Blogs, politics and ethics: the case of Beppe Grillo

Index What is a blog? Blogs and new texts Grillo’s blog Conclusion

Blogs, politics and ethics
the case of Beppe Brillo

Federico Gobbo
federico.gobbo@uninsubria.it
Insubria University


What is a blog?
1
The emergence of blogs as new media
Blogs and citizen journalism
Blogs and new texts
2
Push vs. pull media
New texts as narrow casting and personal media
An integrative framework
Grillo’s blog
3
A political, ethical and glocal blog
The keys of Grillo’s blog success
Evaluation of Grillo’s experiment
Conclusion
4
Power ‘Long Tail’ Law
Blog evolution


Blogging as the last hype phenomenon in the web

Every day there is someone in the world who is opening a blog. In
June 2006 Technorati, a web hub, tracked 35 million blogs and the
number still increases. Only 5% of these blogs is active, and only
13% is updated at least once a week (Powazek, 2006).

One of the key factors of the widespread of blogs is their easiness
of use, i.e. you don’t need to be a computer scientist to publish a
blog, it is as easy as write an e-mail message.


History of blogs in brief

The first blogs, called ‘weblogs’, were simply updated collections of
hyperlinks to Internet items. It was in the late 1990s that weblogs
became blogs, thanks to Jorn Barger, Jesse James Garrett and
Brigitte Eaton. In 1999 she created the Eatonweb Portal, the first
blog index.

What is the difference between a blog and a personal web site?
This question lead us to analyse structural properties of blogs.
One of my theses is that blogging should be treated along
structure, not blog contents.


What the other media tell about blogs

In 2003 blogs entered the Oxford American English Dictionary,
according to Wikipedia, with the following deﬁnition:

a weblog : blogs run by twenty-something Americans
with at least an unhealthy interest in computers”.

In my opinion saying that a blog is a weblog is a tautology.



Blogs as vehicles of ethical and political issues

Blogs are more than what is said in the Oxford American English
Dictionary. They are not bond to speciﬁc topics as high-tech news,
gossips or boyfriend problems.

In particular, there is a social phenomenon worth of interest about
blogs as self-made ethical and political journals, sometimes
organized in groups, called blogospheres.



Blogs as typical web content media

Internet and the web in particular were born as a space for freedom
of speech. Ethical blogs – at least partially – realized what
Berners-Lee (1999), the founder of the web, thought about it more
than 20 years since the beginning.

Some of the most popular blogs are focused on speciﬁc threads of
discussions, in particular on ethical and political topics. In fact,
blogs got the attention of the general public expecially after
September 11, the Tsunami emergency in Asia or during the 2004
US elections – all global political issues.



Blogosphere as the citizen journalism arena?

Unlike blogs considered as personal diaries, ethical bloggers pay a
great attention to spelling and grammar, as in the best journalism
traditions.

Is it true that “the former audience joined the party” (Gilmor)?
Should we consider blogs as the media of citizen journalism?



Myth and truth of citizen journalism

‘Citizen journalism’ is an expression invented by Gilmor
(2004:137–140), and it has at least four different meanings:
people send amateur photographs or small videos on a major
1

event – e.g. taken via a mobile – to a news organization;
people participate in conversation about a specific topic,
2

sometimes along with professional journalists;
people on site report daily life experience where mainstream
3

media cannot – e.g. Zeyad ‘Healing Iraq’ blog in 2003;
people cover a specific topic or event under an unusual or
4

unique point of are. They are often actively engaged in the
topic – e.g. Linux activists on the SCO Group claiming patent
on the Linux kernel.



Citizen journalism and new texts

Citizen journalists use the following as their election media:

wikis;
1

web forums;
2

blogs.
3

We should brieﬂy examinate analogies and diﬀerences before
analysing Grillo’s blog.


“New” in respect of what?

After the press revolution media could reproduce contents in
identical copies. These “old texts” are broadcasted media: the
modern book, newspapers (the press!) and television are all equal
in this respect.

Contents are pushed to users, considered as consumers.


Push vs. pull media

The “push media” model

content A
John Smith

content A
Jack White

push media

content A
Mario Rossi

Pietro
content A
Bianchi


Push vs. pull media

Pull media as the reverse of push media

In the 1990s the web as a mass phenomenon reversed the push
media model as the pull media model. Media publish oﬀ-the-shelf
contents and people choose what they want or what they need.

Nevertheless, this reverse does not capture the novelty of new
texts: people no longer consume products but on the contrary
produce new contents, as understood by the citizen journalism
paradigm.


Push vs. pull media

The “pull media” model

pull media

content A content B content C content D

Pietro
John Smith Jack White Mario Rossi
Bianchi



New texts are diﬀerent

What wikis, web forums or blogs are in common is their
environment: Internet and the web. Every net-connected computer
is a node. Metcalfe’s Law says that the value of a communication
network is the square of the number of nodes. Every node
communicate with few (or many) nodes producing new contents.

Communication is no longer one-to-many (push media model) or
many-to-one (pull media model) but the narrow casting model:
few-to-few.



The narrow casting model: new texts as personal media

People browse, cut, copy, paste, comment, mix and publish
hand-made contents. But how to get important in a connected
environment? Usually, this emphasis to personalization implies a
need to be part of a (virtual) community (Levy 1999:116–129).

Every form of new texts group around a speciﬁc model of
community. What really change between a grouping of wikis, web
forums and blogs is authoriality.



The “wiki way”

The “wiki wiki concept” (wiki means ‘fast, informal’ in Hawaiian)
was invented by Ward Cunningham, an extreme programmer. He
started from an analysis of groupware systems, since Engelbart’s
Augment (Leuf-Cunningham 2001). The most famous and popular
wiki system is Wikipedia.



How a wiki system works
Multiple editors but no authorship: “write many, read many.”

wiki content

edit A edit C

edit B
edit D

Pietro
John Smith Jack White Mario Rossi
Bianchi



Thread systems

Wikis were explicitely created as an alternative to thread systems,
as the old BBS, most mailing lists, or web forums and web groups
as those by Yahoo Groups or Gmail “conversations”. Every thread
is recognized by the topic. The root message is not special in any
way.

They typically have a tree structure. Every node is a message or a
comment and it’s signed. Unlike wikis, they are seldom modiﬁed or
edited.



How a thread system works
Multiple editors and authorship: “write once, read many.”

thread content
Pietro
Jack White Bianchi
root msg

comment A

comment B spin-off topic

comment C comment D

John Smith
Mario Rossi



Blogospheres are authored, commented and/or annotated

In blogs there is clearly an author – maybe collective – who writes
posts. Posts are ordered chronologically. Sometimes authors let
people comment in their blogs, sometimes people prefer to post a
comment in their own blog (annotation).

Blogs taken singularly are similar to threads, but the root message
is the most important. On the other hand, taken as a whole, i.e.
blogospheres, blogs are similar to wikis, but they still retain
authorship.

This model is the most suitable for citizen journalism, more than
wikis and thread systems.



How blogs work
Single author and freedom to comment: “write yours, read and comment the others.”

's blog 's blog
John Smith Mario Rossi

Monday post A post C

a comment
Thursday post B

Wednsday a comment post D annotates B

Pietro
Jack White
Bianchi




authoriality

thread
blogs
systems

single user multi-user

wikis

anonymity


An experiment of direct democracy in Italy
How Beppe Grillo explains his blog during the shows

Today I consider commercials as one of the worst things,
economics as the padrone of politics and Internet as one
of the few possibilities to defend themselves and to give
to politics back the space economics have stolen.
January, the 26th , 2005, I opened a blog,
www. beppegrillo. it . I didn’t know exactly what a
blog really is when I started. I begin to understand it only
now. I don’t know where this experience may lead, but I
feel that it may lead us very far. If we use it well,
Internet may help us throw away this world, governed by
managers of multinational corporations and their
commercials and governors.

Vitaliano (2006:211)


Grillo’s blog history in numbers

opened 26 January 2005;
in June 2005, Technorati rated Grillo’s one of the most read
worldwide;
in 2005 Time elected Grillo ‘European hero’;
8 June 2006 the Italian president of the Council Romano
Prodi received the political proposals discussed in the blog.

Today the blog has about 150,000 contacts per day, about 40,000
downloads of La Settimana (The Week), i.e. the paper version,
and tens of meetups (spontaneous real-world groups) worldwide
with about 18,000 people joining.

Beppe Grillo’s Blog, 8 June 2006



A blog very easy to use

Grillo writes his posts in Italian, and a professional translator put
them in English. Posts are published simultaneously in both
languages, even comics. You may change language by click on the
ﬂag on the right of the navigation bar (6 buttons and the ﬂag as
language switcher).

...leads to an asymmetry
By now, “best comment” and “the Week” are in Italian only



The very base is rooted in the Italian speech community

Compared with Powazek’s blog, who shares the same degree of
popularity, Grillo’s blog is far less linked. Comments in English are
rare and few. Meetups are mostly Italian-based.

But the “always bilingual posting” policy raised the attention of
media hubs as Time (out of the net) or Technorati.com (in the
net). Similarly, the use of syndications and a CreativeCommons
(cc) licence put the blog in a wider network of attention.

Maybe afterwards this situation will change, i.e. a lot of attention
by the English-speaking community.

A professional use of syndications



A blog on glocal issues with original posts

Posts are organized in topics such as Information,
Technology/Internet, Energy, Health/Medicine and so on.
Sometimes posts are relevant to the Italian speech community
(local issues), sometimes they are relevant to everyone (global
issues), but they are always ethical in character. Political posts are
mostly of local – i.e. Italian – interest.

Every post is written in plain, clear language, in order to be easily
understood, as in Grillo’s shows. The principle behind is clear:
Grillo says (1) either what everyone knows but nobody has the
courage to say, or (2) something glocally relevant that mainstream
media – i.e. tv news and the press – don’t say.

The GrilloNews page along the Google News model
GrilloNews may be reached by syndication too



Preserve your freedom to change the message

We are overload by news that let us understand nothing
about what happens. We should act by night. I went out
by night with a big pencil and I wrote over a political
poster... The day after people were coming and laughing:
the poster message turned against itself. Write over, do
not graﬃti. Change the message.

Vitaliano (2006:203)

An example of creative message change: goolag
Ref.: Grillo was censured by Google in China as e.g. Tienamen



Grillo’s success: professionality, popularity & credibility

Beppe Grillo built his credibility in more than 20 years. He became
popular in Italy in the 1980s thanks to comic shows in RAI (Italian
state television), where he denounced the paradoxes of Italian
society and governments. Then he was interdicted from appearing
in television, and in 1990 he started sold-out tours in Italian
theatres. He succeeded to appear in television thanks to Tele+ and
TSI (Swiss-Italian Television) where he pronounced discourses to
humankind (1999, 2000, 2001), always about global issues such as
ecology or energy.

Since 2004 Grillo is columnist at Internazionale (monthly
international political magazine). Then it came the blog (January
2005), the meetups (July 2005) and La Settimana (January 2006).



La Settimana, authoriality and the comments dilemma

“La Settimana” is back to ancient times, to dazebaos
and self-made xeroxing... Print and read, but without too
wide publicity. “La Settimana” is a step back to go
ahead: Net information again in the street.

La Settimana 1(1), Jan 2006

The paper version of the blog is without comments. After the
growing of the readership, most comments are oﬀ-topic: comments
are on top chronologically.



A blog explicitely thought to inﬂuence politics

I have a blog that makes me work: people write, a
discussion thread starts about a topic I choose. A person
who can publish nothing may have 50,000 people reading
with a blog. This is a new form of communication.
Moveon.org follows the same principle: one million
people send an e-mail message to the White House and
they change a law.

Vitaliano (2006:223-4)



Beppe Grillo’s authoritativity and blogging

This is the main diﬀerence with most bloggers: Grillo’s voice was
authoritative before his blog. The structure of the blog was
carefully planned at the end of 2004 by Beppe Grillo and
Gianroberto Casaleggio, an Italian web analyst.

The aim was to transfer Grillo’s style – quality and unusual news,
and professionality – into the web. The team who works daily
behind the blog is more than 10 people (personal communication
by G. Casaleggio). Among them the English native-speaking
translator and a man who clean the comments (even 1,000
comments per post) from obscenity and insults.



Citizen journalism or journalism tout court?

In the integrative framework of blogging, Grillo’s is very traditional:
a single author writes professionally, he listen to readers but he
doesn’t actually answer to them – quite impossible!

Grillo’s experiment of direct democracy seems to me closer to the
best traditional opinion journalism – like a columnis, more than to
citizen journalism, i.e. self-made amateur news ` la Gilmor.
a


Ethics and politics in ICT today: net and paper

12 June 2006 The Guardian announced that news are published
following net time, not daily time as before. The trend is news
media osmosis: the press go towards on line rules, and ICT
blogging towards paper.

Blogospheres follow the Power ‘Long Tail’ Law: without
publication space boundaries, narrow or special interests may be
represented unlike in the push media model, but the head may be
reached only by few (20%) net hubs.

Anatomy of the Long Tail
source: Wired 2005

Most popular English-language blogs
source: Power Law 2003

Most popular Italian-language blogs before Grillo
source: Casaleggio Associati 2005


Blog evolution

From the blog revolution to the blog evolution

level 0: publication. A blog is started, even tracked by a net
hub (e.g. Technorati) but not maintained – i.e. no posts.
level 1: maintenance. A blog is started and kept alive – i.e.
at least one post a week.
level 2: active reading. A blog is commented and/or
annotated by others – i.e. it enters the blogosphere.
level 3: top blog. The blog reach the top levels of reading,
entering the head of the long tail.
level 4: blog gets real. The blog get the attention of push
media, a print version is published and meetups are formed.
Beppe Grillo’s is one of the few blog that reached level 4 evolution.


Blog evolution

Thanks

I want to acknowledge Beppe Grillo and Gianroberto Casaleggio.

Attribuzione - Non Commerciale - Condividi allo stesso modo 2.0 Italia
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/it/
You may have this presentation and hand-out here:
http://purl.org/net/fgobbo

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Blogs, politics and ethics: the case of Beppe Grillo

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