ABSTRACT
In a post on his blog, the press agent of the Italian Forum of Water Movements described the relationship between activism and digital communication that preceded the referendum victory of June 2011. While most news sources were depicting the electoral success and the campaign that I describe in this book as Facebook and Internet phenomena, he explained how water activists were using the online media, stressing that ‘the real influences the virtual, which in turn influences the real’ (Faenzi 2011). Moreover, according to him:
Behind the accounts, behind the avatars and behind the Facebook groups there are real people who become active, apart than on the web, on their job, at school, in the squares and in the streets; they talk, raise the awareness, study, inform. Social mobilization generates virtual mobilization […]. Facebook was helpful, but without the distribution of flyers, the initiatives, the activation of the territorial committees and of the organizations supporting public water and against nuclear power, the quorum would have been impossible to reach. (Ibid.)
