Los comercios y negocios más espabilados – y muy especialmente aquellos con e-commerce y que venden por internet - están aprovechando las oportunidades que nos brindan las nuevas tecnologías y empleando su creatividad e ingenio (al igual que Punto Pelota) en el offline para asegurar el éxito de sus iniciativas online por un coste a veces muy reducido y que de hecho revierte también en sus ventas offline mejorando y modernizando su imagen. Algunos Ejemplos: los códigos QR, la firma digital, la inclusión de marcadores sociales en la publicidad, etc.

It is here where the Internet most obviously makes a contribution to the public sphere. There are literally thousands of Web sites having to do with the political realm at the local, national, and global levels; some are partisan, most are not. We can find discussion groups, chat rooms, alternative journalism, civic organizations, NGOs, grass roots issue–advocacy sites (cf. Berman & Mulligan, 2003; Bennett, 2003b), and voter education sites (see Levine, 2003). One can see an expansion in terms of available communicative spaces for politics, as well as ideological breadth, compared to the mass media. Structurally, this pluralization not only extends but also disperses the relatively clustered public sphere of the mass media.
If the Internet facilitates an impressive communicative heterogeneity, the negative side of this development is of course fragmentation, with public spheres veering toward disparate islands of political communication, as Galston (2003) had argued. Here opens up yet another important research theme, one that must encompass an overarching systemic perspective. That various groups may feel they must first coalesce internally before they venture out into the larger public sphere is understandable; however, cyber ghettos threaten to undercut a shared public culture and the integrative societal function of the public sphere, and they may well even help foster intolerance where such communities have little contact with—or understanding of—one another. Fragmentation also derives simply from the mushrooming of advocacy groups and the array of issues available. While traditional online party politics and forms of e–government may serve as centripetal forces to such fragmentation, the trend is clearly in the direction of increasing dispersion. (…)
Two contending perspectives are emerging in regard to the role of the Internet in the public sphere. One view posits that while there have been some interesting changes in the way democracy works, on the whole, the import of the Internet is modest; the Net is not deemed yet to be a factor of transformation. Margolis and Resnick (2000, p. 14) concluded that “there is an extensive political life on the Net, but it is mostly an extension of political life off the Net.” So while the major political actors may engage in online campaigning, lobbying, policy advocacy, organizing, and so forth, this perspective underscores that there does not seem to be any major political change in sight. The argument is that the Internet has not made much of a difference in the ideological political landscape, it has not helped mobilize more citizens to participate, nor has it altered the ways that politics gets done. Even the consequences of modest experiments to formally incorporate the Internet into the political system with “e–democracy” have not been overwhelming (cf. Clift, 2003). E–government efforts to incorporate citizens into discussions and policy formulations usually have a decisive top–down character (see Malina, 2003, for a discussion of the UK circumstances), with discursive constraints deriving from the elite control of the contexts.
This evidence cannot be lightly dismissed, but what should be emphasized is that this perspective is anchored in sets of assumptions that largely do not see beyond the formal political system and the traditional role of the media in that system. Indeed, much of the evidence is based on electoral politics in the U.S. (cf. the collections by Jenkins & Thornburn, 2003, and Anderson & Cornfield, 2003). While the problems of democracy are acknowledged, the view is that the solutions lie in revitalizing the traditional models of political participation and patterns of political communication.

En las aproximaciones más clásicas, el papel del discurso como constituyente identitario se remonta a la narratología, por ejemplo de Ricoeur; que como otros muchos seguidores atribuye consecuencias y efectos personales a la recepción e interpretación de unos relatos o narraciones (cfr. RICOEUR, 1983-1985). ¿Se encuentra en el mismo caso la cita o la mención digital? ¿También en blogs o en los muros de las redes sociales más habituales?
Independientemente del peso que se le atribuyan, no son factores exclusivos o explicativos de las identidades y colectividades representadas en las redes sociales que investigamos, ahora como eje o conjunto de líneas emergentes en investigación de comunicación. Sin pretender que la lectura digital ocupe las funciones personalizantes de la lectura en la edad bibliográfica moderna, hay cada vez más estudios que apuntan conclusiones y evidencias de construcción grupal o colectiva facilitada por la interacción de aprendientes en las aulas o en las conversaciones digitalmente públicas.

Según Hallahan (2004) -uno de los autores que mejor ha sintetizado las ideas desarrolladas en las relaciones públicas sobre la noción de comunidad-, a pesar de la ubicuidad del término público, concebido como centro de las relaciones públicas, muchos autores encuentran en él diversas limitaciones que condicionan la definición y esencia de la disciplina. Por eso, desde hace algunos años varios teóricos han apostado por utilizar la noción de comunidad como un fundamento para el desarrollo de la teoría y la práctica de las relaciones públicas, desplazando en cierto modo el concepto de público. (…)

Such a transformation in particular economies contributes to increased “time-space compression” (Harvey, 1989) or “time-space distanciation” (Giddens, 1990, 2002). Authors such as Castells (1996) and van Dijk (2006) note the emergence of the term “the network society,” wherein the multiplicity of electronic systems of communication affords new means of association across previously unsurpassable physical and temporal boundaries. Against this backdrop, a number of authors have argued that we are witnessing the rebirth of community. However, this community does not make use of the ideas of either the “nonsociety” or “community of interests” models.
Rather, postmodern communities tend to be antiessentialist, fuid, open-ended entities. Maffesoli (1996) argues that, in postmodern times, we live in temporary networks and groupings, referred to as tribes or “emotional communities.” Such communities are temporary and have no long-term focus. Rather, they are built on the consumption and manifestation of lifestyle choices, images, and fashions. While they have been predominantly metropolitan phenomena, such temporary communities are versatile and flexible. They seek not to constrain members, but to offer a sense of belonging, however ºeeting. For authors such as Jean-Luc Nancy, the postmodern communities also offer a shelter from the decline of society and forms of mass collectivity, as well as from the rise of individualization (Nancy, 1991). Furthermore, many advances in ICT are as a result of postmodernism (Wells, 1996).

Communities of Interest
A second strand of thought on the idea of community can also be detected. Here, the emphasis, while still very idealistic, contends that community should be, or is, based around the interests of members. This tradition stems from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s question of how best to achieve and safeguard personal interests, our “particular will”—the volonté particuliére. Writing in the politically turbulent second half of the 18th century, Rousseau proposed that our best strategy lay in aligning ourselves with common interests or sublimating our volonté particuliére to the “general will”—the volonté générale (Rousseau, 1968). Only in society can we be free; to enter society, then, is to enter a social contract. Perhaps the best-known exponent of this idea is Robert MacIver, in his 1917 text, Community: A Sociological Study Being an Attempt to Set Out the Fundamental Laws of Social Life (MacIver, 1970/ 1917). MacIver argues that community should stem from the “communality of interests” that community offers, that our interests are best served by being in a group, an extension of the Rousseauian idea. MacIver challenges the Tönniesian contention that communities cannot (and should not) be created by “will” or common interest. Communities can come into being though the recognition of shared interests and “common will.” However, this will must be of a certain type—it must be a will to bind people together; a will must be for the “common good” (though how this is determined is a more tricky question). MacIver and Page (1961/ 1937, p. 8) note that we “may live in a metropolis and yet be members of a very small community because our interests are circumscribed within a narrow area.” Moreover, it is important to distinguish this from the simple idea that community is just a collection of people with like interests. In MacIver’s model, community is more than aggregated interests; drawing heavily from the Functionalist ethos that predominated in American sociology of the period, community becomes a social entity in its own right. Community becomes the vehicle though which interests are not only expressed, but made possible. MacIver and Page (1961/1937) contend that economic and “increasingly … political interdependence is a major characteristic of our great modern communities.” While MacIver’s (1970/1917) conception of community predates more recent political ideas of community found in much center-left discourse, it certainly contributes to the current model in which community and the attendant model of citizenship is understood to be something that confers both rights and responsibilities on its members (see, for example, Etzioni, 1995, 1997).