Mediated friendship: Online and offline alliances in girls’ everyday lives in Italy

Abstract

This article engages with the current debate on feminisms and digital media by looking at the tension between individualism and collective action. Drawing on an empirical research project involving girls, carried out in Italy and focusing on female processes of subjectivation in a postfeminist new media context, it will discuss constraints and opportunities shaped by the everyday use of social media. The article places itself in the latest trend of cyberfeminist studies, by analysing friendship relationships developed among girls in and through digital media. It also looks at how the mediated nature of social network sites offers room for the building of alliances among girls, and how this challenges online and offline gender norms. In doing so, the article reflects on the way female relationships change and are reworked in digital culture, thus giving a new meaning to the feminist concept of sisterhood.