Social movement campaigns usually emerge from the efforts of numerous organizations, which create loosely coordinated and partially independent communication initiatives. This multi-centric model of political campaigning permits single organizations and in some cases single activists to create and spread their own symbols and images in support of the issue at stake. Focusing on the campaign around the Italian referendum against the privatization of water in 2011, this paper investigates how these symbols overlap, interconnect, and are diffused in different areas of the web. The research relies on two kinds of data: a self-created database of images extracted from a network of 430 websites that opposed water privatization and a database of Facebook PicBadges, small political symbols that referendum supporters added to their Facebook photo profiles during the campaign. The paper presents a network map, discussing how these symbols – and the connected political ideas – overlapped during the campaign.
