Rethinking grassroots campaigners in the digital media: The ‘grassroots orchestra’ in Italy

Abstract

The diffusion of digital media allows the emergence of new types of relations between grassroots campaigners and organisers. This article presents the results of a comparative qualitative study of two Italian cases of grassroots online participation: a local electoral campaign and a single-issue social movement. The first case is ‘Tell your Milano’, a project that took place during the electoral campaign for Mayor of Milan in the spring of 2011. The second case is the ‘Purple People’ (Popolo Viola), an Italian social movement started in 2009 to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The article introduces the concept of a ‘grassroots orchestra’: a grassroots campaign aimed at a short-term objective, coordinated by a non-grassroots political actor and performed by a community sharing a uniform and coherent context.数字媒体的扩散导致了草根运动家与组织者之间新型关系的出现。本文对两个意大利草根在线参与案例——一为地方选举运动，一为独立议题社会运动——做了对比定性研究。前一个案例是所谓“告诉你一个马力诺”，是2011年春米兰市长选举中的一项活动。另一个“紫色人民”始于2009年，是一个要求贝卢斯科尼总理辞职的社会运动。本文引进了“草根乐队”的概念，意即短期目标的草根运动，由非草根政治主体协调，并由处在同一语境中的一个社群来完成。