Coordinated populism: a reconstruction of M5S Directorate’s communication from 2013 to 2019

In the last decade, the rapid rise of the Five Star Movement has been the focus of many studies investigating populism and its characteristics. While the communicative role of the founder Beppe Grillo has been widely discussed in the literature, to date little attention has been paid to the relevance of the Directorate in shaping the political assets attributed to M5S. By analysing all the tweets posted by Di Battista, Di Maio and Fico from the Italian electoral campaign of 2013 until the European election of 2019, we will show how instead the peculiar political proposal of M5S has been built over time also thanks to the communicative coordination capacity of the Directorate and their strategic exploitation of digital platforms’ affordances. Indeed, the presence of a shared communicative leadership has laid the ground for the construction of a political proposal capable of intercepting and shaping the different souls of the Movement, without, however, affecting the rhetoric of opposition between people and elite on which populist movements rely. The algorithmic logic of customization that governs social media has instead accentuated the possibility for users to choose the «face» they like among the various and contradictory positions of the Directorate. In these terms, M5S communicative strategy highlights the elective affinity between social media and populist rhetoric, showing how the Directorate presence on Twitter has been an exemplary case of populist ability in using the algorithmic governance of digital platforms to one’s advantage. In this view, the avoidance of overlapping between the components of the Directorate is extremely relevant: the coordinated communication between different leaders ensures that no contradictions emerge within the discourses of the individual but also that the broad political proposal can generate a chameleonic and catch-all dimension inside the party.

Algorithmic Logic in Digital Capitalism

This chapter details the key characteristics of algorithmic systems in their current hegemonic social form, which helps to shed a light on the reasons for their increasing social influence. These characteristics include: opacity/obfuscation, datafication, automation, and instrumental rationalisation. Because technologies are inevitably embedded in – and influenced by – the social context in which they develop, the author’s analysis considers these systems as a part of competitive and inherently unstable capitalist society, or to put it more narrowly, as a part of digital capitalism. This provides a critical analytic framework that points to the fact there is nothing ‘natural’ in these characteristics of algorithmic systems, while making it possible to delineate both the structural reasons for their development and their social consequences. On this basis it is claimed we can denote a specific algorithmic logic in digital capitalism that continuously reinforces itself.

OBJECTIFYING THE PLATFORM SOCIETY: INVESTIGATING USERS’ PERCEPTION OF SMART SPEAKERS' ALGORITHMIC SUGGESTIONS AND DATA PROCESSING

Smart speakers are one the latest products of platforms and have the capability to quickly connect platforms, algorithms, people, and households together. The frame of $2 was developed to understand the agency of platforms (corporations based on technological infrastructures guided by algorithms) that have influence on the whole society itself. We can argue, thus, that smart speakers can be conceptualized as devices that objectify the logics of platform society into households because they are produced and programmed by a platform that provides also the operating system and the personal assistant installed, becoming an extension of the platform itself. Due to the fast diffusion of smart speakers, there is the need to investigate their adoption process and user’s perception of algorithmic selection and data processing. The research here presented was one of the first about the subject in Italy and studied the diffusion of smart speakers in Italy with a multi-sided methodology. It let to investigate also the role of smart speakers in reproducing the power of algorithms into households. Research results showed that users were taking for granted some algorithmic logic and appreciated it (like for basic information search or for music selection). They indicated also that the mechanisms of voice interaction made clear some limits of the algorithmic customization and led users to start to be more conscious of it (for example about news selection or vocal search for purchases) and to elaborate strategies to reduce its influence.

Fashion consumption in digital media: Multiple practices and new identities

It is possible to assert that the fashion system constitutes a complex device that determines consumption agendas. Fashion clothing is massively consumed, and consumer habits are deeply affected by online advertising. These consumption practices are not simply passive, sometimes they are creative, yet they are still part of the fashion disciplinary device. In these consumption practices, a range of expressions and discourses between individuals may be detected as well as multiple subjectivities under construction within contemporary societies. The intention of this article is to shed some light on the role of online fashion consumption practices within our societies, which are traversed by daily and prevailingly online advertising and encourage increased consumption. ‘Influencers’ are one novel example of how online advertising is subtly influencing fashion consumption. Even though consumers show certain tendencies in acquiring fashion clothing from specific brands, via different digital media outlets depending on their socioeconomic status and their peer groups, their consumption practices may try to subvert the conventional formats through which fashion clothing has been consumed traditionally. Nevertheless, as much as these practices seem to promote freedom, they might confirm the tactics of the system and just be a part of the algorithmic logic that imposes certain products, reproducing established categories.

The Algorithmic Spectator: Watching Annie Dorsen's Work

Annie Dorsen's digital theatre works reshape the possibilities of the encounter between humans and algorithmic forces. They both address and embody a world in which emotion, cognition, and narrative are increasingly controlled by algorithmic programs; and they invite the spectator to confront a nonhuman and algorithmic logic experientially, altered and pressurized by the terms of the theatre itself.

Coding Time

This article analyzes the various ways algorithmic logic structures, streamlines, and delimits the conception of time and memory; orders the logics of social arrangement; and delimits the political. The author considers the ways in which algorithms extend racial discrimination, rendering it less visible, less discernible, and so more difficult to address. He briefly formulates a notion of crypto-value embedded within algorithmic self-conception and elaborates an algorithmic ontology. The latter is distinguished from the contemporary understanding of the post-human. The essay concludes with a reflection on a politics of street encounter as a counter to prevailing algorithmic constraints on the political. “Coding time” accordingly concerns the coding of time, the conception of time embedded in coding, the sociality and value that coding produces, and the implications for being and being human that the time of coding is manifesting.