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The Internet has drastically changed the way we live and is constantly giving us new tools to be more efficient and connected to the people we care about. The remarkable thing about the web is that we can apply its true power in any context, wherever we are and whenever we want. Politics is probably one of the last fields, where we have seen a massive penetration of the internet, that has an impact on millions of people all over the world. In the past years, a few parties and movements have tried to form a direct democracy on the web, such as the Pirate Party.
However no one of them has been successful as the Five Star Movement, the first political movement to truly understand (or pretend) the word “web”. The story of this movement is quite fascinating, since it started after the 2008 USA elections, where Beppe Grillo and Gian Roberto Casaleggio, the two co-founders of the movement, who were running a famous blog (beppegrillo.it), decided to build a network of people through the “Meetup” platform.
The Meetups were called “Friends of Beppe Grillo” and the aim was to connect the people who were reading the blog and let them discuss the topics of the blog. In this way, people were free to meet in person and start talking about ways to improve their own city, defend a public water system, fight nuclear power, introduce a green economy and live as a community of people who supported each other. In the early days, the Meetups fought different battles on these topics and tried to force their local cities to follow them.
As soon as the two co-founders saw the power of this network, which in the end counted 90 thousands people, they decided to start a movement made by citizens. For the first time, normal and unexperienced people were running for local elections, with the aim to take care of their lands. Although in the first elections the movement was struggling to get 1%, the number of people grew and the network became bigger year by year.
What completely characterised the movement from a social media point of view was the extensive use of the internet as a way of communicating. For years, the Five Star Movement has rejected to take part in talk shows or other tv programmes; Facebook, Twitter, forums and websites were the places where their communication took place. The idea of “ONE MAN” solving the problems for all the population has never been present in this movement that has always thought that a community of brains was more powerful than any other thing.
The more the Italian politicians got arrested and showed how miserable they were, the more the Five Star Movement grew. In 2013, when the movement run for the National Elections, they got 25% from 0%. For the first time in the world, the candidates, that later became Members of Parliament, were chosen online. A few months after the elections, the parliament had to choose the next President of the Republic.
In a party, the MPs would have gathered and thought about a possible name, the Five Star Movement chose its own candidate online, with 30 thousand people who were able to propose a name in the first round and then select a name out of 10 in the second round. These experiments of e-democracy have never been done by a party that got 8 million votes in the elections. That’s why even if this movement has never reached the way the Pirate Party uses the web, they must be considered those who started the biggest political revolution on the internet.
Nowadays, Beppe Grillo counts 1.6M likes on Facebook and 1.47M followers on Twitter. He’s the most followed italian “politician” ever. Direct democracy is a dream, but with the advances of technology, is possible. The Five Star Movement is not perfect, because the use of the internet could have been brought even further; but this is just the beginning.
The key to the success of a movement made by citizens who connected online was the presence of Beppe Grillo, a famous italian comedian, who decided to give something back after a forty years career. Movements strongly focused on the internet, with these same principles, have failed because of the absence of a strong figure who was able to gather thousands of people at the same time. Although Beppe Grillo will never be a politician and run for elections, his presence was fundamental.
In the past months, the movement made another massive experiement in terms of e-democracy by writing an entire law with its members. By splitting the law in steps and making the members vote on each step, at the end of a two months period, the MPs were able to present the law in the Italian Parliament. Something like this has never happened and there is a reason why this movement has projections of 45% between people from 18 to 28 years old and less than 10% with people over 65 years old.
The biggest bet is to see how the transition from a movement with a strong personality to a leaderless movement happens. People must have a point of rereference, otherwise they usually get lost; but what if that point of reference becomes the values and the ideas of a group, which can be carried forward by any individual?
