New media e spazi di democrazia partecipativa nella società dell'informazione: il caso cinese

is paper aims at evaluating to what extent the Web can be regarded as one of the main driving forces at the core of an increasingly widespread political activism and di erent typologies of bottom up participation. e study is set in a wider theoretical framework which investigates the role played by Geography for the analysis of such a complex phenomenon, strictly dependent on the multifaceted nature of the relationship among icts, political activism and democracy. Particularly, the work focuses on the implications sparked o by the evolution and di usion of the virtual sphere in a highly controversial country, such as China. e main aim is to understand if the increased possibilities of access to the Web, caused by China’s astonishing development in terms of technological infrastructures and socio-economic structures, actually produce a wider democratisation of a country still dominated by censorship.