Colective Action and Internet: The Rise of the Republican Social Movement of Beppe Grillo

Abstract

In this work we analyze two fundamental aspects in the rise of the civic organization born from the politicalaction of the Italian comic Beppe Grillo. First, we study how the leader of this organization builds a discoursebased on criteria of justice and injustice, how does he define the responsibilities and, finally, whichstrategies does he propose to resolve this situation. Secondly, we will study the political characteristics,mostly Republicans, of this discourse. Our aim is to frame it within a broader political discourse and to interpretit, so that we can offer a proposal about the political nature and typology of the social movement organizationit belongs to. The case of study is, as said, the organization arises from the Blog of the Italian comicBeppe Grillo. Discourse analysis and, therefore, the basis for political interpretation, results from an empiricalstudy of the opinions and proposals made by Grillo through its Blog. The method used for this study isindicated by the theory of ideological discourse analysis (van Dijk, 1997 and 2004). To do this, we used theT-LAB software (ver. 5.1, Lancia, 2004) for the analysis of texts.