The Grillini in Italy: New Horizons for Internet-based Mobilization and Participation

Abstract

This article looks at the case of the Grillini movement and its emergence on the Italian political scene, and discusses its contribution to the growing literature on the increasing opportunities offered by the Internet for social movement participation and mobilization. My findings are that the movement is successful in both mobilizing and promoting open debate and participation because of its policies and its use of multiple, and fairly open platforms for participation and horizontal decision-making. The Grillini have been able to conciliate the characteristics of newly emerging, Internet-based, ‘internetworked movements’ as well as the more conventional use of the Internet on behalf of well-established social and political movements. They have been able to do so by articulating issues and mobilizing on a national scale, with an increasingly large bureaucratic elite, while retaining a vibrant, partly online- and partly offline-based public sphere and decentralized organizational forms. My conclusion is that the Grillini movement, with its peculiar structure and commitment to participation and inclusion, is a crucial example of how the Internet can be used to aggregate new political issues and foster continuous debate while consolidating a growing electorally driven organization, which is still mostly held accountable by the movement's public sphere.