The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy

by Paolo Gerbaudo

From the Pirate Parties in Northern Europe to Podemos in Spain and the 5-Star Movement in Italy, from the movements behind Bernie Sanders in the United States and Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom, to Jean-Luc Melenchon's presidential bid in France, the last decade has witnessed the rise of a new blueprint for political organization: the digital party.

These new political formations tap into the potential of social media to gain consensus, and use online participatory platforms to include the rank-and-file. Paolo Gerbaudo looks at the restructuring of political parties and campaigns in the time of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and big data. Drawing on interviews with key political leaders and digital organizers, he argues that the digital party is very different from the class-based “mass party” of the industrial era, and offers promising new solutions to social polarization and the failures of liberal democracy today.
 

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Social Science, Technology

224 pages, Paperback

Published January 15, 2019

Reviews

[Marisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and researched. You could probably get the important parts from just the introduction and conclusion.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a political party is as easy to join as a "like" on facebook or a share of a hashtag, what potential does that political party have to organize and effect change? Though the internet promises greater numbers of participants in the political process (imagine voting via the internet, not just for leaders - but for the policies those leaders champion) Paulo Gerbaudo warns that so far the internet has only provided hypercentralized, super powerful charismatic leaders and a generally passive superbase that doesn't actually organize, participate, or work together to accomplish anything. A great argument against the hyperindividualized, less structured, less organized version of democracy libertarians and internet activists fetishize. We need in person connection, we need leaders, we need representatives, and we need physical parties in order to organize properly.

[Tyler K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for the Dig podcast's book club. Interesting analytical foray into the modern, digital political party (compared to the 'mass party' of the industrial era or the 'television party' of the neoliberal era). Would've liked more development in parts and found some of its arguments incomplete, but a good survey of a number of European parties on the left and right with many lessons to be drawn.

[Nikhil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only time will tell if Gerbaudo's observations will hold, but his analysis offers good explanatory value about the changing forms of organization and leadership for the past decade or so. From that perspective, this relatively concise book should be seen well especially when compared to the many other, often in my view weaker, explanations and analyses covering the same transformations in society and technology.