La “crisi migratoria” e la crisi della sfera pubblica

Abstract

This paper analyses the quality of the online public debate about the contemporary migration phenomenon known as ‘refugee crisis’ to detect some characteristics of participation and re-articulate the themes developed in the online public sphere. Specifically, the paper analyses the debate encouraged by users on Facebook through their comments as a practice of access and participation in social media. The empirical basis of the proposed case study consists in a corpus of comments left by users under articles about the “refugee crisis” and posted on Facebook by three Italian newspapers between 2016 and 2018. Starting from the notion of degradation of the public sphere, this study aims to critically reflect on the role of comments, trying to define a public sphere model that includes online participatory forms. On the one hand, this can promote informed citizenry and collective reflection; on the other, it may increase opinion radicalization, polarization and the spread of niche audiences.