#Renziscappa: The Transmedia Story of a Hashtag between Online and Offline Activism

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the hashtag #Renziscappa was used to create a link between online and offline forms of political activism. Launched in November 2014 by the Italian collective Wu Ming, #Renziscappa aimed to encourage the reporting online of any form of offline protest against the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The implementation of #Renziscappa by Wu Ming and their followers sought to counter mainstream representations of Renzi’s purported consensus, and to catalyze and organize the offline protests. Conversely, offline participation linked the hashtag to impact-making political actions. However, the uncontrolled proliferation of #Renziscappa and its appropriation by the Movimento 5 Stelle made the online campaign increasingly lose its connection with the offline protests. By contrast, the concerted transmedia diffusion of #Renziscappa through Wu Ming’s blog Giap and interactive maps preserved this connection. In particular, the maps contextualized #Renziscappa in the genealogical evolution, geo-temporal settings, and socio-political composition of the offline movement. The network of these transmedia extensions constituted a narrative alternative to the mainstream that made users perceive the collective dimension of the movement in a national perspective and fostered the formation of a political subjectivity.