Abstract
In this chapter, I use data collected from the Internet to map the evolution of the media system of the Movement which provided the architecture to foster and sustain the development of its political community. I introduce two key concepts to help interpret what happened within the online community of the M5S: everyday political talk and network individualism. Finally, I provide some descriptive statistics of different traits of the online community and on the crowd of users surrounding it.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Habermas “there are contexts of action that do not primarily serve the carrying out of communicatively harmonised plans of action (that is, the purposive activities of the participants) but make communication possible and stabilize it—for instance, chatting, conversing, and arguing—in general conversation that becomes an end in itself” (Habermas, 1981/1984, p. 327). Thus deliberation for Habermas is not only defined by the production of authoritative decisions and deliberation may also happen without producing any formal decision.
- 2.
The survey question does not specify the type of activity broadly referring to “Participating in online discussions on political issues […]”.
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Bailo, F. (2020). Online Communities and Online Crowds. In: Online Communities and Crowds in the Rise of the Five Star Movement. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45508-8_4
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