L’ecosistema mediale digitale tra disinformazione e alfabetizzazione algoritmica. Nuove forme di partecipazione e di spazio pubblico

The essay examines the contemporary digital media ecosystem as a space where disinformation, malinformation and misinformation emerge as structural outcomes of the attention economy, the convergence of mass and interpersonal communication, and the algorithmic personalization of contents. Drawing on media ecology and apparatus theory, it traces a trajectory “from graffiti to smartglass” to show how increasingly invisible and pervasive media environments reshape subjectivities, everyday practices and the very geometry of social relations. The text discusses how social media and generative artificial intelligence reconfigure public discourse, fragment audiences into algorithmically profiled micro-publics and foster conditions of post-truth, isolation and pseudo-sociality, including the use of chatbots as emotional companions. Against apocalyptic readings, the essay calls for strengthening media literacy and, in particular, algorithmic literacy, reframed as a broader social literacy aimed at making digital infrastructures visible, cultivating critical engagement with platforms and rebuilding the symbolic and relational fabric of contemporary societies.