Laura Iannelli is Lecturer of Sociology of Culture and Communication. She received her Ph.D. in Theory and Social Research from Sapienza University in Rome. Since 2011 she has been teaching ‘Political Communication and Participation’ at the University of Sassari in Sardinia (Italy). In 2014, she was Visiting Scholar at City University London and the University of Leicester. Her primary research focuses on communication processes and political participation. In 2013, she began coordinating a two-year interdisciplinary research project on contemporary public art, activism and performative citizenship, funded by the Region of Sardinia. In 2015, in collaboration with City University London she organized an international conference entitled 'Protest Participation in Variable Communication Ecologies' in Alghero, Italy, and co-edited a special issue on this topic in the journal Information, Communication & Society. She has published various book chapters and articles on media and political participation, and in 2010 authored the book ‘Facebook & Co. Sociologia dei Social Network Sites’ (Milano: Guerini Scientifica).
Hybrid Politics examines the combinations and competitions between older and newer media technologies, practices, actors, contents and logics, by exploring their potential and practical implications in terms of political participation. In this Swift, Laura Iannelli analyses the 'hybridity' of politics in democratic societies from a multidisciplinary perspective, identifying the diverse forms of power and political participation that coexist within the contemporary complex media sphere, and which influence participation in the spheres of institutionalised and protest politics. Building upon renowned global research and original case studies, the book proposes an innovative and challenging analytic strategy to understand, explain, and problematise the contemporary complexity of political participation and communication.
