Beppe Grillo's dramatic incursion into the Twittersphere: talking politics in 140 characters

The unexpected electoral result achieved by Beppe Grillo on the occasion of the voting of May 2012 was immediately described by the media as a "boom". Between the first election day – when the unexpected success had place – and the run-off, that confirmed the solidity of the phenomenon, a great deal of attention was given to the Movimento 5 Stelle (m5s) and to whom described himself as its "spokesman". Together with the media attention, called to deal with the unexpected result, there was the citizens' attention, especially on the web. In the time span of four weeks, 150.000 tweets were posted about the topic. The statistical analysis of a significant sample of tweets has allowed to detect and retrace the communication streams between the users. On the whole, the data confirmed the nature of "third place" ascribable to the social media – many citizens had the opportunity to take the floor and comment on the sudden electoral success of Beppe Grillo – but, in the meantime, they showed h