Reti sociali e realtà aumentata: la digitalizzazione della vita quotidiana

My research project started with a reflection on a fundamental question that the digital communication scholars are dealing with nowadays: the current media technologies that have created new communication patterns and opened new forms of social interrelation lead to a digital dualism or to an augmented reality? I tried to give an answer to this question through an investigation on the most popular social network, Facebook. The analysis of Facebook was preceded by a reflection on the concepts of space and time developed by the philosophical and sociological literature. This reflection has been preparatory to analyse and understand the impact that three key moments have on the intersubjective relationality and on the dynamics of self-realization: the semantic interaction within the delimited space of the traditional square, the multiplicity and the seductive power of communication proposals linked with the mass media square and the affirmation of cyberspace as a place of communication in the digital square. If the peculiarity of the traditional square is indentified with the develop of a “face to face” relationship and in the mass media place the relevance is linked with the predominant role of the source compared to the recipient, the characteristic of the digital square is the creation of a self-inclusive horizon that includes every person who is connected with the network and also the double role of the user who is at the same time a consumer and producer of messages . With the coming of the "online" in the everyday life of social relationality, two levels of communicative interactions are produced and implemented: one related to the online and other related to the offline. The working hypothesis that has driven my research is that the pervasiveness of online communication leads to the integration of the two segments and to their mutual influence.