Love affairs: The piccola posta in the age of social media

Abstract

The piccola posta, which are reader’s letters to women’s magazines, represent a noteworthy phenomenon for the analysis of social, cultural and communicative practices particularly in relation to representation and self-representation, also in terms of gender. Through a brief reconstruction of its evolution, the piccola posta was identified as a space of interaction, exchange and hybrid sharing which managed to depict the contradiction between the stability of traditional morals based on nineteenth-century models and the increasing need to acquire a new awareness in the personal experience. This article focuses on the social, cultural and media role of piccola posta today, developing a qualitative and quantitative analysis of columns currently active online in, for example, traditional web newspapers, blogs and social media. The aim is to understand how the piccola posta of today could still be a worksite to process innovation about relations, self-perception and sexuality.