[ecrea] book announcement on digital citizenship

Cittadini digitali. L'agire politico al tempo dei social media
by Rosanna De Rosa
Milano, Apogeo, ISBN: 8850332696, p 156

With the rapid diffusion of Social Media, grassroots political 
organizations are starting to use supportive technologies to avoid party 
representation. The Pirate Party in Germany and the Five Stars Movement 
(5SM) in Italy are trying to use the interactive democracy paradigm to 
renew the institutional framework of political representation from the
bottom up. This book aims to analyse the citizen engagment in politics 
look at the case of Beppe Grillo and 5SM that - after a successful 
showing in administrative elections - has been involved - for the first 
time - in a national election (2013). How the 5SM - as a virtual party 
without a structured organization - will solve the problems related to 
its institutionalization and how the "proxy vote" will be used in 
parliament are the main questions, which scholars are debating. It is a 
unique occasion to see if this emerging model of a political form will 
evolve into a democratic rather than a cybercratic organization.