The paper explores debates regarding Islam and Muslim immigration in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. To get a full picture of these debates we are interested in which issues dominate the debates, which actors participate, which positions are taken, and which arguments are mobilized. Exploring three countries with an ethnic model of citizenship allows us to control for important cultural factors and to focus on three other explanatory variables: the dominant model of political participation, the relationship between the state and church/Islam, and the strength of right-wing populism. To test our arguments, we rely on a new dataset based on content analyses of quality newspapers from 1998 to 2007 that enables us to go beyond existing studies that concentrate on state activities or on mass-level attitudes. We demonstrate that above all the relationship between the state and church/Islam, thus issue-specific opportunity structures, influence the debates to a great extent.

In the UK, Big Brother has been both blamed for an alleged crisis of democracy and celebrated as a socially cohesive force. Political scientists, who are concerned with the investigation of the links between politics and the mass media, have traditionally focussed on and celebrated news and current affairs programmes and ignored or criticised popular culture. In this paper I claim that Big Brother UK forces us to rethink the relationship between politics and the mass media. A critical analysis of the content of the programme shows that Big Brother UK articulates political ideas, beliefs and values. I argue that this complicates the traditional distinction between what counts as ‘politics’ and what is ‘mere entertainment’, as it is spelt out in the UK Public Service Broadcasting rationale. By employing a political theory approach to the study of Big Brother I explore what type of ‘politics’ the programme articulates. I argue that, despite its expressly non-political nature, Big Brother provides examples of what it means to be a good citizen, what it means to be represented and to meaningfully participate in decision making practices. I claim that the discursive themes that emerge from such investigation conceptually qualify citizenship. This new way of communicating citizenship raises important questions about the role that television entertainment plays in relation to modern forms of political participation that political scientists can no longer afford to ignore.

Quelli che molti hanno definito gaffes, epifenomeni o incidenti di percorso di Silvio Berlusconi in effetti rappresentano nuove forme della partecipazione politica che implicano la morte della politica così come è stata vissuta nel corso degli ultimi due secoli. Attraverso l’analisi di alcuni casi eclatanti che hanno coinvolto il nostro Presidente del Consiglio si dimostrerà come in effetti questi casi esemplifichino: 1) nuove modalità di costruzione delle identità sociali che sostituiscono le identità organizzate dei partiti di massa; 2) la sovrapposizione tra consumismo e politica, tra vita quotidiana e politica, 3) il ruolo sempre più importante della televisione nel determinare le forme dell’immaginario sociale e della cittadinanza politica.

Considering citizenship strictly connected to the development of western democracies, that is as a three-dimensional concept involving a civil, a political and a social element, this paper is focused on the role of internet for the expression of some civil rights, like the freedom of opinion and the right to obtain justice, in contemporary Russia. In particular, it describes different events which show several ways in which Russian bloggers express their civic position by using Internet options, doing it sometimes in fun yet criminal style. This is particulary meaningful in a country that, in western terms, cannot be considered a fully developed democracy and in which citizens normally are politically passive and not used to really affect political decisions and judicial actions. Evolutionally, it describes how the Internet has changed the behavior of usually politically passive users of Russian cyberspace. There several cyber events might be presented: the first ( and the only) Internet conference with President Putin which occurred in Summer 2006, a cyber war with Estonia in April-May 2007, a cyber war with distributors of Biologically Active Addings in October 2007, a cyber war with Georgia during the military actions in Summer 2008. I will also analyze how in situation of total lack of attention of politicians to the population everyday problems and the level of state corruption, blogs are the only way to catch an eye of authorities and make them act, when usual means do not work. It all proves that with the help of Internet tools, average users can become a significant power, having an ability to influence different events that must be really important in the country of “so –called democracy.