Internet, esfera pública e comunicação: dois estudos de caso

Abstract

The new communication and information technologies, especially in their various applications in network environments, as is the case of the Internet, are increasingly present in contemporary society and politics. In an accelerated pace, they meddle in traditional social settings, causing plenty of reactions among their established actors, leading to developments that, in the context of communication studies, raise new questions and perspectives to be investigated. Within this universe, this study picked out two cases to be more closely detailed: the website Wikileaks, and the Blog do Luis Nassif. The two cases were analyzed as phenomena that alter some of the interactional logic of the environment in which they appear, and in which they begin to establish relations of interaction, conflict and displacement. The two cases, that at first have no specific relationship between them, were addressed in an around some conceptual elements of classical social theory, particularly the critical traditions of the Public Sphere. As for their communicational aspects, they’ve been investigated according to the concept of interactional device, as it appears in contemporary communication studies.