find two football teams, Inter Milan and AC Milan, president Obama and the Pope.

Amongst the most discussed topics we find: 1) current affairs 2) soccer 3) the Internet 4) sport 5) politics. These are followed by a rather detailed list of less discussed topics from cinema, to art, to cooking, to music and so on. Finding current affairs at first place and politics at 5th place was indeed rather reassuring, supporting the idea that the Internet is indeed used as a virtual agora for discussion or a virtual civil society, rather than merely a tool for entertainment purposes. It should be noticed, however, that Maria de Filippi (TV presenter of Mediaset reality TV shows) was the top tag in the ‘entertainment category’, where we can find blogger Beppe Grillo at 4th place, and journalists Marco Travaglio and Michele Santoro further down in the list. Finally, finding the Internet as third most discussed topic, was also unsurprising – this is a common finding from research of different country/language blogospheres, where a big proportion of bloggers is made up by IT/media enthusiasts who blog about the medium they are using for communication (see for example our research on different language blogospheres from the Berkman’s Internet and Democracy project).

While the methodology used for this study is not illustrated in this article, it certainly provides a really good snapshot of what the online community and bloggers are talking about: this is very informative of what is going on in Italian society – and should be compared to the news agenda of mainstream media, in order to establish the role of the Internet in public discourse.

The Internet and the 2008 US election: participation and/or fragmentation?

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has just released a report on the role of the Internet in the 2008 US election, which analyses trends in how people consume political news & information and the ways they use the internet to engage with politics. Here are some of the key findings:

More than half  (55%) of the voting-age population has used the Internet to get involved in the political process during the election year (74% of Internet users).

The survey findings show that the Internet has become a paramount tool for people’s engagement in the political process, not only as a source of information (60% of Internet users have gone online to look for political information in 2008 compared to 22% in 1996), but as a tool for active participation. 18% of Internet users actively engaged online by posting comments on the campaign on online forums such as blogs or social networking sites and 45% watched online videos related to the campaign.

Young voters  (18-24 year olds) showed the highest levels of political involvement online. They engaged heavily in the political debate through social networking sites: two-thirds of young people with a social networking profile took part in some form of online political activity. Continue reading “The Internet and the 2008 US election: participation and/or fragmentation?”

Joe Green on Facebook Causes

Live blogging from the workshop “From Social Network to Social Movement” at Harvard Law School. Joe Green, Founder of Facebook Causes is presenting. You can also follow on Twitter: #HLSsocnetworks

Facts on Facebook Causes: 50 million people using it, 250.000 active causes, 7 million dollars raised, average donation $22

(1) Why does FB matter? 200 million people using it. This is the Internet getting real. Community online at the beginning was people in Usenet groups talking about Star Wars using pseudonyms. Real identity online has been a holy grail for a long time. Facebook profiles on the other hand use real names [CdG = is this equal to real identities?] – so it is much harder now to fake identity than before. Social graph – there are nodes and connections between the nodes – the nodes being people. That allows real world social dynamics to be brought on the Internet. Continue reading “Joe Green on Facebook Causes”

Ben Rattray on Change.org

Live blogging from the workshop “From Social Network to Social Movement” at Harvard Law School. Ben Rattray, Founder and CEO of Change.org is presenting. You can also follow on Twitter: #HLSsocnetworks

Rise of the social web has been huge. Activism by proxy – people are interested in organizations and these organizations act on their behalf. They get information from direct email and the organization acts. People by themselves are unable to take action at the national level so they need proxies, outside of traditional media, for example through blogs. The Web would disintermediate existing organizations, allowing people to get together and collectively running action. So we have a toolset to create action and to allow NGOs to organize. Continue reading “Ben Rattray on Change.org”

Marshall Ganz on narratives and social movements

Live blogging from the workshop “From Social Network to Social Movement” at Harvard Law School. Marshall Ganz from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, presenting The role of narratives as leadership practice in social movements. You can also follow on Twitter: #HLSsocnetworks

Social movements are a form of association. Tocqueville studied the problem of individualism and he discovered the rich associational life in the US and found it encouraging for 3 reasons: 1) active associations brought individuals out of their silos and brought them together to learn their common interest 2) at least theoretically, the promise of democracy that equality of voice will balance the equality of resources: people coming together around a common interest can mobilize power 3) these associations were voluntary, freed from coercion, so they serve as crucibles for value renewal. Continue reading “Marshall Ganz on narratives and social movements”