The mechanisms of transition from on-line public to the off-line public, as well as from local to global level

Table of contents

Introduction1. The concept of public: from ancient times to era of Web 2.0

.1 Classical theories

.2 Rethinking Public23

.3 Web 2.0. and public engagement2. Transition of public: from local to global level. Charlie Hebdo case

.1 Global public communication

.2 Chalie Hebdo case-study

.3 “Charlie Public”: features and mechanisms of transition3. Transition of public from on-line to off-line. Five Star Movement

.1 Case study. From blog to political party

.2 “M5S Public”: features and mechanisms of transition

new reality: the spread of Web 2.0., new state of World Wide Web characterized by more interactive and collaborative approach to content, as well as introduction and expansion of social media, totally transform the features of communication in the modern society - the quality, quantity and speed of information flows, as well as its impact on political and social processes. People have obtained not only the access to the massive volume of information and an opportunity to get news in a timely manner, learn the diversity of viewpoints on particular topic and to discover the issues of importance in a greater depth but also an easier way to express themselves, to coordinate their activity, to summon and participate, for instance, in the sphere of public policy. The Internet brings new forms of collective action or reinforces the existing ones. Reducing the differences between those of high socioeconomic status versus those of low socioeconomic status, men versus women, youth versus adults and many other groups (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996) along with removing the distance barriers, Web 2.0. facilitates public interaction and expands civic engagement across diverse populations. Thanks to these features, the public formed in digital space does not stay constant, it has an opportunity to grow, transform and influence other publics. Virtual publics have a potential to evolve into offline publics or fuel already existing ones. In other words, on-line publics might further offline publics, but do not necessarily represent them. On-line publics can have influence over off-line and vice versa. Furthermore, this phenomenon of virtual engagement can start on the local scope, but then disperse globally. The Internet ruining traditional hierarchical structures, gives the voice to different social groups, which can be caught up by global chorus. Besides, the local issue can become a catalyst for global public mobilization. These public transitions are resulting not only from technological features of Internet but also are determined by some social mechanisms which we will try to elicit in the following research called “Emergence of Virtual Publics in Social Media: from on-line to off-line, from local to global participation”.

Research Problem and Goals

Being analyzed in media communications’ study and sociology, the topic of virtual public is rather new to political studies. Hence, there is the following research problem - lack of adequate analytical framework for reconstruction of emerging on-line publics and their correlation with off-line ones, as well as the transformation of local virtual public into global. Thus, the research question we want to answer within this research - what are the mechanisms of transition from on-line public that is not coming out in the streets but using social networks, expressing their attitudes, calling for action and organizing it to the off-line public, as well as from local to global level.main goal of this work is to figure out the forms of transition from on-line to off-line and from local to global. Obtaining this goal, we will fulfill the following tasks: 1) to analyze the concept of “public”; 2) to examine the process of formation of publics and their types, 3) to check if the concept of public has changed through time; 4) to research the role of the Internet and social media in the public summoning; 5) to study the case of Charlie Hebdo and analyze the expansion of public from local to global level; 6) to scrutinize Charlie public and trace reasons, issues, motives, tools and principles of transformation into global entity; 7) to study the case of Five Star Movement to analyze the interconnection between on-line and off-line publics; 8) to conduct a survey with Five Star Movement supporters to understand the mechanisms of public transition.

The relevance of the research problem can be explained by the fact that though there have already been conducted some researches to prove the possibility of the transformation of public from local to global and from online to offline, none of them haven’t explored in details the mechanisms which make this transition possible. Major attention was paid to the features of the Internet itself and interactivity of social media disregarding some other social constructs, which we try to evolve in this research. The paper investigates two cases: Charlie Hebdo and Five Star Movement. The case of Charlie Hebdo was taken because it is astonishing how one case in France, though dramatically painful and resulting on killings was connected both to religion, identity, country history and nations’ pride, freedom of speech and freedom of expression, sparked a significant amount of debate and collected noticeable number of people both on the streets and in social networks in France as well as in the global level. Thus, we can examine Charlie Hebdo, from the one hand, as country-based case, from the other, as a global one. The case of Five Star Movement as well presents the example of interconnected on-line and off-line publics. It shows how the discourse created around the blog can influence on-line participation resulting in the formation of real political actor - political party. The Italian case is also interesting from the point of long-lasting formation, organization and mobilization of public through combination of both digital and street activity. It should be noted that we do not compare these cases, we use them as examples to prove the hypothesis of our work.

Methods and Data Sources

To fulfill the research, the next methods are applied: case study, content analysis, analysis of secondary data and such quantitative technique as survey. The data for research is taken from official data sources, social network analysis (Twitter and Facebook) and from the related researches. We also use the data collected through surveys conducted with the activists of Five Star Movement. The survey was managed in Italian language both in printed and on-line form. Among surveyed there were the representatives of Five Star Movement in Forli (Emilia-Romagna, Italy) and the members of Five Star Movement groups on Facebook.

Literature review

We appeal to several categories of literature: theoretical literature on public and the influence of media on public formation and transition as well as the literature referred to our case studies. It is worth noting, that we use the sources not only in Russian and English, but also in French and Italian languages, that helps us to explore the topic in depth and get the whole solid picture of cases happened in France and Italy.concept of publics have been analyzed by different scholars from diverse angles. Our work is mainly guided by Jürgen Habermas’ “The Structural Transformation of the public sphere” (1962), cornerstone in the communication studies. The author precisely examined the concept describing the evolution of the public sphere in Europe in XVIII century when separate individuals gathering in coffee-shops and cafes were creating an autonomous sphere of public debate and, thus, together formed public, as well as public sphere’s decline in the century after caused by its convergence with private property which led to the destruction of the rational-critical debate. We also base our research on more recent studies as Warner’s work “Publics and Counterpublics” (2002), which presents seven main features applicable to any public, Nick Mahony’s “Rethinking the Public: Innovations in Research” (2010), which develops the concept of public, discovers its communication and action features in the changing mediated world. Moreover, we follow the steps for analysis of public by Nina Belyaeva offered in her “Public Action and Emerging of Protesting Public” (2012). We also take into account some other influential works discovering the concept of public as those by N. Fraser (1992), J. Dewey (1988), J. Grunig (1984) and G. Hauser (1999). All together, these researches represent a significant analytical framework for studying publics., these fundamental works are not covering the topic of the Web 2.0. and especially social media as well as their influence on public formation, organization and action. We have analyzed an extensive amount of literature related to the expression, mobilization and participation in the digital age. Among most significant scholars in this field, there is Peter Dahlgern (2005), who argued that political discussion in social media demands to redefine the concepts of public sphere and engagement, emphasizing the role of identity and subjectivity in online communications. One more significant scholar is Clay Shirky (2011), who is one of the first to describe social media potential to become a tool for collective action, for public engagement and producing a change. Clark and Aufderheide in their research “Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics” (2009) are showing the significant influence of new media on participatory user behaviors. According to some other scholars, there is as well a positive relationship between the usage of the Web.2.0 and social capital (Shah, Kwak&Holbert, 2001), civic engagement (Wellman, 2001) and political participation (Shah, Schmierbach, Hawkins, Espino, & Donovan, 2002). Rachael Gibson and Marta Cantijoch (2013) conceptualize and measure participation at the era of Internet, investigating if online forms do replicate offline or they mix together or exist in separate spheres. The topic of correlation between on-line and off-line started to attract attention of researchers in connection with the Arab revolution and Occupy movements, which represent the cases when social media was extensively used to coordinate and mobilize publics. For instance, there are valuable articles by Donatella della Porta (2005, 2007, 2009), who studies the local, national and transnational protest publics and the contribution of online communication tools for their emergence and development.we study the cases of Charlie Hebdo and Five Star Movement, we refer to the relevant researches. The Italian case has been studied a lot and, thus, we found a considerable amount of literature on the general information about Five Star movement, its emergence and development (Turner, 2016; Albertazzi,2016; Natale, 2014; Bordignon& Ceccarini, 2014; Biorcio, 2014; Mosca, 2015; de Rosa, 2013; Tronconi, 2016), its place in Italian and European context (Franzosi & Marone & Eugenio Salvati, 2015; Corbetta & Vignati, 2014; Milani, 2014), its communication tools and digital activity (Tronconi, 2015; de Rosa, 2013, Bentivegna, 2014; Mosca &Lorenzo& Vaccari& Valeriani, 2015) and its leadership (Lanzone, 2012; Miconi, 2014; Cosenza, 2014). It is worth saying, that Lorenzo Mosca, Cristian Vaccari, and Augusto Valeriani (2015) have already carried out the research on the Internet usage by the Five Star Movement and its influence on the organization and mobilization of the party. They figure out how the rhetoric about the Internet compares to reality, how the online voting system works and what are its limitations, as well as what are the participatory repertoires of party’s supporters. Based on conducted survey, the scholars show the behavioral patterns of those voting for the Movement; for instance, they are more likely to use Internet for political purposes than voters of other parties. Another noticeable research exploring the Five Star Movement and its supporters was prepared by British think-tank Demos (2013) and based on online survey of Facebook fans of the Movement.for Charlie Hebdo case, it is more recent and there are mostly researches on the freedom of expression and terrorism than on public solidarity movement. Thus, there is lack of researches on how the public was formed and took action, still there exist some data analysis on the spread of the solidarity message in time and distance. For instance, Martin Grandjean (2015) has investigated the most used hash-tags during the period when the Charlie Hebdo shooting happened and visualized how they were shared in Twitter. Matthew Zook in the article “Mapping the Twitter Reaction to the Charlie Hedbo Attack”, has shown the distribution of the top hashtags by countries and their reference to usual amount of tweets in the country. Spanish scholars Herrera-Viedma, Bernabé-Moreno, Porcel and Martínez (2015) looked at the languages of the hash-tags and explored how the sense of solidarity brought people with different communication and behavioral patterns together. Jisun An and a group of scholars (2016) as well based their research on the languages of the Twitter hash-tags putting main focus on the proportion in the use of hashtags by users identified as Arab and all others (Non-Arab) in aftermath of terroristic attack.in all, studying cases, we take into account what has already been done and use available data, still changing the focus on the mechanisms of public transition and adding our considerations. We would like also to mention that this research is the extended continuation of our previous work, as we have already analyzed the case of Charlie Hebdo before and summarized our findings in the paper “Je suis Charlie” as mass protest: analytical reconstruction of emerging publics in France and in global level” (Kakabadze&Uzoikina, 2015) presented on International Conference on Public Policy in Milan in June-July 2015.

Structure of the Dissertation

The structure of the paper is strictly defined by the tasks we raise in each chapter. The first chapter is devoted to analysis of how the concept of “public” changed through time with the introduction of new media tools and what is public today in the era of web 2.0. We also discuss the potential of social media to summon public and the existing approaches to the transformation of public from on-line to off-line and local to global. The second chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the interdependence between local and global public using the Charlie Hebdo case. First, we investigate in details the case and then proceed to the examination of public and its features, taking into consideration context, discourse, principle circulating message, resources and public spaces. In the third chapter, we examine the transformation of on-line public into off-line studying the case of Five Star Movement. We start from the detailed analysis of case and continue with the research of public applying the results of our survey.

Theoretical Contribution of the Dissertation

This paper represents adequate analytical framework for reconstruction of emerging virtual publics, identifies the mechanisms of public transition from local to global and from online to offline and, thus, fills in the existing gap in public studies. The research contributes to the developing area of studies of new media and public relations, the Internet and society. Virtual publics and their potential have become a topic of interest for many communication and media scholars, as well as it becomes attractive research subject for political scientists due to the ability to mobilize people and even make change. Thus, this work will be useful and challenging for those who are interested in contemporary political studies especially in public communication and this is the theoretical value of the work.

1. The concept of public: from ancient times to era of Web 2.0

.1      Classical theories

concept of public can not be understood without looking back in the history and analyzing the variety of approaches used for it. Since the times of ancient Greece, political philosophers, for instance, Aristotle (1992) started to distinguish private and public spheres; he emphasized the role of the public forum as the place where the range of social experiences could be rationally articulated and exchanged.the 20th century, the political theorist Hannah Arendt as well stresses the role of Greek polis, saying that this is the first model of public sphere where citizens gathered for collective decision-making. Subsequently, according to scholar, the public sphere expends and transforms from purely political entity into the form of common life (1958). For Arendt the essential criteria for the emergence of public is a visual and, moreover, spatial contact, as she speaks about Greek agora. She identifies publicity in terms of the city, its walls. The scholar states that the transformation of the private sphere has caused the decline of public sphere. Overall, Arendt understands the public space as an arena for actions of people interacting directly and united by similar values (1958). Hannah Arendt’s theory is usually opposed by the German researcher Jürgen Habermas, who, in contrast is saying that the visual criteria is not important, as public sphere can be described as a virtual community, which has appeared thanks to the growth of printing, and as a result a group of people who read, write and interpret information. He does not speak about decline of the public sphere, instead he is describing a new type of publics appearing during Enlightenment -the public of private individuals discussing social topics appeared in media (Habermas, 1989)., from the antiquity to the present day, the concept of public has gone through the times of ambiguity and development. Still, the theory and definitions proposed by Jürgen Habermas in the 1960s are considered as classical, normative for other works on public sphere and had a profound impact overall area of public policy studies. Therefore, in the following paragraphs we will analyze more precisely the Habermasian theory, its critics, as well as some other conceptualizations of publics with special attention to the latest works on public in the era of Web 2.0.defined public sphere in the encyclopedia article as ”a realm of the social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed” (Habermas, 1964). The philosopher picks out the following characteristics of the public sphere: it forms public opinion, it is accessible to all citizens, there are no restrictions about matters of general interests (the guarantee of freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom to expression and publication of opinions) and debate over the general rules governing relations.the work “The structural transformation of the public sphere”, Jürgen Habermas examines the publicity and its change in the XVIII century (1991). Although the idea of differentiation public and private appeared in antiquity, the development of public sphere, according to Habermas, takes place in the XVII century. Jürgen Habermas studying publics goes back into history and looks at the opposition between private and public. The scholar shows that before 18th century there have been representative publicity with lords and kings presenting themselves in front of the audience. In other words, there was no distinction between state and society or between public and private. However, in the 18th century thanks to the economic, social, cultural development public sphere has transformed and influenced the emergence of a new phenomenon - bourgeois public sphere. “The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor” (Habermas, 1991). The success of such public is seen in rational-critical discourse, which constitutes separated individuals in coffee-houses and salons. The bourgeois public sphere, according to Habermas, emerged from the family “literary public sphere”, where art and literature have started to be discussed. The philosopher attracts the attention to the role of discourse in formation of public opinion; he believes that dialogue, debate, discussion effectively compose the public sphere. Communication is central to the formation of public sphere. Habermas understands public sphere as a sort of network for communicating, discussing information and points of view. One of the main elements of public sphere is “ideal speech situation” which is formed while actors not only observe each other but also take other’s attitude, ascribe communicative freedom to each other and, finally, share mutual understanding., Habermas identifies institutional criteria for new public sphere to emerge: disregard of status, the existence of the domain of ‘common concern’ as well as inclusivity. Nevertheless, the next century have changed the state of affairs: the public lost its voice due to the domination of corporations in public sphere as well as the diffusion of press and propaganda. “Therewith emerged a new sort of influence, i.e., media power, which, used for purposes of manipulation, once and for all took care of the innocence of the principle of publicity. The public sphere, simultaneously prestructured and dominated by the mass media, developed into an arena infiltrated by power in which, by means of topic selection and topical contributions, a battle is fought not only over influence but over the control of communication flows that affect behavior while their strategic intentions are kept hidden as much as possible” (Habermas,1992). Jürgen Habermas called this shift “refeudalization”, the mutual penetration of state and society. The scholar states that consumption has substituted the rational-critical debate and public opinion is now formed not through discourse but by media engineering.the later works, Habermas (1992) claims that there is a significant place of media in the public sphere, that public sphere changes with the change of media, so the development of mass-media, appearance of the Internet have influenced the dynamics of public sphere. It changes with the electronic mass media, with the increasing confluence of information and entertainment, the raising relevance of advertising, the greater centralization in all areas. On the one hand, media, according to Habermas, contributes to the differentiation of public, it helps to expand the public sphere, make it more inclusive and bring together isolated individuals distributed throughout vast geographical areas. However, on the other hand, there is a fear that media can dominate public sphere. The scholar is rather critical to the role of media, saying that it is important but not central because of the dominance of established opinions and asymmetry of media landscape (Habermas, 1992). The theorist, as well, emphasizing the Internet’s limited potential does not share the opinion of its crucial role for establishing public sphere. On Annual convention of the International Communication Association 2006, the scholar declared “The Internet has certainly reactivated the grassroots of an egalitarian public of writers and readers. However, computer-mediated communication in the Web can claim unequivocal democratic merits only for a special context: it can undermine the censorship of authoritarian regimes which try to control and repress public opinion. In the context of liberal regimes, the rise of millions of fragmented chat rooms across the world tend instead to lead to the fragmentation of large but politically focused mass audiences into a huge number of isolated issue publics” (Habermas, 2006). Thus, Habermas sees the role of Internet as parasitical, oriented on fracture of mass audiences into detached issue publics.is worth noting that Habermas does not distinguish clearly “public sphere” and “public” because sometimes he uses these terms interchangeably. Still, he clarifies that within encompassing public sphere there exist numerous different segmented “public spheres” (publics), which can communicate with each other, “build hermeneutic bridges” from one to another and remain porous (Habermas, 1996). In his later work, Habermas (2006) has redefined public sphere, saying that it is a complicated network that branches out into a variety of coinciding subcultural, local, regional, national and international arenas.German philosopher distinguishes “strong” and “weak” publics. Strong publics are organized, formal, oriented on opinion forming and decision-making, whereas weak publics are informal focused on opinion forming. The main characteristics of these weak publics is their pluralism, openness and spontaneity. The separation of strong and weak publics gives the capacity for more inclusive network of “sub-publics” (Habermas, 1992). He also makes a distinction between two states of public sphere: dormant and mobilised. When public sphere is dormant, it is not producing any influence; however, mobilised one can make a change. Different possible tools for mobilisation of public sphere including, for instance, social networks or mobile phones, have been discussed later by subsequent researchers guided by Habermasian theory (Hartmann& Rössler& Höflich, 2008) and which we will analyze more precisely later in this work. The scholar also distinguishes three levels of public sphere: abstract, occasional and episodic. This distinction is based on the frequency of communication, organizational complexity and range (Habermas, 1996). Arranged public is the public of specific event (it can be either concert or party assembly, church meeting or performance in theatre). Episodic publics are formed in coffee houses and salons. Abstract public sphere is composed of isolated individuals from around the world assembled by the means of mass communication. This distinctions proposed by the theorist will be useful for our future analysis and case studies.(1996) also examines how issues can move to the core of public sphere from the periphery. The scholar provides three models: inside access model (the issue is raised inside and remains inside without interference of public sphere), mobilization model (the issue is raised by the proponents who mobilize public sphere) and outside initiative model (the issue is brought to inside from the periphery by the initiative of publics). In the last model, mass media plays a significant role, bringing the outside issues to the public agenda. These topics reach the larger public by the means of mass media or through such activities as “sensational actions, mass protests and incessant campaigning” (Habermas, 1996).in all, to summarize Habermas’ theory, he sees public sphere as a network. Public sphere cannot exist without communication during which the public opinion forms. The role of the media in public sphere, according to scholar, is incontestable; still it should not be exaggerated. Habermas’ theory, which has become a cornerstone for the future studies on public sphere has received a great volume of criticism, which we will examine in the following paragraphs.of all, there have been long discussions about the notion of public sphere and its unity. For instance, John Kean (2000) wrote that there are various public spheres, which are ‘differently sized, overlapping, and interconnected’. He distinguishes micro-public spheres operating on the sub-nation-state level, meso-public spheres on the nation-state level and macro-public spheres on global, supranational scope. Nancy Fraser (1990), known for her feminist approach, in her work “Rethinking public sphere” defines publics as ‘fragmented into a mass of competing interest groups’ that are overlapping. She sees exclusions in the Habermasian public sphere and that is why the scholar introduces the concept of subaltern counter publics, which include marginalized social groups excluded from universal public sphere. These numerous counterpublics share and develop their alternative understandings of their interests, identities and needs, circulate counter-discourses and formulate oppositional interpretations (1990). There also exists criticism towards the historical development of public sphere, definition of "common concern” as well as the role of media in public sphere especially the impact of so-called new media. Before proceeding to the analysis of the relation of publics and Internet, examining the recent researches on this topic, we need to take into account that there are some more influential works on publics.of the leading American philosophers of the first half of the XX century John Dewey in his work “Public and its problems” defends the role of publics and participatory democratic ideals against Walter Lippmann’s critique in “The Phantom Public”. The scholar defines publics as networks or relationships of action assembled to solve problems, the responses to specific issues; he emphasizes that public is not a membership or structure but it is “conjoined action” (Dewey, 1988). As Dewey explains, “indirect, extensive, enduring and serious consequences of conjoint and interacting behavior call a public into existence having a common interest in controlling these consequences” (1988). The scholar attracted attention to the role of communication for formation of publics, saying that public emerges from such acts of discourse as problem solving. He states that public forms not only around political concerns, but also, for instance, around cheap reading and that the new technologies take away people’s interest in political affairs. At the same time, the philosopher expects that later development of technologies have a potential to return back public political discussions. All in all, Dewey’s point of view was that the publics will always form and act until there is need to address the problems that arise from the indirect consequences of social action.Grunig continues Dewey’s idea about situation that forms public and he creates the situational theory of publics. According to public relations theorist (Grunig, 1984), it is possible to make a distinction between publics based on their self-organization and methods of dealing with problem: active publics (active to solve problem), aware publics (admit the existence of problem), latent publics (who just have a problem but do not do anything about it) and non-publics (do not have problem). Another representative of public relations theory, Gabriel M. Vasquez develops the ideas of both Dewey and Grunig, defining public as a “collection of individuals that develop a group consciousness around a problematic situation and act to solve the problematic situation" (Vasquez, 1993). The theorist writes that publics discussing common problem create their own language and their narratives, which differentiate them from other publics.concept of counterpublics introduced by Fraser is also discussed in the works of Michael Warner “Publics and Counterpublics” (2002). According to Warner, the idea of a public is one of the central in modern life, today it is extended to the new contexts, media and politics, it gets new meaning and thus needs to be precisely examined. The scholar explains the difference between the public (“a kind of social totality”) and a public (“a concrete audience, a crowd witnessing itself in visible space, as with a theatrical public, which possess a sense of totality, bounded by the event or by the shared physical space”) (Warner, 2002). One more sense of public, according to the author, is public which appears only thanks to circulation of texts. The distinction is not so sharp, however, what is important for the author is that both publics are connected to the text. Emphasizing the role of public in modern world, Warner (2002) distinguishes 7 main features of public:

.        A public is self-organized through discourse and exists by virtue of being addressed;

.        A public is a relation among strangers, who are identified primarily through the participation in discourse and cannot be known in advance;

.        The address of public speech is both personal and impersonal (individuals realize that public speech is addressed not exactly to them but to the strangers whom they were. Warner calls it “partial nonidentity with the object of address in public speech” (2002)).

.        A public is formed through mere attention, which means that it possess free and active membership, anyone can join just by expressing attention.

.        A public is the social space formed by the reflexive circulation of discourse, the concatenation of texts through time. In other words, there is a link between the previous discourse and future one, the public exists not in relation to contemporary discourse, but in relation to the whole circulation.

.        Publics act historically according to the temporality of their circulation, therefore all publics are intertextual, even intergeneric. Warner notes that this criteria of temporality can be changed by the Internet and other new media. The author writes: “At the time of this writing, Web discourse has very little of the citational field that would allow us to speak of it as discourse unfolding through time. So although there are exceptions-including the migration of some print serials to electronic format and the successful use of the Web by some social movements-the extent to which developments in technology will be assimilable to the temporal framework of public discourse remains unclear. If the change of infrastructure continues at this pace, and if modes of apprehension change accordingly, the absence of punctual rhythms may make it very difficult to connect localized acts of reading to the modes of agency that prevail within the social imaginary of modernity. It may even be necessary to abandon “circulation” as an analytic category” (Warner, 2002).

.        A public is poetic world making. According to scholar, public discourse declares not only “Let a public exist” but “Let public have this character, speak and see the world in this way” through the effects of idioms, speech genres, temporality, stylistic markers, lexicon, citations and so forth.for Warner’s distinction between publics and counterpublics, he criticizes Fraser’s approach and define counterpublics as dominated groups characterized by an awareness of their status and usage of the poesies means for resistance, transformation, against dominant discourse.Hauser moves from Habermasian theory proposing the rhetorical model of the public sphere. A public, according to the scholar, refers to individuals interdependent between each other who hold different views on common issues and try to influence it by means of discourse and public sphere is “the locus of emergence for rhetorically salient meanings” (Hauser, 1999). Publics are formed by active members through vernacular discourse about a specific issue. They exist as processes not as entities in response to issues which attract attention and induce a rhetorical act. In Hauser’s theory, publics and public discourse generate shared meaning, which help interaction to take place. The rhetorical public sphere has the following characteristics: 1) it is discourse-based; 2) the critical norms are developed from actual discursive practices; 3) intermediate dialogues as discursive exchanges that form the discourse. Hauser also lists five rhetorical norms, which construct rhetorical public sphere: permeable boundaries (the possibility for individuals outside public to participate in discussions), activity, contextualized language, believable appearance and tolerance (1999). Thus, Hauser comes to the conclusion that to study publics, it is necessary to observe social conversation to understand who is speaking to whom and about what, to analyze the rhetorical exchanges, the narratives of common meaning and historicity.Mahony as well studies public, defining it as “a pre-existing collectivity that can be identified, addressed and moved to action” (2013). He introduces a very useful and important notion “public summoning”, the process of emergence, and mobilization of public. The scholar examining various public speeches concludes that mediated practices of summoning are “consequential for the sort of public that is been summoned and the role it is invited to perform” (Belyaeva, 2012). Based on this finding, Mahony (2012) distinguishes three types of publics:

·        “abject publics”, affected and immobilized, spoken for and on behalf of someone;

·        “audience publics”, minimally autonomous, summoned as bearers of limited and pre-decided choices;

·        “agentic public”, independent, reflexive, creative, supposed to find an identity, form views and structure.public policy scholar Nina Belyaeva defines public as “a set of independent, competent and concerned citizens who are able to participate in formulating and implementing policy decisions” (2012). In her work “Protest Public as a Social Actor” (2012) she discusses all mentioned above theories and tries to come out with new conceptual framework on protest publics. Belyaeva attempts to distinguish public types based on their actorness level, she marks out:

·        Minimal level of actorness, meaning that public perform in the interests of others;

·        Marginal level of actorness, meaning that public has limited resources;

·        Full-fledged actorness meaning that public free and with adequate resources (Belyaeva 2011a; Belyaeva 2011b; Belyaeva 2007).previous theories, the scholar states that protest publics can not only aggressively confront but also produce an alternative thinking, transform the societies creating discourse of the “other word possible”. Success of protest public is dependent on its creativity, sustainability and transformative power of vision of the world. As Belyaeva writes, “if the social protest is carried out by truly independent agent public by the fact of their mere discussion of their social problems and sharing their own discourse with the broader public, they are joining in with "political protest". At its first stage such participation can be only virtual, at the next stage of protest public development -it can easily transform to personal participation” (2012). The scholar lists the analytical steps that any researcher need to follow examining protest publics of any actorness level and of any type: 1) reconstruction of the message that influenced public to summon with the special attention to the text or event that provoked the response from public and how public interpreted it; 2) examination of self-organization of public; 3) identification of public spaces where the discourse appeared, was shared and developed as well as examination of multiplicity of the forms and styles, mechanisms of this discourse; 4) assessment of the intensity and temporality of discourse circulation; 5) evaluation of the public’s poetic message of the alternative world from the point of its attractiveness and creativity. We will also follow the research steps proposed by Belyaeva and apply it for the case-studies., the above-mentioned theories present the multiplicity of approaches to the notion of public, its typology and characteristics. Still, there are some common features, which include the active and inclusive character of public, the role of discourse in public summoning and the message that is addressed, by public. Furthermore, the theorists recognize the influential role of media for public sphere. Still, in the examined works the topic of media and publics, their interconnection is not so much investigated. Thus, we will have a look at the relevant researches on this topic with particular attention to the works on public sphere in the era of globalization and Internet.

1.2    Rethinking Public

contrast to Habermasian critics of the role of media in public sphere, there are more and more researchers who show that traditional perspectives on the public do not work in changing reality, who see the dominant role of media in formation of public sphere, facilitation public discussion and setting agenda. Spichal was one of the first to speak about the new transformed post-modern public sphere, which is based upon representations in mass media not anymore on composed of network of independent participatory communications channels (1999). The idea of the transformed public sphere and the role of mass media in it was studied by Dahlgren (1991, 2005). Dahlgren defined public sphere as “a constellation of communicative spaces in society that permit the circulation of information, ideas, debates-ideally in an unfettered manner-and also the formation of political will” (2005). The scholar suggested three dimensions of the analysis of public sphere:

) Structural (arrangement of communicative spaces);

) Representational (refers to media output and media content: agenda setting, pluralism, fairness);

) Interactional (refers to the interplay between user and media).shows that all these dimensions are very important for studying publics in connection with media. Moreover, his input into public theory was also the description of issue publics, which are temporary and dynamic and, according to the scholar, appear over around-lived issues, exist for some time and then finally dissolve. Such issue publics appear thanks to the spread of media. Furthermore, proving that today mass media is dominating the public sphere, Dahlgren introduces new concept of mediated multidimensional public sphere. The concept of mediated public was also developed by Thompson (1995), Livingstone (2007), Zolo (1991). The scholars describe mediated public sphere as open-ended, non-localized and non-dialogical . Thompson (1995) calls this form of society “mediated publicness”, which is despatialized (meaning that there is reorder of time and space and people can interconnect and see more things not being physically at the same location), unidirectional (no dialogue between media and public, however internet changes this situation bringing interactivity), diverse (it unites individuals from completely different backgrounds, social classes with diverse beliefs and values). Shulz (2001) as well presented the theory of a media-constructed public sphere, which one more time shows the fragmentation of public. The plural, diverse and complex character of transforming public sphere is discussed in the works of Keane (1995), who distinguishes three public sub-levels: 1) micro-public sphere (reflects small-scale and bottom up locales of citizens, discussion circles, church communities), 2) meso-public sphere (includes vast amount of individuals all around the world, who are watching, listening or reading. Large media organizations as BBC or Reuters are examples of such spheres); 3) macro-public sphere (the connection of millions and even billions of people involved in disputes at supranational and global level. Such public sphere appear thanks to the growth and spread of Internet).ideas of tranformed public sphere and even formation of new one appear more and more in the studies about publics and Internet and especially social networks. Internet is condidered apart from other media due to its technological features, the absence of structure and mediators, data storage and connection of people from different sides of the globe.there even appear theories considering Internet as a global public sphere. For example, Yochai Benkler speaks about emerging networked public sphere, emphasizing that the individuals can transform from passive users, readers and listeners to potential speakers, participants of discussions thanks to the easy possibility of effective communicating in the public sphere offered by Internet (2006). Spanish scholar Manuel Castells in his work “The new public sphere” (1996) is also proving that both media and Internet are public spheres, which present diverse interactive chanels of communication. Dahlberg (2001), in his turn, defines the specific criterias for Internet to be called public sphere: 1) autonomy from state and economy; 2) reflexivity; 3) exchange and critique of criticizable moral-practical validity claims; 4) sincerity; 5) ideal role-taking; 6) inclusion in discourse and equality.Internet is called the global system thanks to the number of the interconnected users all over the world. According to the statistics, the number of Internet users has grown rapidly worldwide in last ten years. The following graph shows a substantial increase in the Internet usage from 1024 millions in 2005 to 3174 millions in 2015.

the fact that Internet is not equally spreading in the developed and developing countries due to infrastructure reasons as among 3 billions of global users, 2 are representatives of the developed world, the Internet access is improving bringing the users from developing countries closer to the technology era and providing access to valuable tools for economic development, public expression and engagement.Clay Shirky states during his speech on TED conference (2009), today we face a transformed media landscape. There have been four significant media revolutions in the history: the introduction of 1) printing press, 2) telegraph and telephone (conversational media), 3) recorded media as photos, sounds, movies; 4) radio and television. The fifth media revolution implies new media to be “global, social, ubiquitous and cheap”, to combine creation of conversations and creation of groups, supporting many-to-many pattern of communication, to “become the mode of carriage for all other media”, causing migration of previous mediums to the Internet, to give an opportunity for public to be both consumers and producers of information. New media today is less about crafting a message to be consumed by individuals, but it is “more and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups”, because “groups that see or hear or watch or listen to something can now gather around and talk to each other as well” (Shirky, 2009).approach is shared also by Clark and Aufderheide (2009), who claims that present media becomes people-centric; the individual is not anonymous part of mass anymore. Web 2.0. changes peoples media patterns: choice, conversation, curation, creation and collaboration. For instance, users today discover the news and choose significant issues themselves by the usage of search engines and news feeds, they do not need any more the content to be transferred to them as it was in previous centuries. The users have an opportunity to comment and discuss this news, creating conversations about topics, which appeal to them and, thus, form specific issue publics. Moreover, there is a place for sharing, tagging, ranking and critiquing content, so that the users have a possibility to share their opinion, asses the content. The individuals also get an opportunity to produce the content themselves, to publish photos, texts, audios, videos and so on, either original or remixing existing content. Internet allows users to adopt new roles, for example, to organize online and offline events, to mobilize around some issues. The scholars emphasize that publics are not rigid structures; they appear regularly around issues and are fed by the spread of communication. People “come as participants and leave recognizing themselves as a member of public”, which can take action based on the transformative act of communication (Clark& Aufderheide, 2009)., Internet effectively playing the role of traditional press, allows people to monitor and destroy the power of mass media as well as to mobilize themselves for actions moving beyond representation into direct participation. In other words, Internet helps, using Mahony’s term, to summon publics, to engage them in public activity. Both Dahlgren (2000) and Keane (2005) were sure about Internet’s abuility for deliberation, strengthening political interest, public consolidation and future action. Dahlgren stated that “Internet represents a massive boost for the public sphere emerging as a clear factor in promoting participation” (2009). The Internet has radically transformed elements of traditional public mobilization: cost, speed and efficiency of participation, the organization structure from hierarchical to flexible horizontal or hybrid one, need for co-presence and collective content production.media, being “a group of Internet based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0., which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010), has become a powerful public tool nowadays. The term “social” in the name of “social media” shows that it implies three forms of sociality: cognition, communication and cooperation (Trottier & Fuchs, 2013), which can be treated as its main characteristics. Convergence of these three models of sociality results in so-called integrated sociality. Social networks, for instance Facebook, have a potential to provoke transition from one stage of sociality to another, as an individual user has an opportunity to produce some media content (cognitive level), publish it for other users to comment (communicative level), and to manipulate it, so that there can emerge new content with multiple authorship (cooperation level) (Fuchs&Trottier, 2013). Moreover, social media can be characterized by integration of social roles, which means the convergence of diverse roles of a human being’s life, as in social media individuals can possess private roles (friends, relatives, lovers), civic roles (community members), public roles (activists), systemic roles (citizens, politicians, workers, consumers), which are summarized in one single social profile visible for other users. These constitutive features of social media are shown in the following scheme:

media, including variety of social networks (like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn), weblogs and microblogging service (like Tumblr, Twitter), content-sharing sites (like YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest) and some other resources, attracts more and more users, seeing as well the rapid growth in last 10 years. The increase in the number of users of social networks is clearly seen on the graph, prepared by Search Engine Journal.

to the statistics, by January 2016, Facebook has had 1 960 millions, Youtube 1 billion, Twitter 316 millions, Google+ 343 millions, Instagram 400 millions, Tumblr 230 millions of active users. Such success is a result of the fact that these applications are available for free, possess non-hierarchical nature, allow a rapid and public response (Lyona &Mantgomery, 2013) and, what is more, “bypass the mechanisms and commercial bias of the mainstream media” (Kavada, 2005).media creates new forms of cooperation, initiates new types of relations between its participants, allowing maintaining a dialogue beyond the borders of existing states and cultures. Rethinking Habermas’ concept of public sphere, social media induced the formation of new type of on-line publics or networked publics (Tierney, 2013). According to contemporary researchers (Boyd, 2010), these online publics exercise many same functions as the other publics, for instance, “they allow people to gather for social, cultural, and civic purposes and they help people connect with a world beyond their close friends and family” (Papacharissi, 2011). The sense of being united and belonging to one issue group stimulates people to for participation in public life, which by turn can bring some changes. For example, Caroline
S.
Sheedy in her Capstone project (2011) analyzes the impact of social media activity on social change examining such notable cases as the

attacks
in
Mumbai in 2008, 
the
 
Green
Revolution
in
Iran in 2009,
 
the

earthquake
in
Haiti in 2009 and the Egyptian revolution in 2011, which all together show the influential potential of social media publics.

.3 Web 2.0. and public engagement

social networks despite their sporadic and ephemeral nature, ease the contribution to collective (informational) goods and give an opportunity to a larger number of individuals to participate (Earl & Kimport, 2011). Social media changes communication patterns from one-to-many (in traditional media) into many-to-many giving the broader audience an opportunity to interact with each other without a regulating structure. Online space in contrast to offline has distinctive opportunity to provide users with so-called social information, real-time knowledge about what other people are doing and thinking (for instance, how many other people are signing the petition or sharing the same political views). This knowledge can influence people’s social norms and affect their willingness to join the wider social group (Margetts, John, Hale& Yasseri, 2016). According to Granovetter (1978), people possess different mobilization thresholds, taking into the account the quantity of participants who summoned before them. Thus, people with low thresholds can be mobilized faster and easier than those who have high thresholds. The latter mobilize in the last stages when they see how many people before them have already joined in. From this perspective, social networks making the numbers of followers, likes, shares visible, motivate people with high thresholds and encourage public participation. Besides, online platforms are not isolated from each other, they represent the “networks of networks”, spreading the information on public mobilization across platforms and affecting the information dissemination and, as a result, collective action (Margetts, John, Hale& Yasseri, 2016). The summonning opportunities of Interner were higly debated and, therefore there formed two groups of scholars: those who state that Interner activate already predisposed users (Bimber, 1999; Bonfadelli, 2002; Krueger, 2002; Norris, 2001; Polat, 2005; Weber, Loumakis, & Bergman, 2003) and others who argue that Internet has power to mobilize the individuals who have not been traditionally participating in such collective activities (Barber, 2001; Krueger, 2002; Ward, Gibson, & Lusoli, 2003; Weber, 2003).for visibility of social media, the users also get an opportunity to show their personality (the interest in this is demonstrated by selfie phenomenon), to identify themselves with experiences and actions they undertake (as in case with donations). At the same time, social media provide the level of anonymity, which can also facilitate the participation of people who are scared to reveal their personality (as during Arab Spring revolution or in many activities in censored Chinese digital space)., social media has challenged the theories of public engagement and collective action. Traditionally, collective behavior is connected to the spontaneous, unregulated, unstructured emotional reaction of individuals to some tension or collapse in normal social routines (Blumer, 1951). Some other definitions of collective action also emphasize the aim of contribution to public goods. Among types of collective action, there are both small acts as petitioning, letter writing, lobbying, donating money, fundraising, demonstrating and striking, rioting, armed struggle, sabotage etc. Today with the usage of the Internet majority of these acts are possible online, for instance there are special on-line platforms for petitions, letters and lobbying, donations and fundraising, virtual blockades and sit-ins. Some other acts stay offline but can be coordinated in digital space, for example demonstrations, rallies, political violence. Moreover, according to Margetts, John, Hale and Yasseri (2016), posting status, spreading photo or video, changing profile picture, liking and sharing, tweeting and retweeting can be also considered as tiny contemporary collective acts. Morozov (2009) calls these types of participation as “nano-activism” and characterize it as low-cost, low-time consuming and low-risk.media is even considered to be causative for collective action as it provides easy way to produce and share individual content, to circulate information and increase awareness, which in sum lead to collective efforts which overcome the necessity for any organizational mediations (Shirky 2011). However, just the usage of the social media does not guarantee the success of public summoning and action, it very much depends on the type of collective action (Diani, 2008), type of social media (Kaplan&Haenlein 2010) and how they are used (Earl&Kimport, 2011). Still social media can have a transformative effect on collective action “not only because it translates in the actual amplification of the size of collective endeavors but, more importantly, because the extended set of social relations established via social media provides a whole new relational milieu for exchanging informational and material resources as well as for creating shared symbolic systems and visions - two defining dimensions of collective action dynamics” (Pavan, 2013)., virtual publics should be examined having regard to their features and peculiarities of self-organization, as well as potential to summon, mobilize and transit public from digital to offline space, from local scale to global.are some theories of public engagement and transition. One useful model of transition is presented in the work of Hernando Rojas and Eulalia Puig-i-Abril in their work “Mobilizers Mobilized: Information, Expression, Mobilization and Participation in the Digital Age” (2009) in which scholars examine how new media can provide new pathways for engagement of individuals and rise participation providing arena for discussion of new ideas. The theorists come up with the following graph, which presents model how use of Internet influences public engagement and offline participation (Figure 1).

to scholars, “informational uses of ICTs (Information and Communication technologies) result in online expressive participation and that these online forms of expressive action ultimately spill over the “real” world, mostly via our own efforts to mobilize those around us” (Rojas &Puig-i-Abril, 2009). Thus, for them for public to mobilize it needs to get access to information through on-line news or blog use or even use of mobile phone and then through expression in social-networks system or cellphone it can contribute to offline civic participation.is just one model of transition, in our work we are going to examine cases of Charlie Hebdo and Five Star Movement to come up with our own approach to public engagement from on-line to off-line and from local to global defining the specific mechanisms.

Chapter 2. Transition of public: from local to global level. Charlie Hebdo case

2.1 Global public communication

we have turned out in the first chapter, public sphere is the space of communication of ideas, discourse is one of essential characteristics of publics. The term of “global” communication stands for various interpretations of a developing communication space and demonstrate its history and diversity.birth of international communication is associated with expansion of newsletters in the fifteenth century. As Stephens explains, traders of silver in Antwerp, traders of wheat in Venice, merchants in Nuremberg exchanged economic newsletters and in the rights of capital created common beliefs and values (1988). The development of media, its commercialization have led to appearance of international news agencies (BBC, Reuters) in the XIX century. International communication was also developing thanks to world wire and cable systems. Finally, the creation of media systems like CNN or MTV, which were operating internationally, has led to the beginning of new age -the age of global communications. However, only with the spread of the Internet, the low-cost tool which allows facilitation of connection and expression among groups all over the world, the global communication as well as formation of global public space have become possible. Internet has allowed to reduce and sometimes even obliterate the differences. As Ingrid Volkmer writes in her article “International Communication Theory in Transition: Parameters of the New Global Sphere” the public (and its opinion) with the development of international communication has changed into “more or less autonomous global public sphere which can be considered not as a space between the 'public' and the state but between the state and an extra-societal global community” (1999)., Internet and especially social networks have a potential to consolidate public on the global level. In addition, even the local issue public can become a global one thanks to usage of new media. To understand this phenomenon of transition from local to global public and the relevant mechanisms, we will analyze the case of Charlie Hebdo, which represents a perfect example of global summoning. Moreover, it should be noted that the first attempts to analyze this case were made before, in the paper “Je suis Charlie” as mass protest: analytical reconstruction of emerging publics in France and in global level” (Kakabadze&Uzoikina, 2015) presented during International Conference on Public Policy in Milan in summer 2015.

.2 Chalie Hebdo case-study

7th of January 2015 two terrorists - French Muslim brothers of Algerian origins Saïd and Chérif Kouachi armed with assault rifles and other weapons attacked the Paris office of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Being established in 1969 and positioning itself as secular, atheist and far-left-wing newspaper, Charlie Hebdo has been publishing caricatures, cartoons, jokes and polemics about political, religious and cultural issues supporting freedom of speech and expression. The newspaper not once attracted controversy mocking Islam and publishing caricatures on Prophet Muhammad, causing violent responses in the Middle East and the threats to the editorial office. The terroristic attack on Charlie Hebdo on 7th of January 2015 took the lives of 12 people including the editor Elsa Cayat and Mustapha Ourrad, famous cartoonists Stéphane Charbonnier , Jean Cabut, Philippe Honoré, Bernard Verlhac and Georges Wolinski, economist Bernard Maris, maintenance worker Frédéric Boisseau, guest Michel Renaud, and police officers Ahmed Merabet and Franck Brinsolaro, as well as wounding eleven people. Meanwhile a terrorist Amedy Coulibaly linked to the same jihadist network as Kouachi brothers killed the young employee of the municipal police of the Paris suburb of Montrouge Clarissa Jean-Philippe, seriously wounding her colleagues and employees of the local service for repair of roads. Next day Amedy Coulibaly attacked the Hyper Cacher supermarket in east Paris, shot four people and took a dozen of hostages. French President Francois Hollande called the assaults a “barbaric attack against France and against journalists” (The Telegraph, 2015) and promised to track down the terrorists. The world leaders (U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Russian President Vladimir Putin , Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Pope Francis, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, Egypt's president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam, The Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, Australia’s prime minister Tony Abbott, a spokesman for the South African government Clayson Monyela, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, Iran’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham, Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and many more officials) as well condemned the shootings and expressed solidarity with France in fighting with terrorism and defending freedom of press. International and intergovernmental organizations as United Nations, the western defense alliance NATO, European Council, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Arab League, Commonwealth of Nations, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), the Nordic Council, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) stated they stood with France. Such global actors as Google, Apple and Facebook as well joined the solidarity movement and donated money to the newspaper, which allowed it to publish the next issue in a million of copies. French Google homepage have put the picture of a small black square with the slogan “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”) and was followed in mourning by other searching engines as Bing and Yahoo. A black line with the message “Je Suis Charlie” also appeared on Apple’s French website. Moreover, the company has shown its solidarity in quickly approving the application (usually it takes 10 days but Apple's CEO Tim Cook approved this application in one hour). The application gives users the opportunity to show their cohesion just by sharing their location on the map and explore how the solidarity movement is spreading all around the world. As written in the description of the application “Because "Je suis Charlie" has become the symbol of freedom of speech whatever your beliefs, your country and your opinions, download the "I am Charlie" app and simply state where you stand on today's world map”. The number of “Charlies”, people who downloaded and used this application is more than 260 000. The global chorus was joined by journalist agencies, media organizations and cartoonists. Leading French news agencies “Le Monde”, “Liberation”, “Le Figaro”, “Le Parisien”, “La Croix”, “L'Equipe”, “L'Echo”, “La Tribune”, “La Provence”, the English “Guardian”, “The Times”, “The Daily Telegraph”, “The Independent”, “Financial Times”, “Daily Express”, “Daily Mail”, “Daily Mirror”, “Metro”, German “Bild”, “Berliner Kurier”, “DeMorgen”, “Berlingske”, Norwegian “Aftenposten”, Danish “Information”, “Jyllands-Posten”, “Politiken”, Belgian “De Tijd”, Spanish “Berria”, Scottish “The National” were rallying around Charlie Hebdo showing solidarity with Charlie Hebdo victims on their front pages. Caricaturists in commemoration of their colleagues have published their cartoons using the fast-spreading slogan “Je suis Charlie”. Furthermore, celebrities have shown support in social networks and held signs or wore pins with the words “Je suis Charlie” on the red carpet of 72nd Golden Globe Awards show which took place right after the Paris attacks on 11th of January 2015. Following Charlie Hebdo shooting, such world landmarks as Eiffel Tower in France, Sydney Opera House in Australia, London Eye in the United Kingdom, Brandenburg Gate in Germany, Christ de Redeemer in Brazil, City Hall in the United States, La Moneda Palace in Chile and Ostankino Tower in Russia were illuminated in the colors of French flag., right after the attack the event received a wide coverage in the Internet and gained tremendous attention of users of social networks, who forthwith started to like, share and comment the information about Paris shootings. Users started to express the solidarity using hash-tags, sharing the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo and replacing their profile photos with white-on-black picture with slogan “Je suis Charlie”. This message has united millions of people in the virtual space. Twitter has become one of the main virtual tools of public consolidation and addressing the issue. The reaction of Twitter users during the week after the tragedy is visualized in the article “Les millions de tweets #CharlieHebdo et #JeSuisCharlie” by Martin Grandjean (2015). The researcher has investigated the most used hash-tags during the period when the Charlie Hebdo shooting happened and was the item of the world agenda. According to his work, #CharlieHebdo, #JeSuisCharlie, Charlie Hebdo without hash-tag and #RespectforMuslims were among top-hashtags. The most popular one was #CharlieHebdo which was used 3 559 000 times by Twitter users on 7th of January and 7 057 100 times in the whole period of analysis (from 6th to 15th of January 2015). The next widespread hash-tag was #JeSuisCharlie, which was used 2 048 000 times at the day of shooting and 5 272 000 times during these 10 days.

research shows that apart from the main key hashtags there were also some other messages used by the Twitter users at that time. These were #NousSommesCharlie (which means “We are Charlie”), #JesuisAhmed (in English “I am Ahmed”, the tribute to a Muslim police officer killed during the attack on 7th of January), #JesuisJuif (In English “I am a Jew”, hashtag expressing solidarity for the Jewish people living in France after the attacks on a Jewish Supermarket in Paris in the following days after Charlie Hebdo attack), #LaFranceEstCharlie (in English “France is Charlie”, the hash tag to show French unity) and #NousSommesEnsemble (in English “we are together”, this hashtag was used to show the worldwide unity and solidarity with France), #VoyageAvecMoi (in English “Travel with me” to support muslims in fear of travelling after the attack), #TousALaMarcheDu11Janvier (In English “All on the March on 11th of January” which aimed to attract more people to join mass march of solidarity), #JeSuisFlic or #JeSuisPolicier (In English “I am a Police officer” for commemoration of another policeman killed during the terrorist attack), #Killallmuslims (the hashtag has been used in the social network since 2013 and was given a boost by the Charlie Hebdo attack, still its popularity is controversial, as it was used by people in such cotext: “People have no heart who really want to #KillAllMuslims”), #JesuisKouachi (the opposite campaign used by Islamists to support two brothers Kouachi that were suspected of the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine and then killed by the police), #AnnulezLaMarcheDu11Janvier (In English “Cancel the march on 11th of January” which was used by the users who were afraid of the repeat of the terrorist attack during the march), #JeSuisCharlieMartel (hashtag which remind of Charles Martel, French military leader of the 8th century who went down in history as the savior of Europe from the Arabs at Poitiers), #JeNeSuisPasCharlie (hashtag opposite to “jesuischarlie” and used for different reason by people who did not agree to express solidarity with France) and the last but not the least is #JeSuisNico that was made to make fun of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy who pushed his way to the front during the march of solidarity. This variety of messages, their distribution is shown in the following table and graph.

Therefore, despite the existence of the controversies, the main slogans that joined users of Twitter space were association with victims and calls for unity, solidarity. These key messages were spreading rapidly worldwide. Matthew Zook in the article “Mapping the Twitter Reaction to the Charlie Hedbo Attack” (2015), has shown the distribution of the top hashtags by countries and their reference to usual amount of tweets in the country. The scholar collected 73,000 geotagged tweets with the hashtags: #charliehebdo or #jesuischarlie that were posted in social network from 7th of January to noon of 8th of January. Zook aggregated these tweets to the country level and normalized by a random sample of tweets in each country during the same period. This procedure helped to compare the reaction in countries with differences in population and access to the Internet. The author calculated a location quotient for each of the country. The location quotient that is more than 1 shows the higher level of tweets about Charlie Hebdo in comparison with usual amount of tweets in this country. A quotient less than 1 shows the lower level of tweeting. The results of this analysis were summarized in the following table:

table can be supplemented by the map, created by Rich Donohue, a post-doc at the University of Kentucky Department of Geography. This map shows the widespread reaction on the Charlie Hebdo shooting all around the world. “Red” countries (France, Belgium and French Guyana) have the highest relative number of tweets on Charlie Hebdo. The “orange” countries (Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Cameroon, Lebanon, India and Pakistan) show a greater level of tweets related to Charlie Hebdo than one would expect when taking into account typical level of tweeting in this country. The countries shaded in blue have a lower level of tweets related to Charlie Hebdo than usually and those shaded in grey failed to meet the minimum threshold of tweeting activity (15 tweets) to be included in the analysis.reaction in France and closest Belgium is comprehensible, as well as great level of tweeting in other neighboring European countries. What is more interesting is the support outside of Europe by the former French colonies: Canada, Algeria, Tunisia and some others that do not have such historical ties: Australia, New Zealand, India, and Pakistan.

global reaction to the Charlie Hebdo shooting caused the translation of the key messages “Je suis Charlie” into other languages. Thus, in an official website of Charlie Hebdo appeared the translated versions of a rallying cry against the gunmen attack on 7th of January. Charlie Hebdo staff has translated the slogan into 7 languages: German, Farsi, Spanish, Arabic, Slovakian, Russian and Czech and uploaded the pictures on their web-site.users as well have shown the immediate response to the terrorist attacks with changing their profile pictures into white-on-black “Je suis Charlie”, liking, commenting and sharing information. Many supporters posted caricatures of Charlie Hebdo and French flags. There have appeared hundreds of pages and groups in solidarity with victims, as well as there were created Facebook events for public gathering with the information about time and place. Many of them had huge amount of people marked as “attending”. Our research of such event groups has shown that in many cities around the globe, Facebook users has shown their unity and readiness for collective action. Indeed, 523 Facebook users in Auckland, New Zealand, 1100 in Taipei, Republic of China, 236 in Cambridge, United Kingdom, 4500 in Montreal, Canada, 470 in Seoul, South Korea, 444 in Perugia, Italy, 1200 in Melbourne, Australia, 56 in San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico, 76 in Shinjuku, Japan, 1300 in Beirut, Lebanon, 1700 in Vienna, Austria, 144 in Vienna, Austria, 805 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 4200 in Brussels, Belgium and many more marked themselves as “attending” the rallies of solidarity with victims of terroristic attacks happened in Paris on 7th of January 2015. The whole table with events and numbers of the participants can be found in Appendix.

From Paris to Washington and from Jerusalem to Beirut ordinary people expressed their solidarity not only in social-networks, using hashtags and spreading pictures but also in the streets waving French flags, singing France's national anthem La Marseillaise, holding up pens in the air, the editions of Charlie Hebdo newspaper and placards with slogan “Je suis Charlie”. The rallies took place all over the world, on every continent and summoned more than 4, 4 million people in France and 100 000 people internationally.

First demonstrations happened in France on 7th of January. According to French newspapers, this day approximately 35,000 people gathered in Paris, 15,000 each in Lyon and Rennes, 10,000 people in Nice and Toulouse, 7,000 in Marseille and 5,000 each in Nantes, Grenoble and Bordeaux. All in all, there were more than 100 000 people in total on the French streets on 7th of January. The rallies in France were followed by the citizens of some other countries. Thus, on 7th of January public gatherings under the same slogans happened in Amsterdam. Brussels, Barcelona, Ljubljana, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Washington, New York, Luxembourg, Seattle, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and many other cities.

public communication on-line off-line

The following figures, collected from news agencies (CBS news, 2015; Euroactiv, 2015; Times of Israel, 2015) show the scale of international support to France:

gatherings also took place in Delhi, Tunis, Gaza, Warsaw, Seoul, Kiev and some other cities.of participants showed support by carrying the banners or shouting the slogan “Je suis Charlie” both in French and in their native languages. For instance, the demonstrators in Jerusalem held up in the air the signs “Je Suis Charlie” and “Israel is Charlie” written in Hebrew, in the West Bank Palestinians were waving the banners “Palestine stands with France against terrorism”, in Madrid hundreds of Muslims went out on the square, carrying the placards “Not in our name” to condemn terrorism and show that it is not a part of Islam, in Lebanese capital Beirut people used signs “ We are not afraid” and “Je suis Ahmed” referring to the name of Muslim policeman killed during the Charlie Hebdo attack.the following days, on 10-11th of January there were a series of demonstrations, so-called marches républicaines (the republican marches) across French cities, which have become the largest public gathering in country’s history. According to gathered data, on 10th of January the rallies took place in Toulouse (150 000 - 180 000 demonstrators), Nantes (75 000), Marseille (45 000), Strasbourg (45 000), Lille (35 000-40 000), Nice (30 000), Besançon (30 000), Limoges (30 000), Pau (30 000), Orléans (22 000), Agen (13 000) and Le Havre (10 000). On 11th of January people assembled on the streets of Paris (1 500 000-2 000 000), Lyon (330 000), Bordeaux (140 000), Rennes (115 000), Grenoble (110 000), Montpellier (100 000), Saint-Étienne (70 000), Marseille (65 000), Brest (65 000), Nancy (50 000), Strasbourg (45 000), Toulon (45 000), Angers (45 000), Metz (45 000), Aix-en-Provence (40 000), Perpignan (40 000), Tours (35 000), Dijon (35 000), Caen (33 000), Clermont-Ferrand (30 000), Lorient (30 000), Nimes (30 000), Saint-Brieuc (30 000), Reims (25 000), Cherbourg (25 000), Mulhouse (25 000), Quimper (25 000), Angouleme (20 000), Chambery (20 000), Avignon (20 000), Vannes (20 000), Albi (16 000), Alençon (15 000), Bastia (15 000), Bourg en Bresse (15 000), Blois (15 000), Carcassonne (15 000), La Rochelle (15 000), Laval (15 000), Mâcon (15 000), Perigueux (15 000), Poitiers (15 000), Saint-Malo (15 000), Tarbes (14 000), Belfort (13 000), Cognac (11 000), Charleville-Mézières (12 000), Troyes (12 000), Ajaccio (10 000), Cannes (10 000), Bergerac (10 000), Tulle (10 000), Colmar (10 000), Ferney Voltaire (10 000), Libourne (10 000), Dammartin-en-Goële (10 000), Narbonne (10 000).rally in Paris was attended by more than 40 foreign world leaders including large number of European leaders, members of governments of Brazil, Canada, the USA, Armenia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, UAE, Palestine, China, India, Turkey, Algeria, Benin, Gabon, Mali, Niger, Tunisia, Togo, Senegal, Egypt and representatives of some international institutions who walked arm-in-arm down the Boulevard Voltaire to pay tribute to the victims of attack and show their solidarity with France. In the words of French President François Hollande, Paris became the capital of the world for one day (CNN, 2015).officials were followed by hundreds of thousands people who no matter their ethnicity, race, class, age stood up against terrorism and hatred proclaiming “Je suis Charlie” in order to show their solidarity with victims and support for the values of the French Republic: liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity). The analysis of banners held by participants show that the main slogans were “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), “Nous sommes Charlie” (We are Charlie), “Not afraid”, “Vive la France”., Charlie Hebdo shooting stimulated the creation of global public, which has included both mass assemblies all over the world and strong international movement in social media, uniting civil society, global non-governmental organizations, heads of states and international intergovernmental organizations, business and media. The local issue though severe and resulting in killings could cross the borders, unite strangers through the reflexive circulation of discourse, cause global public outcry and summon significant amount of people on the streets and in social networks and cause the formation of specific public, to which we will refer further as “Charlie Public”.

2.3 “Charlie Public”: features and mechanisms of transition

the theoretical framework, which have been discussed in the first chapter of the work, we can characterize “Charlie public” as independent, reflexive, creative “agentic public” (Mahony, 2012), acting in terms of Keane (1995) in macro-public sphere. To examine more precise the features of the public, we will use the concept of analysis of publics, proposed by Belyaeva (2012).“troubling message” which caused the summoning of public is the terroristic attack on satirical newspaper “Charlie Hebdo”. Here we need to pay special attention to the context, which influenced such unprecedented attention and provoked the powerful response from public. The attack on the heart of France has become one of the worst massacre and threatened not only French essential principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, but, without any doubts, imperiled the freedom of speech crucial for democracy and the position of west in the face of terrorism and religious extremism. “Je suis Charlie” case has tapped into a tangle of hot-button issues, revealed the causes of concern in the Western world.for self-organization of the public, it was immediate both on-line and off-line. The image with ”Je suis Charlie” was first tweeted right after the attack on the edition office at 11:52 am by Parisian artist Joachim Roncin and then started rapidly spreading in the Global network among users from all over the world. The following maps show how the hash-tag “Je suis Charlie” was spreading worldwide according to the geo-location of the users tweeting it.

tagged tweets containing #JeSuisCharlie at 14:59 (CET) on January 7, 2015

tagged tweets containing #JeSuisCharlie at 23:33 (CET) on January 7, 2015

first street gatherings, as we mentioned above, have started at the same day after attack, masses of people went out to show their solidarity first in France and then in other European countries, as well as in America, Africa, Asia, Australia and were followed by the Republican marches attended both by heads of the states, officials, celebrities and ordinary citizens.public spaces, where the “Charlie” discourse was circulating, were diverse: starting from social networks to official media, from the official public events where the government members and celebrities have expressed their solidarity with France to the mass rallies on the streets. The forms and mechanisms of the discourse, as we have seen, were multiple and the discourse itself was dominated by the slogan “Je suis Charlie”, which started as twitter hashtag, # symbol employed to mark keywords or key topics and then was adorning banners in the city squares, speeches of world leaders and Hollywood starts. In social media, the slogan was often accompanied with visual messages - cartoons in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and in the streets by such symbols as pens raised up in the air in commemoration of murdered journalists.

One of the features of the discourse was the breaking of communication patterns and behavioral change of users abandoning their comfort zone. As it has been revealed in the research by Spanish scholars (Herrera-Viedma&Bernabé-Moreno& Porcel& C. y Martínez, 2015), the heart-breaking terrorist attack in Paris has triggered the users to speak up, to join forces in a global scale dialogue, to interact with strangers to share the same message even if they were not so active on-line and not used to post anything. Moreover, the article shows that the users with different language background seeking for sense of community, unity and common identity used more frequently French hashtags than their translations to the local language. The study represent the analysis of hashtags related to Charlie Hebdo case in 5 different languages: French, Spanish, English, Italian and German. The following chart showing the frequency of top hash-tags proves that in all twitter-spaces #jesuischarlie and #noussommescharlie (“we are Charlie”) exceeded their counterparts in the native languages (“iosonocharlie” in Italian, “IamCharlie” in English, “YosoyCharlie” in Spanish and “WirsindCharlie” in German).

circulation of the message addressed by Charlie Public was not only intensive but also longstanding. “Je suis Charlie” has become not only a global solidarity movement, but also a symbol for defiance against terrorism and watchword for freedom of speech and expression. The message of solidarity revoiced in the rallying cries:

·        “Je suis Ahmed” ( “I am Ahmed”, the tribute to a Muslim police officer shot on 7th of January);

·        “Je suis Juif” ( “I am a Jew”, the tribute to Jewish people attacked in Kosher supermarket in the next day after Charlie Hebdo attack);

·        “Je Suis Flic” or “Je Suis Policier” (In English “I am a Police officer” for commemoration of another policeman shot during the attack on Charlie Hebdo edition office);

·        “Je suis Nigeria” (in response to Boko Haram’s attack in Northern Nigeria on 7th of January that took lives of more than 2000 people);

·        “Je suis Volnovakha” (to venerate memory of the 12 people killed in the attack on bus in eastern Ukraine on 13th of January 2015);

·        “Je suis Nisman” or in Spanish “Yo soy Nisman” and “Todos somos Nisman” which means “We are all Nisman” ( to pay homage to the prosecutor Alberto Nisman who specialized in international terrorism and was killed in Argentina on 19th of February 2015);

·        “Je suis Boris Nemtsov” (to honor the memory of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov murdered in Moscow on 27th of February, 2015);

·        “Je suis Tunisien” or “Je suis Tunisie” (the slogan used in solidarity with victims of attack on Bardo National museum in Tunis on 18th of March, 2015);

·        “Je suis Sousse” or in Arabic “Ana Soussa” (to commemorate the victims of Islamist mass shootings at the tourist resort not far from Tunisian city Sousse on 26th of June);

·        “Je suis Paris” (in response to the deadliest terroristic attacks happened in Paris on 13th of November, 2015);

·        “Je suis Diesel” (“ I am Diesel”) or “Je suis Chien” (“I am dog”) in order to commemorate a police dog which was killed by terrorists during the police raid on 18th of November, 2015.

·        “Je suis Bruxelles” (the tribute to people killed and injured in the terrorist bombings in Brussels on 22th of March, 2016).the slogans were the response to the heartbreaking devastating events, mostly terroristic attacks, which awaken feelings of frustration, chagrin, abhorrence and anxiety and, thereby, trigger more people to express their feelings, share them both in social networks and during the gatherings outdoors. As Adam Smith wrote in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments”, empathy, the ability to see yourself in a similar position as others is one of the fundamentals of social life, which bound people together. The association of yourself with victim modifying the slogan “Je suis Charlie” has become the powerful message of solidarity which started to circulate and influenced the emergence of new publics.is also important to note that the Charlie public’s poetic message is not new; it is rooted in the national culture of protest in France. It reminds the similar slogan of the French revolution of May 1968, which was “Nous sommes tous des Juifs allemands” (We are all German Jews). It was the response of French students to the attempt of the French authorities to deport one of the leaders of the protest movement - Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a German student of Jewish descent. After this, the rallying cry “Nous sommes tous” was often used by the French Left in order to show solidarity with excluded groups, for instance “Nous sommes tous des sans papiers” (“We are all undocumented immigrants”) (Paunksnis, 2015). The French newspaper “Le Monde” used the slogan “ Nous sommed tous Americains” (“We are all Americans”) in the aftermath of the terroristic attack 9/11 in the USA to show that the rest of the world stood together in condemning terrorism and expressing solidarity with the country., the connotation can be found with famous phrase “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am Berliner”) by John F. Kennedy in West Berlin in 1963. He interpreted it in the following way “ Today in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner”…All free men, whenever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner” (Kennedy, 1963). The powerful rhetorical tool “I am/We are”, thus, does not mean only expression of solidarity, but broadly belonging. As Paunksnis (2015) explains this sense of belonging to a morally superior identity group can be as that of freedom or of Western values against barbarism. Thus, Charlie Public does not only publicly commemorate the victims of terroristic attack but also identify themselves with a group which opposes barbarism, which stands for the Republic and all its values. This identity group “in the context of contemporary geopolitics, international islamophobia and race-relations in France, comes fully formed, ready to be stepped into” (Paunksnis, 2015)., in opposition to Charlie, there forms so-called counter public, which declares “Je ne suis pas Charlie” (“ I am not Charlie”). This public formulated oppositional interpretations and circulated counter-discourses. To be more precise, the counter-slogan was used mainly by those accusing Charlie Hebdo edition for offencive humour, racism, intolerance and, even, hate speech. It was first principally used by Muslims, who condemned the newspaper for indecent insults to the prophet Mohammad and Islam in general. Afterwards, it was used also by people who were indignant at the smaller outcry over other severe acts in non-Western countries in comparisan to the public reaction on Paris attacks., this public was much more less extencive and posessed lack of unity. As Jisun An and a group of scholars, have shown in their research on the proportion in the use of hashtags by users identified as Arab and all others (Non-Arab) in aftermath of terroristic attacks in France on 7th of January 2015, slogan “Je suis Charlie” was much more intensively used by Twitter users both in Arab and Non-Arab countries than the counter hashtag “Je ne suis pas Charlie”. The following distribution table, prepared by scholars based on Twitter data gathered from 7th to 28th January 2015, proves that first slogan was used 51 027 in Middle East Twitter Space (Morocco, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Tunisia, Jordan, Libya, UAE, Kuwait, Yemen, Iraq, Turkey, Algeria, Palestine, Bahrain, Qatar and Lebanon) and 1 488 860 in Western (Cyprus, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, United Kingdom, Denmark, Italy, Norway, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Greece, , Luxembourg, Portugal, Iceland, USA) while “Je ne suis pas Charlie” 210 times in the first group of countries and 915 in the second one.

in all, terrifying terroristic attack bringing up the issues of spreading radical extremism, the scope of freedom of speech and stability of western values, has provoked the circulation of certain discourse around which the specific public has formed. This public eager not only to express their solidarity with victims but also to show their opposition to terrorism and commitement to western values, has used the potential of both traditional and new media. Usage of social networks which posess omnitude, conenctivity, absence of hierarchy, many-to-many communication, rapid exchange of information helped to spread the message among more users, create collective identity and coordinate personal participation. As a result public engagement crossed the borders and involved individuals both on-line and off-line, transforming it from local to global. Millions of people from around the world searching for unity, started to use common symbols, to circulate powerful and creative slogan of association with victims which has had its historical counterparts, to break their communication patterns, adopting foreing slogans, change learned behaviour and identify themselves as a consolidated group. This is a complex of mechanisms which influenced the transition of public from local scale to global one.

3. Transition of public from on-line to off-line. Five Star Movement

it was stated in previous chapters, the Internet offers more convenient ways of engaging into public life decreasing the costs of participation, the differences in knowledge and background, crossing the borders and changing the patterns of self-organization and collective action . Internet has a potential to refresh civic life by raising access to information, facilitation of discussions and development of social networks. Social media thanks to its features of integration of sociality and social roles, visibility and openness, expanded opportunities for expression and communication, is able to mobilize the individuals indisposed to action and transfer the collective activity from online to offline.case of Five Star Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle) represents a perfect example of the formation, mobilization and action of virtual public, influential potential of new media and its ability to transit activity from digital space to offline concrete political steps.

.1 Case study. From blog to political party

In 2005 Beppe Grillo, the former Italian comedian banned from public television RAI for his jokes against Socialist party and Gianroberto Casaleggio, computer scientist and web-strategist have founded the on-line blog beppegrillo.it. The site has become the forum for discussing current problems of Italy and the possible ways to solve them by adopting new laws and implementing necessary reforms. First, it was focusing on common political and social problems, after it transformed into the platform for exchange of opinions on such topics as electronic democracy, anti-corruption, security and contained criticism of the recent government. One of the first posts dedicated to these issues “Politics disappeared” was commented more than 100 times (Bailo,2015), since then the amount of supporters expressing their opinion in this social media platform was only increasing. The blog being available in Italian and English has become the cradle for the growing community of people interested in politics and unsatisfied with the current state of affairs in Italy. 3 years after its foundation, the blog numbered around 200,000 unique visitors a day, several thousands comments for each post and it was ranked as one of the most influential blogs by The Guardian and The Observer (Cairola, 2012). The blog activity was accompanied by the usage of other social media applications as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Twitter and Facebook were mainly used to contact with public, to spread the messages created by activists, while YouTube became the opposition to official television, the sort of antitelevision. The new web-channel “La cosa” (The thing) was launched to broadcast the events that happen in Italy and all around the world on a 24 hour basis. It was actively used to televise live the rallies and other events as well as interviews with Beppe Grillo and other activists., the on-line activity around the on-line blog posts has united random people sharing more-or-less the same ideas and attitudes on political topics, created the circulating discourse, encouraged involvement of people and, so, influenced the appearance of networked public.to efforts of its founders, this on-line public got an opportunity and a tool not only to express their opinion from the far distance and have a virtual debate but also to assembly face-to-face and become an off-line community. This idea was introduced by Beppe Grillo from the very foundation of the blog. On 16th of July 2005 he wrote:” I thought on how to do to give all who follow my blog the opportunity to meet to discuss, take the initiative, see each other in person. To transform a virtual discussion into an opportunity to change. I discussed with my collaborators and I decided to use MeetUp. MeetUp is a site that allows to organize in a simple way meetings among people interested in a topic”(Bailo, 2015) . Hence, the supporters started to arrange the meeting forming local grass-root groups through this on-line platform. It is noteworthy that the site allows anyone to create a new Meet-up event even if there already exists one in this area. Moreover, it gives a possibility for users to keep a blog and update the information about upcoming offline events. Therefore, interested people started to self-organize and gather all over Italy. The increasing in number discussion clubs were named Friends of Beppe Grillo (Amici di Beppe Grillo). The first meet-ups were held in Roma, Milan, Naples and after in Turin, Bologna, Florence, Vicenza, Salerno, La Spezia and were dedicated mostly to environmental problems (Tronconi, 2015). In course of time, the number of adherents was growing rapidly and the quantity and distribution of Meet up groups was growing proportionally.participants of on-line discussions and off-line meetings came up with the idea of the public events, so - called “V-days” which made Bepe Grillo’s initiatives known to a wider public. “V-Day” aimed to mobilize public in order to collect signatures for some initiatives or petitions and was held under “V” standing for vendetta, victory and “vaffanculo”, which literally meant saying “fuck off” to bad policies. First, such rally took place in Bologna on 8th of September 2007 and called for “Clean Parliament” - removal of the members of parliament who had any criminal convictions as well as for some changes in the electoral system and two-term limit for all members of parliament (De Maria et al., 2008). Moreover, the demonstrators projected the names of Italian politicians convicted for corruption and tax avoidance. Despite its vulgar insult, the demonstration collected more than one million participants and more than 350,000 signatures (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2013) and was followed by the rallies in the other Italian cities. The next V-day (V2 Day) took place in Turin on 25th of April 2008 and was oriented on criticisms of Italian press and lack of press freedom. The participants were collecting signature for a referendum, which would ease the publication process. This demonstration was not as huge as the first one, still it collected around 500 000 people (Beppegrillo.it, 2008).popularity of on-line Beppe Grillo’s applications especially with the success of the events have opened new opportunities for “Grillini” (Grillo’s supporters) - to interact with formal politics. They created Civic Lists (known as “Amici di Beppo Grillo”), which Grillo himself described as “viruses of participatory democracy” (Tronconi, 2016). The participation required the candidates not to be the member of any other party or political movement, not to have any criminal convictions, not to serve more than one electoral term, to be the resident of the region where he or she is participating in elections. Moreover, the civic lists should publish candidates’ curricula in the Internet, introduce a blog to exchange ideas, be open to criticism and not ally with other parties or other “Friends of Beppe Grillo”. The largest Meet-up groups followed these requirements and put forward their candidates for local elections in 17 municipalities in April 2008. Despite the fact that some of the candidates were elected as councilors, the percentage they gained was rather low, averaging 2.43% of the vote in these places (Ministero dell’Interno, 2008). Still, the supporters were satisfied with the first results, achieved mostly through mobilization in Internet without any television or press support and public funding. In March 2009, Beppe Grillo initiated the national meeting of civic lists, which is held in Florence in order to present Florence Charter (“Carta di Firenze”), joint program of several local civic lists in order to attract attention to the issues connected with ecology, transport, energy, connectivity and mobility. After, the civic lists succeeded in more municipal and regional elections until on 9th of September 2009 Beppe Grillo announced the establishment of a "Five Star Movement" (Movimento Cinque Stelle, M5S), which spirit in the words of the leader, “can be summarized in two words: transparency and participation, both possible thanks to the diffusion of the internet” (Euronews, 2012). Announcing the creation of the movement in the blog, Beppe Grillo wrote “On 4 October 2009, a new National Five Star Movement will be born. It will be born on the Internet. Italian citizens without a criminal record and who are not members of any political party can join… the parties are dead. I do not want to found ‘a party’, an apparatus, a structure of intermediation. Rather I want to create a Movement with a program” (Financial Times, 2012). The movement declared to focus on 5 main issues (that reflected in its name) - sustainable development, public water, transport, Internet access and environmentalism. The requirements for joining movement and its main objectives are listed in the “Non-Statute” published in Beppe Grillo’s blog. For instance, according to article 4, the movement aims to build through the Internet (Candidates to the elections to Parliament, Senate or Regional and Borough Councils are organized in Web 2.0.), which is recognized to be “a prime tool in the process of consultation, deliberation, decision and choice for the movement itself” (Non-Statute, 2009).this the movement started to thrive in elections, in 2010 M5S participated in regional elections and achieved remarkable results in 5 regions (Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont, Veneto, Lombardy and Campania), getting their 4 candidates elected as councilors in Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont. Five Star Movement as well ran in four important municipalities with average 3.5% of the vote (Ministero dell’Interno, 2010). In local elections in 2011 the movement even more improved and gained 10 percent of votes in north-central and north-western regions of Italy. However, the real political success was achieved during municipal elections in May 2012. The movement not only expanded the list of cities where it could put forward candidates (101 of the 941 Italian cities had candidates from Five Star Movement (Cairola, 2012)), but also succeed in such cities as Parma, Mira, Comacchio, Sarego, where M5S candidates became mayors. It also received solid support in Genoa, Verona, Monza, Piacenza and some other cities with an average of 5% of the vote and 34 councilors elected (Ministero dell’Interno, 2011). The opinion polls of this time showed the increasing support to M5S (around 20 per cent) that resulted in M5S becoming the most voted party during the Sicilian regional elections of 2012 (Colloca&Vignati, 2013).an enormous support in the Internet, Five Star Movement declared their intention to participate in national elections in February, 2013. The candidates were chosen through the on-line voting by party members, which was accompanied by rallies, so-called Tsunami tour, during which people gathered all around Italy from small towns to big cities as Rome, Milan, and Turin. Neglecting official media, the representatives of movement were filming the rallies and broadcasting them in WebTV channels especially on Youtube. Moreover, adherents were covering the actions of Beppe Grillo and supporters of the movement by posting, sharing, commenting the photos and videos in social networks. As it is nicely described by de Rossa (2013), “the Web stormed into the piazzas and the piazzas stormed onto the Web with images showing the crowds of attentive citizens… A month in which virtual and real piazzas moved in tandem and acted in unison, amplifying Grillo’s speeches and magnifying the effects of an electoral campaign which had epic traits…The Web became the connective tissue, the megaphone and the organizing principle behind a campaign that offers seamless movement between different reality spaces (online/offline).” It is also noticeable that a month before the elections, M5S supporters started more intensively to use MeetUp, the number of groups grew from 500 in November to over 700 in January and to more than 1000 in March 2013 (de Rossa, 2013). The following graph, prepared by PHD student of Sydney University Francesco Bailo, shows the evolution of Five Star Movement and increase in number of Meet-up groups, especially after the success in municipal elections 2012 and national elections 2013.

a result, Five Star Movement succeeded in the national elections, exceeding predictions of opinion polls and becoming one of the main political forces in Italy and second voted after Democratic party with 25.6% of the votes at the lower chamber and 23.8% at the Senate (Paparo & Cataldi). The research of the electorate (Mosca &Lorenzo& Vaccari& Valeriani, 2015) shows that M5S supporters were using the Internet more intensively than the proponents of other parties. As Italian scholars figured out, in spring 2013, 74 % of M5S voters were online and among them 73 % used Facebook. Moreover, during the election campaign Beppe Grillo was the most followed Italian party leader (Vaccari &Valeriani, 2013).towards electronic democracy, in July 2013 right after Italian parliament had launched the interactive platform Tu Parlamento, Five Star Movement replied by introducing their own “electronic parliament”, which in contrast to the first one gives users the opportunity not only to vote and to comment on laws, but also to help in their writing, propose amendments and, generally, engage activists in decision-making process. Thus, members of Five Star Movement got an opportunity to participate in political discourse, where “shared common view is not altered by social hierarchies and inequalities of knowledge” (Barillari, 2013).May 2014 Five Star Movement participated in European Parliament elections with the list of candidates elected through online voting. The supporters of M5S started a powerful hash-tag campaign spreading the slogan #vinciamonoi (“We will win”) in social networks, which was again accompanied with rallies all around Italy. According to the research of social media intelligence company Blogmeter, from 25th to 26th of May, hashtag #vinciamonoi was used 25 500 times and #M5S 34900 times. However, the party could only get second place nationally after Democratic Party receiving 21.15% of the votes. The viral hash-tag was transformed into #vinciamopoi (“We will win later!”) and also obtained a wide distribution. According to Blogmeter, #vinciamopoi was tweeted 36200 times, going beyond its counterpart. In 2014, M5S also became the part of Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD)., we have examined the pathway from small networked public around Beppe Grillo’s blog to an influential political party with its ideological program and millions of supporters. Today M5S public is significant netwok, which acts both on-line and off-line. There is no inconsistency between the Internet activity and campaigns on piazzas as “both of them offer a similar kind of forum for the exchange of public opinion. The ubiquitous nature of the Web is provided by the rising numbers of mobile devices and Wi-Fi connections in Italy, and the piazza, in many ways, reflects the broadcasting model Grillo uses in his shows and in his blog.” (de Rossa, 2013) .public is developed around the Beppe Grillo’s blog, which serves as megaphone of M5S agenda attracting attention to the issues both on local, national and international scale, and as the registered office of the party. According to the web-statistics, there are 4 456 655 monthly and 53 444 395 yearly unique visitors in the blog, 1 828 081 followers in Facebook official group, 1 980 000 followers in Beppe Grillo’s Twitter, 245 986 followers on Google + and 499 332 followers and more than 100 000 000 views on You-Tube. There is a considerable number of Meet-ups all around Italy and some other European countries. According to Beppe Grillo’s Meet-up page, in April 2016 there are officially 1291 groups with 157161 members and 59390 interested spanning more than in 1020 cities (mainly based in Italy) and 22 countries. Civic lists in each city have their own Facebook groups, which are used in order to translate the news, as well as to organize and spread information about off-line events.

.2 “M5S Public”: features and mechanisms of transition

we explore the public of Five Star Movement, applying the theoretical framework, determined in the first chapter of the work, we can state that it is agentic public that now possess enough resources to be called full-fledged actor. To figure out the features and mechanisms of public transition from on-line to off-line we will again apply Belyaeva’s analytical framework (2012)., to understand better M5S public we have conducted a survey in April 2016. The survey questions can be found in the Appendix. Respondents were asked three question pools: general information (sex, age, place of residence), the information on participation in M5S on-line and off-line activities and the attitude towards some statements about public participation which was measured on a scale from 1 to 7 (where 1 indicated “strongly disagree”, 2 “disagree”, 3 “somewhat disagree”, 4 “neither agree nor disagree”, 5 “somewhat agree”, 6 “agree”, 7 “strongly agree”).people surveyed were the supporters of the Movement and were mainly from Italy, so the questions were addressed in Italian language. We combined both off-line and on-line surveying. The paper survey lists were distributed on one of the assemblies of representatives of Five Star Movement in the city of Forli. Furthermore, we used free easy-to-use on-line tool - Google forms, which allows creating and sharing the survey with internet users. Thus, the members of Five Star Movement groups on Facebook were sent the link to the survey hosted at Google Forms. As a result, we collected 21 response from Forli activists and 61 from Facebook users. Therefore, the final sample size is 82. The findings of our research are presented later in this part of work.understand the “troubling message” which mobilized the public, we need to look back in the history and examine the case background. Marco Milani in his work “Contemporary populism in Italy: the five star movement” (2014) very precisely analyzed the political and economic context. He states that the Italian society has faced great stress after economic disasters, pandemic corruption and low credibility in the international arena during and after Berlusconi government. The scandals around mafia and bribery infiltrations of political institutions have caused the mistrust in both European and national political institutions. The political parties were accused for ineffective political measurements and inefficiency in attempts to stop the economic crisis of 2008 and 2011 (Clara,2012). According to the opinion polls, in 2013 only 10 % of Italian had confidence in the national Parliament and political parties and 32% had trust in European Union (Bartlett, 2013)., during last two decades, the dominating political parties were skeptical to the new technologies and ignored the usage of new media giving preference to the traditional ones as television, press and radio. Berlusconi, being the owner of media-empire and having the control over public and private media, the main national TV channels, had an opportunity to manipulate public opinion and the agenda. This lack of pluralism in the Italian media system has been noted by Reporters without Borders (Reporters without Borders, 2003)., these factors conduced the mobilization of public around the new discourse created by Beppe Grillo, which started circulating the message of opposition to the existing government, to the political parties. National Five Star Movement consider itself to be a movement not a ‘a party’, as it is formulated in its statute, M5S “is a free association of citizens. It is not a political party and it does not mean to become so in the future. It has no left or right ideologies, but ideas. It wants to full-fill an efficient and effective exchange of opinions and a democratic comparison excluding associative and party ties and without the mediation of leaderships and representations, recognizing to all citizens the governing and directing role normally ascribed to a few” (Lanzone, 2013). According to Beppe Grillo’s rhetoric, the parties are dead and the voice of Italian citizens means absolutely nothing, so there is an urgent need to change the state of affairs, returning the country to people. This populist approach, the orientation on the sovereign people and participatory direct transparent democracy conduced the fast and vast mobilization of public. M5S is promoting a bottom-up concept of democracy, focusing on transforming the citizens from passive audience into the protagonists of politics. Moreover, M5S opposed itself to the traditional media, controlled by the government and used an innovative communicative strategy, making the internet the key platform for self-organization, decision-making and fund-raising, for democratic and horizontal participation.it was mentioned before, initially the public was organizing only around Beppe Grillo’s blog beppegrillo.it, which has been serving as a central node of communication. As our survey has shown most of the supporters have learned about the Movement from social media - 43,2 % of the respondents, others from traditional media 22, 2 %, friends 17,3 %, off-line campaigns 4,9% and through other tools 12, 3% (as Beppe Grillo’s blog)., the respondents have confirmed that among all Beppe Grillo’s on-line communication platforms, they mostly follow the blog: 84,1 % (69 out of 82) of all surveyed. 65, 9% (57 out of 82) from all the participants follow Facebook, 40, 2 % (33 out of 82) YouTube, 24, 4% (20 out of 82) Twitter and 11% Google Plus (9 out of 82). And what is more important, the respondents check these social media sites regularly. According to survey, more than two third (73,2%) read the content connected to M5S every day. And 12, 2 % two or three times a week., the main messages and ideas come from Beppe Grillo’s blog, which are later commented and shared by the supporters of M5S. Sometimes Grillo himself asks the users to spread the message adding specific hashtag to it. In words of Chadwick (2009), this information exuberance is a result of citizens engagement in activities which require little commitment but all together can expand into mass phenomenon. The content of the blog is mostly oriented on reporting about Beppe Grillo and Five Star Movement both on local and national scope, as well as about rallies and protests organized by the movement. Moreover, as Clara has shown the blog also contains critics of the Italian “political castle” and mass media. There is a strong contradistinction between the supporters of Movement, which are referred as “us” and “others” from anti-democratic, obsolete and authoritarian political system (Clara, 2012). It is worth noting, that all followers of the blog can like, comment and information, however only accredited members are allowed to participate in on-line voting. Commentary section is widely used, and according to Clara’s analysis, the number of comments has raised with the success of M5S during elections.survey has shown that more than a half of respondents (58,5%) not only read the news but also share them in other social networks (for example, Facebook and Twitter) and more than one third of participants usually write comments (46,3 %).Meetup platform and offline assemblies of local grassroots, as well, later started to serve as public spaces for summoning. Local organizations, so-called friends of Beppe Grillo, are free to manage themselves, to use any organizational structures and choose the local issues to discuss. The local groups possess strong connection with its origin area and has a stable representation on the ground (Lanzone, 2014). The grillinis organize local events, square meetings, stands and gazebos during the open markets, petitions, debates and demonstrations. Besides, they use social networks to spread the information about local problems (as public water or high speed trains) and the general information about the M5S activity, as well as to organize assemblies and get consultations from leaders of the movement. The Internet, thus, serves as a linking mechanism between local groups and leadership (Bordignon, 2015). Moreover, the face-to-face meetings and mass rallies helped to raise visibility of the movement which was extremely limited at the first stages. Among survey respondents, 79% indicated they participate in meetings organized by Meet-Up platform and 54, 9% engaged in V-day, about which they mostly learned from Beppe Grillo’s blog.we have mentioned before, the success in such large events as V-days and then in elections have influenced the increase in number of supporters of Five Star Movement. Thus, satisfying results of previous activity can be considered as one more driver of people’s mobilization. The results of the survey as well proved this assumption showing that most of the respondents agreed that success of Vday and M5S on elections influenced their engagement in M5S other public activities.survey has shown that the respondents also participate in other online activities as writing online petitions (81,4%), contacting politicians (51,4%), making donations or engaging in fundraising (55,7%), hash-tag campaigns in Twitter (14, 3 %).S characterizes itself as a non-hierarchical and leaderless, however the political line and the agenda are defined by Beppe Grillo, who thanks to his charisma and satire acts as a megaphone of the movement, spreading the message of M5S to the wider audience. Many researches point attention to the importance of the personality of Beppe Grillo. Ignoring and neglecting TV and press, he still brilliantly attracts their attention by his communication strategies: from his swear words to body language, from his sharp speeches during electoral campaigns to his powerful posts in blog. For instance, in the article on Grillo’s communication style, Cosenza (2013) clarifies that the leader of Five Star Movement is using explicit and vulgar expressions talking about political, social and economical issues, as well as in speeches with ordinary people.many of his speeches he declares to public “I am one of you”, addressing the audience with the Italian personal pronoun “tu” instead of plural “voi” (you) almost identifying himself with them (‘I am you’), creating total fusion and mutual trust between the leader and the voters (Cosenza, 2013). Moreover, Beppe Grillo conquers the official media space by provocative behavior, for instance by swimming across the Straits of Messina during the Sicilian regional electoral campaign in order to support candidates from M5S. Thus, the language, the body, the comic’s background help Beppe Grillo to shape the identity of M5S.our survey we asked respondents if the M5S leaders know the right words to encourage people to vote and found out that mostly the surveyed agree with this statement. However, there was uncertainty among respondents if the leaders’ positions can influence their behavior. The results of the survey are represented in the following two graphs:means that the leadership is indeed very important for M5S supporters, but the position of leaders can be doubted sometimes.dominant public space, where M5S discourse is regularly and intensively circulating is the Internet in combination with the periodic conquer of official media headlines. As Casaleggio and Grillo wrote in their book, “In Italy the Five Stars Movement was born to the Web, with not a cent of public funding to its name, and with media opposition from all sides” (de Rosa, 2013). Indeed, possessing a lack of resources and being disregarded by traditional media, M5S was relying on the free accessible social media, volunteers work and donations.

participants of the survey as well affirmed that online activity gives the opportunity to join movement and to show the support without much effort, to spread easier the information about offline actions and involve more people, to learn about other “grillinis” and to be close to the leaders of the movement.surveyed perceived online activity to be essential for the movement organization, saying that without it Five Star Movement would not achieve the same success. However, according to the respondents, offline activity is also significant for achieving political goals. Thus, the combination of both digital and face-to-face participation is the most efficient strategy for the Movement. It is worth admitting, that the importance of the offline actions was more emphasized by activists surveyed during the assembly of Five Star Movement in Forli than by Facebook followers of the relative groups.

we have noted in the first chapter, information about other people who share the same views, affect the social norms and willingness to join this group. Moreover, as it was stated the quantity of participants can also play influential role and mobilize people with high thresholds. The surveyed M5S supporters as well acknowledge that through the Internet they could learn that more people share the same political position as them and are going to participate in the M5S manifestations and vote for this political party on elections., the respondents also admitted that online community of Five Star Movement encourages them to use social networks as Facebook and Twitter to share political information, to use Meetup and participate in its meetings as well as to vote for M5S on elections. This proves that interaction between users in social media has the impact on the individual’s behavioral patterns.

discover some personal drivers, which influence M5S activists to gather and stay united, we asked the respondents of the survey, what they feel using the Movement’s online platforms. Among the main feelings appeared the opportunity to share experiences, values and opinions (60 out of 81 responded, 74,1%), personal investment (47 out of 81 responded, 58%), sense of belonging and identification (45 out of 81 responded, 55,6%), common identity (26 out of 81, 32,1 %), influence on others in the community (25 out of 81, 30,9%) and being influenced by community (10, 12,3 %), emotional safety (8, 9,9%). Moreover, the participants mentioned the possibility to create a community, personal growth, opportunity to express disappointment and to make a change. Most of the respondents as well agreed that online tools help to create mutual trust between the members.

, to summarize, Five Star Movement could create a successful approach of combination of on-line and off-line activity. The usage of the blog, where the message of opposition to the current state of affairs first started to circulate, and some social networks, the introduction of the on-line voting system and electronic parliament in combination with the creation of the network of Meetup groups, organization of rallies as “Vdays”, some pre-election campaigns and local events as square meetings, stands and gazebos, in sum have brought together individuals sharing similar political positions and ideas, have created and mobilized the wide diversified public that covers huge geographical area. Public engagement into M5S activity has resulted not only from the social, political and economic context in Italy and dissatisfaction of people with the current political parties and lack of media pluralism, not only from the oppositional powerful message addressed by M5S but also by strong leadership of Beppe Grillo. The former comic with his style of expression, satire and provocative behavior, his distinction between “us and them” could encourage people to join M5S public. Moreover, Casaleggio’s knowledge of Web tools provided public with some digital tools, which helped people to stay connected, to share experiences and opinions, to invest personally into collective action, to influence others in community and be influenced by others. The social networks helped to create mutual trust between members, common identity, the sense of belonging and the environment of emotional safety. Furthermore, the published information on the quantity of followers, participants of rallies, voters on elections could mobilize the individuals with high thresholds. The interaction between the individuals is facilitated not only by blog or social networks but also by such online platform as Meetup, which enables organization of face-to-face meetings, which create closer intimacy between members. Furthermore, one more factor, which influence public summoning, and transition of public from on-line to off-line is the success of previous activities undertaken by public and perspective of making a change.

the first philosophers, the notion of public inextricably intertwined with communication, articulation and exchange of social experiences. Both for Aristotle and for Habermas, for Warner and for Belyaeva discourse is the necessary factor for the formation of public. The media has always affected the communication and with introduction of mass media, it started to influence rational critical public debate converging it with private property. Only introduction of the Internet, global, social, ubiquitous, rapid and cheap network, could bypass the commercial bias of the mainstream media and, thus, stimulated the development of concept of public sphere. Today with the Web 2.0. and social networks, classical theories are not enough for understanding publics. Individuals got a non-hierarchical interactive tool for many-to-many communication, for exercising different social roles at the same time and adopting new ones, for consuming and producing information regardless social status, age, and distance. New digital tools have brought changes to the mechanisms of emergence, organization and mobilization of public. Social networks implying three forms of sociality: cognition, communication and cooperation, bypass the commercial bias of the mainstream media and, thus, ease the exchange of opinions, showing support or vice versa the opposition, creation of symbolic systems and visions, contributing to collective action and, hence, encourage public summoning. Today even sharing, liking, tweeting and retweeting are perceived as public participation. The numbers of such participants grow quickly and publics get a potential to transform from local to global and from on-line to offline. This transition happens not only by virtue of technical features of Web 2.0. Thus, we investigated two cases which can be characterized by vivid transformation of public and defined the mechanisms of transition.examined case of Charlie Hebdo presents the potential of social media to spread public discourse from local to global. The circulation of strong message embodied in driving hash-tag (#jesuisCharlie) stimulated many users to join forces to participate in a bigger scale dialogue, interacting with anonymous users around the world. People, motivated by the need to speak up, the need to share feelings and to show support and solidarity, have adhered to the same message, abandoning their comfort zone and even their language barriers. Circulating the common symbols and messages and noticing the rapidly growing support of participants including officials and international organizations, Charlie Public expanded not only in distance: from local to global but also in level of participation: from online to offline. Engagement both by just liking, sharing and commenting as well as going out on the streets contributed to the immediate and long-lasting circulation of the message. The creativity of message and its intertextual character led to the situation that the identification of yourself with victim (the slogan “jesuis…”) started to be used in different circumstances and for different occasions. All in all, public summoning and transition from local to global scope was triggered both by the characteristics of social media, as well as the social constructs: search for unity in opposition to terrorism, association yourself with victim and need to show the solidarity, visibility of support from ordinary people as well as from world leaders and some global actors, circulation of the same powerful message which is rooted in the history of solidarity movements, adherence to same symbols and visions and, as a result, creation of the common identity and the desire to contribute to collective action.case of Five Star Movement has proved the ability of Web 2.0. not only to spread information to summon public outside virtual environment, but also to create the tools which allow people to feel both as part of on-line and off-line public at the same time (Meet-up groups, On-line Voting, E-parliament). The public of Beppe Grillo’ blog, first, limited in resources and using only one tool for organization and communication could benefit from the interactive character of the new media and use its potential to expand its activity. Thanks to the commitment to the close political positions and strong leadership, development of strong opposition to others and drawing a line between “them” and “us” in the context of lack of pluralism, the number of Beppe Grillo’s supporters was growing rapidly. Liking, sharing and commenting the blog as well as social networking pages, the individuals felt connectiveness, ability to share experiences and opinions, to influence others and be influenced by others, personal contribution and unity. Getting the tool, which combines on-line and off-line participation, which allows to meet and personally get to know and at the same time stay connected on-line, helped to create mutual trust and emotional safety between members. These all together motivated the public for more significant steps as rallies, signing petitions and local demonstrations, which were happening simultaneously live and were transmitted online on Youtube channels, in Facebook groups and Twitter posts. The success of these campaigns as well triggered public participation and mobilized more people in new formed Five Star Movement. The common symbols and vision fueled the development of common identity and the need to exercise collective action to change the state of affairs. The participation in elections as well as the opportunity to make a personal investment and produce a visible change, even more activate the public and keep it together., the virtual publics form around many different subjects whether that be advocacy campaign or the personal life of the celebrity, the expression of solidarity or opposition to the existing political castle, and most of this public have a potential to spread globally and expand to offline level. Our work is just an attempt to investigate these publics and to look more deeply in their formation, organization, communication and action facilities. Today in the every-day-changing digital world, there is an opportunity to analyze many more virtual publics, which will be a logical continuation of this work.

1.      Albertazzi, D. (2016). Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. Organisation, communication and ideology. Contemporary Italian Politics.

2.      An, J., Kwak, H, Mejova, Y., Oger, S. & Fortes, B.G. Are you Charlie or Ahmed? Cultural pluralism in Charlie Hebdo response on Twitter. International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. #"901116.files/image019.jpg">

Non è obbligatorio

1.      Sesso

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

 Femmina

 Maschio

2.      Quanti anni Lei ha?

_______________________________

3.      In quale paese Lei abita?

___________________________________

4.      In quale città Lei abita?

________________________________________

5.      Sei favorevole al Movimento Cinque Stelle?

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

 Si

 Non

Parte principale

6.      Da dove e’ venuto a conoscenza del M5S

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

 Social network

 Amici

 campagna off­line

 Traditional Media

 Altro:__________________________

7.      Che cosa fa nel gruppo Facebook del M5S (più di 1 risposta è possible)

Seleziona tutte le voci applicabili.

clicco mi piace

commento

condivido

leggo le notizie

Altro:_________________________________

8.      Utilizzando le piattaforme online del M5S, mi sento

Seleziona tutte le voci applicabili.

la sicurezza emotive

il contributo personale

senso di appartenenza

poter influenzare altra gente

essere influenzati da comunità

l'opportunità di condividere esperienze, valori, opinioni

identità comune

Altro:________________________________

9.      Quali pagine di Beppe Grillo segue sui social network?

Seleziona tutte le voci applicabili.

Blog

Twitter

Facebook

Google plus

Youtube

Niente di quanto riportato sopra

Altro:

10.    Che cosa fa nel blog di Beppo Grillo?

Seleziona tutte le voci applicabili.

                 Commento

                    Condivido (Facebook, Twitter)

                 Leggo le notizie

                    Niente di quanto riportato sopra

                  Altro:___________________________

11.    Quali pagine dal M5S segue sui social network?

Seleziona tutte le voci applicabili.

               Twitter

                 Facebook

                    Google plus

                      Youtube

                    Niente di quanto riportato sopra

                  Altro:_________________________

12.    Con quale frequenza Lei guarda\condivide il contenuto sui social media su M5S?

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 Mai

 Meno di una volta al mese

 2­3 volte al mese

 una volta a settimina

 2­3 volte a settimana  ogni giorno

13.    Lei usa Meet­up

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

 Si

 No

14.    Ha partecipato agli incontri off­line dei gruppi Meet.up (con i membri del M5S )

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

 Si

 No

15.    Ha partecipato alle votazioni online organizzate dal M5S?

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

 Si

 No

16.    Ha partecipato ad altre attività on­line?

Seleziona tutte le voci applicabili.

petizione online

un politico

o raccolta di fondi

di hash­tag su Twitter

:

17.    Ha partecipato al V­Day?

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

 Si

 No

18.    Da dove ha saputo del V­ Day

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

 Blog di Beppe Grillo

 social networks

 amici

 Altro:____________________

19.    Ha partecipato alle elezioni?

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

 Si

 No

Scala da 1 a 7

Su una scala da 1 a 7 (dove 1 indica "completamente in disaccordo", 2 "abbastanza in disaccordo", 3 "un po'in disaccordo", 4 "incerto", 5 "abbastanza d'accordo, 6 "un po' d'accordo e 7 indica "completamente d'accordo"), La prego di indicare il grado del Suo consenso con le seguenti affermazioni.

20.    Attività online mi dà l'opportunità di unirmi al movimento senza troppa fatica

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

21.    Con l`attività online è più facile mostrare il mio sostegno al movimento

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

22.    L`attività online aiuta a diffondere informazioni e rende più facile il coordinamento delle azioni offline

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

23.    Le piattaforme online rendono più facile il riconoscimento di altre persone che sostengono il M5S

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

24.    Attraverso l`internet sono venuto a conoscere di una manifestazione di M5S si sarebbe svolto nella mia città

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

25.    Attraverso l`Internet ho saputo che molte persone avevano pianificato di partecipare a una manifestazione di M5S nella mia città

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

26.    Attraverso l`Internet ho saputo che molte persone avevano pianificato di votare alle elezioni per il M5S

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

27.    Attraverso le pagine del M5S ho saputo che molte persone condividono la stessa posizione politica

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

28.    Le piattaforme online aiutano a essere più vicini ai leader del M5S

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

29.    La posizione dei leader del M5S può influenzare il mio punto di vista

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30.    Le piattaforme online del M5S aiutano a creare fiducia reciproca tra i membri

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

31.    L'attività online è molto più efficiente di proteste per la strada

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

32.    Se ho letto di dimostrazione di M5S nelle social networks, io parteciparvi

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

33.    La combinazione di attività on­line e off­line è molto più efficiente per raggiungere gli obiettivi politici di M5S

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34.    Il M5S può avere successo anche senza l'utilizzo di strumenti online

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35.    I leader del M5S conoscono le parole giuste per incoraggiare le persone a votare

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36.    Seguo i rappresentanti eletti, i candidati, i leader del M5S sui social media

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

37.    La comunità online del M5S mi incoraggia ad usare il Facebook, Twitter e condividere le informazioni

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

38.    La comunità online del M5S mi incoraggia a votare alle elezioni per il M5S

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

39.    La comunità online del M5S mi incoraggia a usare il Meet­up

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

40.    Il successo del Vaffanculo Day ha incoraggiato la mia partecipazione in altri attività del M5S

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

41.    Il successo delle elezioni mi ha incoraggiato a prendere parte in attività del M5S

Contrassegna solo un ovale.

GRAZIE PER LA PARTECIPAZIONE!

voste risposte contribuiranno tantissimo alla mia ricerca!