Social Media as a New Public Sphere

The information and communication technology system is constantly creating new scenarios, but a tendency in them can still be recognized: the blurring of the limits between consumers and producers and the passage from interactivity to participation (user generated contents, web 2.0, social networks). In this emerging cultural context, constantly redefined and remediated by individual and personalized forms of elaboration, it is important to understand the way in which every single person or group leads his/her own way towards reappropriation of the technological realm. The author aims to explore potential and real capacities of these new technologies to generate a new public sphere by analyzing an exemplary case study: the moblog communities in the megaphone.net project.