At the core of this paper’s revised understanding of citizenship is the post-Aristotelian concept of the monitorial citizen first elaborated in 1998 by the American Scholar, Michael Schudson. For Schudson, the obligations attached to the old ideal of the well-informed citizen must be understood instead as ‘monitorial’. Citizens may appear often politically apathetic, but, in reality, they are monitoring the situation; they are scanning the informational environment that surrounds them. If something happens, they are ready for action, if action indeed is required. Schudson’s analysis provides an important theoretical framework to understand the complexity of citizenship and the many challenges that an average citizen is confronted with in contemporary societies. But such analysis suffers from having rapidly been outdated by subsequent events. By analysing the recent history of the Italian web-based Five-Star Movement I suggest that the rising influence of the Internet in the last decade has changed radically the environment surrounding Schudson’s monitorial citizens and has given life to a new type of political subject: the networked citizen. The Five-Star Movement began on a comedian’s blog and has now evolved into a mature and active political group whose members have strong interest in the political future of their communities; they understand the power of social media to reach out to others and know how to use them effectively to build a network of active supporters and win elections.
Overall, I argue in this paper, the Five-Star Movement is an important example of the increasing relevance of the Internet in shaping civic engagement in the 21st century. The Internet widens the range of citizens’ scanning ability; it increases their chances and widens the quality of their political commitment; it connects citizens with each other in new ways and by doing so it increases exponentially the effectiveness of political engagement.
