Social media, including variety of social networks (like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn), weblogs and microblogging service (like Tumblr, Twitter), content-sharing sites (like YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest) and some other resources, attracts more and more users, seeing as well the rapid growth in last 10 years. The increase in the number of users of social networks is clearly seen on the graph, prepared by Search Engine Journal The Growth of Social Media v 3.0 [Infographic], retrieved April 10, 2016, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/growth-social-media-v-3-0-infographic/155115/.



According to the statistics, by January 2016, Facebook has had 1 960 millions, Youtube 1 billion, Twitter 316 millions, Google+ 343 millions, Instagram 400 millions, Tumblr 230 millions of active users. Such success is a result of the fact that these applications are available for free, possess non-hierarchical nature, allow a rapid and public response (Lyona &Mantgomery, 2013) and, what is more, “bypass the mechanisms and commercial bias of the mainstream media” (Kavada, 2005).

Social media creates new forms of cooperation, initiates new types of relations between its participants, allowing maintaining a dialogue beyond the borders of existing states and cultures. Rethinking Habermas' concept of public sphere, social media induced the formation of new type of on-line publics or networked publics (Tierney, 2013). According to contemporary researchers (Boyd, 2010), these online publics exercise many same functions as the other publics, for instance, “they allow people to gather for social, cultural, and civic purposes and they help people connect with a world beyond their close friends and family” (Papacharissi, 2011). The sense of being united and belonging to one issue group stimulates people to for participation in public life, which by turn can bring some changes. For example, Caroline?S.?Sheedy in her Capstone project (2011) analyzes the impact of social media activity on social change examining such notable cases as the??attacks?in?Mumbai in 2008, ?the? ?Green?Revolution?in?Iran in 2009,? ?the??earthquake?in?Haiti in 2009 and the Egyptian revolution in 2011, which all together show the influential potential of social media publics.

1.3 Web 2.0. and public engagement

The social networks despite their sporadic and ephemeral nature, ease the contribution to collective (informational) goods and give an opportunity to a larger number of individuals to participate (Earl & Kimport, 2011). Social media changes communication patterns from one-to-many (in traditional media) into many-to-many giving the broader audience an opportunity to interact with each other without a regulating structure. Online space in contrast to offline has distinctive opportunity to provide users with so-called social information, real-time knowledge about what other people are doing and thinking (for instance, how many other people are signing the petition or sharing the same political views). This knowledge can influence people's social norms and affect their willingness to join the wider social group (Margetts, John, Hale& Yasseri, 2016). According to Granovetter (1978), people possess different mobilization thresholds, taking into the account the quantity of participants who summoned before them. Thus, people with low thresholds can be mobilized faster and easier than those who have high thresholds. The latter mobilize in the last stages when they see how many people before them have already joined in. From this perspective, social networks making the numbers of followers, likes, shares visible, motivate people with high thresholds and encourage public participation. Besides, online platforms are not isolated from each other, they represent the “networks of networks”, spreading the information on public mobilization across platforms and affecting the information dissemination and, as a result, collective action (Margetts, John, Hale& Yasseri, 2016). The summonning opportunities of Interner were higly debated and, therefore there formed two groups of scholars: those who state that Interner activate already predisposed users (Bimber, 1999; Bonfadelli, 2002; Krueger, 2002; Norris, 2001; Polat, 2005; Weber, Loumakis, & Bergman, 2003) and others who argue that Internet has power to mobilize the individuals who have not been traditionally participating in such collective activities (Barber, 2001; Krueger, 2002; Ward, Gibson, & Lusoli, 2003; Weber, 2003).

As for visibility of social media, the users also get an opportunity to show their personality (the interest in this is demonstrated by selfie phenomenon), to identify themselves with experiences and actions they undertake (as in case with donations). At the same time, social media provide the level of anonymity, which can also facilitate the participation of people who are scared to reveal their personality (as during Arab Spring revolution or in many activities in censored Chinese digital space).

Hence, social media has challenged the theories of public engagement and collective action. Traditionally, collective behavior is connected to the spontaneous, unregulated, unstructured emotional reaction of individuals to some tension or collapse in normal social routines (Blumer, 1951). Some other definitions of collective action also emphasize the aim of contribution to public goods. Among types of collective action, there are both small acts as petitioning, letter writing, lobbying, donating money, fundraising, demonstrating and striking, rioting, armed struggle, sabotage etc. Today with the usage of the Internet majority of these acts are possible online, for instance there are special on-line platforms for petitions, letters and lobbying, donations and fundraising, virtual blockades and sit-ins. Some other acts stay offline but can be coordinated in digital space, for example demonstrations, rallies, political violence. Moreover, according to Margetts, John, Hale and Yasseri (2016), posting status, spreading photo or video, changing profile picture, liking and sharing, tweeting and retweeting can be also considered as tiny contemporary collective acts. Morozov (2009) calls these types of participation as “nano-activism” and characterize it as low-cost, low-time consuming and low-risk.

Social media is even considered to be causative for collective action as it provides easy way to produce and share individual content, to circulate information and increase awareness, which in sum lead to collective efforts which overcome the necessity for any organizational mediations (Shirky 2011). However, just the usage of the social media does not guarantee the success of public summoning and action, it very much depends on the type of collective action (Diani, 2008), type of social media (Kaplan&Haenlein 2010) and how they are used (Earl&Kimport, 2011). Still social media can have a transformative effect on collective action “not only because it translates in the actual amplification of the size of collective endeavors but, more importantly, because the extended set of social relations established via social media provides a whole new relational milieu for exchanging informational and material resources as well as for creating shared symbolic systems and visions - two defining dimensions of collective action dynamics” (Pavan, 2013).

Thus, virtual publics should be examined having regard to their features and peculiarities of self-organization, as well as potential to summon, mobilize and transit public from digital to offline space, from local scale to global.

There are some theories of public engagement and transition. One useful model of transition is presented in the work of Hernando Rojas and Eulalia Puig-i-Abril in their work “Mobilizers Mobilized: Information, Expression, Mobilization and Participation in the Digital Age” (2009) in which scholars examine how new media can provide new pathways for engagement of individuals and rise participation providing arena for discussion of new ideas. The theorists come up with the following graph, which presents model how use of Internet influences public engagement and offline participation (Figure 1).



According to scholars, “informational uses of ICTs (Information and Communication technologies) result in online expressive participation and that these online forms of expressive action ultimately spill over the “real” world, mostly via our own efforts to mobilize those around us” (Rojas &Puig-i-Abril, 2009). Thus, for them for public to mobilize it needs to get access to information through on-line news or blog use or even use of mobile phone and then through expression in social-networks system or cellphone it can contribute to offline civic participation.

This is just one model of transition, in our work we are going to examine cases of Charlie Hebdo and Five Star Movement to come up with our own approach to public engagement from on-line to off-line and from local to global defining the specific mechanisms.

Chapter 2. Transition of public: from local to global level. Charlie Hebdo case

2.1 Global public communication

As we have turned out in the first chapter, public sphere is the space of communication of ideas, discourse is one of essential characteristics of publics. The term of “global” communication stands for various interpretations of a developing communication space and demonstrate its history and diversity.

The birth of international communication is associated with expansion of newsletters in the fifteenth century. As Stephens explains, traders of silver in Antwerp, traders of wheat in Venice, merchants in Nuremberg exchanged economic newsletters and in the rights of capital created common beliefs and values (1988). The development of media, its commercialization have led to appearance of international news agencies (BBC, Reuters) in the XIX century. International communication was also developing thanks to world wire and cable systems. Finally, the creation of media systems like CNN or MTV, which were operating internationally, has led to the beginning of new age -the age of global communications. However, only with the spread of the Internet, the low-cost tool which allows facilitation of connection and expression among groups all over the world, the global communication as well as formation of global public space have become possible. Internet has allowed to reduce and sometimes even obliterate the differences. As Ingrid Volkmer writes in her article “International Communication Theory in Transition: Parameters of the New Global Sphere” the public (and its opinion) with the development of international communication has changed into “more or less autonomous global public sphere which can be considered not as a space between the 'public' and the state but between the state and an extra-societal global community” (1999).

Therefore, Internet and especially social networks have a potential to consolidate public on the global level. In addition, even the local issue public can become a global one thanks to usage of new media. To understand this phenomenon of transition from local to global public and the relevant mechanisms, we will analyze the case of Charlie Hebdo, which represents a perfect example of global summoning. Moreover, it should be noted that the first attempts to analyze this case were made before, in the paper “Je suis Charlie” as mass protest: analytical reconstruction of emerging publics in France and in global level” (Kakabadze&Uzoikina, 2015) presented during International Conference on Public Policy in Milan in summer 2015.

2.2 Chalie Hebdo case-study

On 7th of January 2015 two terrorists - French Muslim brothers of Algerian origins Saïd and Chérif Kouachi armed with assault rifles and other weapons attacked the Paris office of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Being established in 1969 and positioning itself as secular, atheist and far-left-wing newspaper, Charlie Hebdo has been publishing caricatures, cartoons, jokes and polemics about political, religious and cultural issues supporting freedom of speech and expression. The newspaper not once attracted controversy mocking Islam and publishing caricatures on Prophet Muhammad, causing violent responses in the Middle East and the threats to the editorial office. The terroristic attack on Charlie Hebdo on 7th of January 2015 took the lives of 12 people including the editor Elsa Cayat and Mustapha Ourrad, famous cartoonists Stéphane Charbonnier , Jean Cabut, Philippe Honoré, Bernard Verlhac and Georges Wolinski, economist Bernard Maris, maintenance worker Frédéric Boisseau, guest Michel Renaud, and police officers Ahmed Merabet and Franck Brinsolaro, as well as wounding eleven people. Meanwhile a terrorist Amedy Coulibaly linked to the same jihadist network as Kouachi brothers killed the young employee of the municipal police of the Paris suburb of Montrouge Clarissa Jean-Philippe, seriously wounding her colleagues and employees of the local service for repair of roads. Next day Amedy Coulibaly attacked the Hyper Cacher supermarket in east Paris, shot four people and took a dozen of hostages. French President Francois Hollande called the assaults a “barbaric attack against France and against journalists” (The Telegraph, 2015) and promised to track down the terrorists. The world leaders (U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Russian President Vladimir Putin , Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Pope Francis, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, Egypt's president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam, The Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, Australia's prime minister Tony Abbott, a spokesman for the South African government Clayson Monyela, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, Iran's foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham, Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and many more officials) as well condemned the shootings and expressed solidarity with France in fighting with terrorism and defending freedom of press. International and intergovernmental organizations as United Nations, the western defense alliance NATO, European Council, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Arab League, Commonwealth of Nations, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), the Nordic Council, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) stated they stood with France. Such global actors as Google, Apple and Facebook as well joined the solidarity movement and donated money to the newspaper, which allowed it to publish the next issue in a million of copies. French Google homepage have put the picture of a small black square with the slogan “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”) and was followed in mourning by other searching engines as Bing and Yahoo. A black line with the message “Je Suis Charlie” also appeared on Apple's French website. Moreover, the company has shown its solidarity in quickly approving the application (usually it takes 10 days but Apple's CEO Tim Cook approved this application in one hour). The application gives users the opportunity to show their cohesion just by sharing their location on the map and explore how the solidarity movement is spreading all around the world. As written in the description of the application “Because "Je suis Charlie" has become the symbol of freedom of speech whatever your beliefs, your country and your opinions, download the "I am Charlie" app and simply state where you stand on today's world map”. The number of “Charlies”, people who downloaded and used this application is more than 260 000. The global chorus was joined by journalist agencies, media organizations and cartoonists. Leading French news agencies “Le Monde”, “Liberation”, “Le Figaro”, “Le Parisien”, “La Croix”, “L'Equipe”, “L'Echo”, “La Tribune”, “La Provence”, the English “Guardian”, “The Times”, “The Daily Telegraph”, “The Independent”, “Financial Times”, “Daily Express”, “Daily Mail”, “Daily Mirror”, “Metro”, German “Bild”, “Berliner Kurier”, “DeMorgen”, “Berlingske”, Norwegian “Aftenposten”, Danish “Information”, “Jyllands-Posten”, “Politiken”, Belgian “De Tijd”, Spanish “Berria”, Scottish “The National” were rallying around Charlie Hebdo showing solidarity with Charlie Hebdo victims on their front pages. Caricaturists in commemoration of their colleagues have published their cartoons using the fast-spreading slogan “Je suis Charlie”. Furthermore, celebrities have shown support in social networks and held signs or wore pins with the words “Je suis Charlie” on the red carpet of 72nd Golden Globe Awards show which took place right after the Paris attacks on 11th of January 2015. Following Charlie Hebdo shooting, such world landmarks as Eiffel Tower in France, Sydney Opera House in Australia, London Eye in the United Kingdom, Brandenburg Gate in Germany, Christ de Redeemer in Brazil, City Hall in the United States, La Moneda Palace in Chile and Ostankino Tower in Russia were illuminated in the colors of French flag.

Moreover, right after the attack the event received a wide coverage in the Internet and gained tremendous attention of users of social networks, who forthwith started to like, share and comment the information about Paris shootings. Users started to express the solidarity using hash-tags, sharing the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo and replacing their profile photos with white-on-black picture with slogan “Je suis Charlie”. This message has united millions of people in the virtual space. Twitter has become one of the main virtual tools of public consolidation and addressing the issue. The reaction of Twitter users during the week after the tragedy is visualized in the article “Les millions de tweets #CharlieHebdo et #JeSuisCharlie” by Martin Grandjean (2015). The researcher has investigated the most used hash-tags during the period when the Charlie Hebdo shooting happened and was the item of the world agenda. According to his work, #CharlieHebdo, #JeSuisCharlie, Charlie Hebdo without hash-tag and #RespectforMuslims were among top-hashtags. The most popular one was #CharlieHebdo which was used 3 559 000 times by Twitter users on 7th of January and 7 057 100 times in the whole period of analysis (from 6th to 15th of January 2015). The next widespread hash-tag was #JeSuisCharlie, which was used 2 048 000 times at the day of shooting and 5 272 000 times during these 10 days.

The research shows that apart from the main key hashtags there were also some other messages used by the Twitter users at that time. These were #NousSommesCharlie (which means “We are Charlie”), #JesuisAhmed (in English “I am Ahmed”, the tribute to a Muslim police officer killed during the attack on 7th of January), #JesuisJuif (In English “I am a Jew”, hashtag expressing solidarity for the Jewish people living in France after the attacks on a Jewish Supermarket in Paris in the following days after Charlie Hebdo attack), #LaFranceEstCharlie (in English “France is Charlie”, the hash tag to show French unity) and #NousSommesEnsemble (in English “we are together”, this hashtag was used to show the worldwide unity and solidarity with France), #VoyageAvecMoi (in English “Travel with me” to support muslims in fear of travelling after the attack), #TousALaMarcheDu11Janvier (In English “All on the March on 11th of January” which aimed to attract more people to join mass march of solidarity), #JeSuisFlic or #JeSuisPolicier (In English “I am a Police officer” for commemoration of another policeman killed during the terrorist attack), #Killallmuslims (the hashtag has been used in the social network since 2013 and was given a boost by the Charlie Hebdo attack, still its popularity is controversial, as it was used by people in such cotext: “People have no heart who really want to #KillAllMuslims”), #JesuisKouachi (the opposite campaign used by Islamists to support two brothers Kouachi that were suspected of the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine and then killed by the police), #AnnulezLaMarcheDu11Janvier (In English “Cancel the march on 11th of January” which was used by the users who were afraid of the repeat of the terrorist attack during the march), #JeSuisCharlieMartel (hashtag which remind of Charles Martel, French military leader of the 8th century who went down in history as the savior of Europe from the Arabs at Poitiers), #JeNeSuisPasCharlie (hashtag opposite to “jesuischarlie” and used for different reason by people who did not agree to express solidarity with France) and the last but not the least is #JeSuisNico that was made to make fun of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy who pushed his way to the front during the march of solidarity. This variety of messages, their distribution is shown in the following table and graph.

Message	Number of tweets from 6th to 15th of January
#NousSommesCharlie	203 050
#JesuisAhmed	207 800
#JesuisJuif	62 700
#LaFranceEstCharlie	30 040
#NousSommesEnsemble	4 130
#VoyageAvecMoi	7 530
#TousALaMarcheDu11Janvier	10 230
#JeSuisFlic	13 530
#JeSuisPolicier	19 070
#Killallmuslims	107 400
#JesuisKouachi	46 510
#AnnulezLaMarcheDu11Janvier	104 100
#JeSuisCharlieMartel	4 190
#JeNeSuisPasCharlie	75 200
#JeSuisNico	56 750

Therefore, despite the existence of the controversies, the main slogans that joined users of Twitter space were association with victims and calls for unity, solidarity. These key messages were spreading rapidly worldwide. Matthew Zook in the article “Mapping the Twitter Reaction to the Charlie Hedbo Attack” (2015), has shown the distribution of the top hashtags by countries and their reference to usual amount of tweets in the country. The scholar collected 73,000 geotagged tweets with the hashtags: #charliehebdo or #jesuischarlie that were posted in social network from 7th of January to noon of 8th of January. Zook aggregated these tweets to the country level and normalized by a random sample of tweets in each country during the same period. This procedure helped to compare the reaction in countries with differences in population and access to the Internet. The author calculated a location quotient for each of the country. The location quotient that is more than 1 shows the higher level of tweets about Charlie Hebdo in comparison with usual amount of tweets in this country. A quotient less than 1 shows the lower level of tweeting. The results of this analysis were summarized in the following table:

This table can be supplemented by the map, created by Rich Donohue, a post-doc at the University of Kentucky Department of Geography. This map shows the widespread reaction on the Charlie Hebdo shooting all around the world. “Red” countries (France, Belgium and French Guyana) have the highest relative number of tweets on Charlie Hebdo. The “orange” countries (Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Cameroon, Lebanon, India and Pakistan) show a greater level of tweets related to Charlie Hebdo than one would expect when taking into account typical level of tweeting in this country. The countries shaded in blue have a lower level of tweets related to Charlie Hebdo than usually and those shaded in grey failed to meet the minimum threshold of tweeting activity (15 tweets) to be included in the analysis.

The reaction in France and closest Belgium is comprehensible, as well as great level of tweeting in other neighboring European countries. What is more interesting is the support outside of Europe by the former French colonies: Canada, Algeria, Tunisia and some others that do not have such historical ties: Australia, New Zealand, India, and Pakistan.

The global reaction to the Charlie Hebdo shooting caused the translation of the key messages “Je suis Charlie” into other languages. Thus, in an official website of Charlie Hebdo appeared the translated versions of a rallying cry against the gunmen attack on 7th of January. Charlie Hebdo staff has translated the slogan into 7 languages: German, Farsi, Spanish, Arabic, Slovakian, Russian and Czech and uploaded the pictures on their web-site.

Facebook users as well have shown the immediate response to the terrorist attacks with changing their profile pictures into white-on-black “Je suis Charlie”, liking, commenting and sharing information. Many supporters posted caricatures of Charlie Hebdo and French flags. There have appeared hundreds of pages and groups in solidarity with victims, as well as there were created Facebook events for public gathering with the information about time and place. Many of them had huge amount of people marked as “attending”. Our research of such event groups has shown that in many cities around the globe, Facebook users has shown their unity and readiness for collective action. Indeed, 523 Facebook users in Auckland, New Zealand, 1100 in Taipei, Republic of China, 236 in Cambridge, United Kingdom, 4500 in Montreal, Canada, 470 in Seoul, South Korea, 444 in Perugia, Italy, 1200 in Melbourne, Australia, 56 in San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico, 76 in Shinjuku, Japan, 1300 in Beirut, Lebanon, 1700 in Vienna, Austria, 144 in Vienna, Austria, 805 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 4200 in Brussels, Belgium and many more marked themselves as “attending” the rallies of solidarity with victims of terroristic attacks happened in Paris on 7th of January 2015. The whole table with events and numbers of the participants can be found in Appendix.

From Paris to Washington and from Jerusalem to Beirut ordinary people expressed their solidarity not only in social-networks, using hashtags and spreading pictures but also in the streets waving French flags, singing France's national anthem La Marseillaise, holding up pens in the air, the editions of Charlie Hebdo newspaper and placards with slogan “Je suis Charlie”. The rallies took place all over the world, on every continent and summoned more than 4, 4 million people in France and 100 000 people internationally.

First demonstrations happened in France on 7th of January. According to French newspapers, this day approximately 35,000 people gathered in Paris, 15,000 each in Lyon and Rennes, 10,000 people in Nice and Toulouse, 7,000 in Marseille and 5,000 each in Nantes, Grenoble and Bordeaux. All in all, there were more than 100 000 people in total on the French streets on 7th of January. The rallies in France were followed by the citizens of some other countries. Thus, on 7th of January public gatherings under the same slogans happened in Amsterdam. Brussels, Barcelona, Ljubljana, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Washington, New York, Luxembourg, Seattle, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and many other cities.

public communication on-line off-line

The following figures, collected from news agencies (CBS news, 2015; Euroactiv, 2015; Times of Israel, 2015) show the scale of international support to France:

City	Number of people	City	Number of people
Vienna, Austria	12 000	Madrid, Spain	500-1000
Brussels, Belgium	20 000	Athens, Greece	500
Montreal, Canada	20 000	Bangkok, Thailand	500
Berlin, Germany	18 000	Geneva, Switzerland	500
Dublin, Ireland	4 000	Oslo, Norway	500
Luxembourg city, Luxembourg	2 000	Boston, US	500
Lausanne, Switzerland	2000	Cluj-Napoca, Romania	500
Stockholm, Sweden	3 000	Brasilia, Brazil	300
Munich, Germany	3000	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	250
Washington, US	3 000	Beirut, Lebanon	200
London, UK	2 000	Tokyo, Japan	200
San Francisco, US	2 000	Guadalajara, Mexico	200
Jerusalem, Israel	1000	Rammallah, Palestina	200
Rome, Italy	1000	Lisbon, Portugal	200
Milan, Italy	1000	Caracas, Venezuela	200
Cardiff, UK	1000	Istanbul, Turkey	120
Buenos Aires, Argentina	1000	Moscow, Russia	100
Sydney, Australia	500-1000

Smaller gatherings also took place in Delhi, Tunis, Gaza, Warsaw, Seoul, Kiev and some other cities.

Majority of participants showed support by carrying the banners or shouting the slogan “Je suis Charlie” both in French and in their native languages. For instance, the demonstrators in Jerusalem held up in the air the signs “Je Suis Charlie” and “Israel is Charlie” written in Hebrew, in the West Bank Palestinians were waving the banners “Palestine stands with France against terrorism”, in Madrid hundreds of Muslims went out on the square, carrying the placards “Not in our name” to condemn terrorism and show that it is not a part of Islam, in Lebanese capital Beirut people used signs “ We are not afraid” and “Je suis Ahmed” referring to the name of Muslim policeman killed during the Charlie Hebdo attack.

In the following days, on 10-11th of January there were a series of demonstrations, so-called marches républicaines (the republican marches) across French cities, which have become the largest public gathering in country's history. According to gathered data, on 10th of January the rallies took place in Toulouse (150 000 - 180 000 demonstrators), Nantes (75 000), Marseille (45 000), Strasbourg (45 000), Lille (35 000-40 000), Nice (30 000), Besançon (30 000), Limoges (30 000), Pau (30 000), Orléans (22 000), Agen (13 000) and Le Havre (10 000). On 11th of January people assembled on the streets of Paris (1 500 000-2 000 000), Lyon (330 000), Bordeaux (140 000), Rennes (115 000), Grenoble (110 000), Montpellier (100 000), Saint-Étienne (70 000), Marseille (65 000), Brest (65 000), Nancy (50 000), Strasbourg (45 000), Toulon (45 000), Angers (45 000), Metz (45 000), Aix-en-Provence (40 000), Perpignan (40 000), Tours (35 000), Dijon (35 000), Caen (33 000), Clermont-Ferrand (30 000), Lorient (30 000), Nimes (30 000), Saint-Brieuc (30 000), Reims (25 000), Cherbourg (25 000), Mulhouse (25 000), Quimper (25 000), Angouleme (20 000), Chambery (20 000), Avignon (20 000), Vannes (20 000), Albi (16 000), Alençon (15 000), Bastia (15 000), Bourg en Bresse (15 000), Blois (15 000), Carcassonne (15 000), La Rochelle (15 000), Laval (15 000), Mâcon (15 000), Perigueux (15 000), Poitiers (15 000), Saint-Malo (15 000), Tarbes (14 000), Belfort (13 000), Cognac (11 000), Charleville-Mézières (12 000), Troyes (12 000), Ajaccio (10 000), Cannes (10 000), Bergerac (10 000), Tulle (10 000), Colmar (10 000), Ferney Voltaire (10 000), Libourne (10 000), Dammartin-en-Goële (10 000), Narbonne (10 000).

The rally in Paris was attended by more than 40 foreign world leaders including large number of European leaders, members of governments of Brazil, Canada, the USA, Armenia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, UAE, Palestine, China, India, Turkey, Algeria, Benin, Gabon, Mali, Niger, Tunisia, Togo, Senegal, Egypt and representatives of some international institutions who walked arm-in-arm down the Boulevard Voltaire to pay tribute to the victims of attack and show their solidarity with France. In the words of French President François Hollande, Paris became the capital of the world for one day (CNN, 2015).

The officials were followed by hundreds of thousands people who no matter their ethnicity, race, class, age stood up against terrorism and hatred proclaiming “Je suis Charlie” in order to show their solidarity with victims and support for the values of the French Republic: liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity). The analysis of banners held by participants show that the main slogans were “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), “Nous sommes Charlie” (We are Charlie), “Not afraid”, “Vive la France”.

Overall, Charlie Hebdo shooting stimulated the creation of global public, which has included both mass assemblies all over the world and strong international movement in social media, uniting civil society, global non-governmental organizations, heads of states and international intergovernmental organizations, business and media. The local issue though severe and resulting in killings could cross the borders, unite strangers through the reflexive circulation of discourse, cause global public outcry and summon significant amount of people on the streets and in social networks and cause the formation of specific public, to which we will refer further as “Charlie Public”.

2.3 “Charlie Public”: features and mechanisms of transition

Applying the theoretical framework, which have been discussed in the first chapter of the work, we can characterize “Charlie public” as independent, reflexive, creative “agentic public” (Mahony, 2012), acting in terms of Keane (1995) in macro-public sphere. To examine more precise the features of the public, we will use the concept of analysis of publics, proposed by Belyaeva (2012).

The “troubling message” which caused the summoning of public is the terroristic attack on satirical newspaper “Charlie Hebdo”. Here we need to pay special attention to the context, which influenced such unprecedented attention and provoked the powerful response from public. The attack on the heart of France has become one of the worst massacre and threatened not only French essential principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, but, without any doubts, imperiled the freedom of speech crucial for democracy and the position of west in the face of terrorism and religious extremism. “Je suis Charlie” case has tapped into a tangle of hot-button issues, revealed the causes of concern in the Western world.

As for self-organization of the public, it was immediate both on-line and off-line. The image with ”Je suis Charlie” was first tweeted right after the attack on the edition office at 11:52 am by Parisian artist Joachim Roncin and then started rapidly spreading in the Global network among users from all over the world. The following maps Geotagged Tweets mentioning #JeSuisCharlie, Paris time zone, January 7, 2015. Map created by in CartoDB, retrieved April 20, 2016, from https://srogers.cartodb.com/viz/123be814-96bb-11e4-aec1-0e9d821ea90d/embed_map show how the hash-tag “Je suis Charlie” was spreading worldwide according to the geo-location of the users tweeting it.

Geo-tagged tweets containing #JeSuisCharlie at 14:59 (CET) on January 7, 2015



Geo-tagged tweets containing #JeSuisCharlie at 23:33 (CET) on January 7, 2015

The first street gatherings, as we mentioned above, have started at the same day after attack, masses of people went out to show their solidarity first in France and then in other European countries, as well as in America, Africa, Asia, Australia and were followed by the Republican marches attended both by heads of the states, officials, celebrities and ordinary citizens.

The public spaces, where the “Charlie” discourse was circulating, were diverse: starting from social networks to official media, from the official public events where the government members and celebrities have expressed their solidarity with France to the mass rallies on the streets. The forms and mechanisms of the discourse, as we have seen, were multiple and the discourse itself was dominated by the slogan “Je suis Charlie”, which started as twitter hashtag, # symbol employed to mark keywords or key topics and then was adorning banners in the city squares, speeches of world leaders and Hollywood starts. In social media, the slogan was often accompanied with visual messages - cartoons in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and in the streets by such symbols as pens raised up in the air in commemoration of murdered journalists.

One of the features of the discourse was the breaking of communication patterns and behavioral change of users abandoning their comfort zone. As it has been revealed in the research by Spanish scholars (Herrera-Viedma&Bernabé-Moreno& Porcel& C. y Martínez, 2015), the heart-breaking terrorist attack in Paris has triggered the users to speak up, to join forces in a global scale dialogue, to interact with strangers to share the same message even if they were not so active on-line and not used to post anything. Moreover, the article shows that the users with different language background seeking for sense of community, unity and common identity used more frequently French hashtags than their translations to the local language. The study represent the analysis of hashtags related to Charlie Hebdo case in 5 different languages: French, Spanish, English, Italian and German. The following chart showing the frequency of top hash-tags proves that in all twitter-spaces #jesuischarlie and #noussommescharlie (“we are Charlie”) exceeded their counterparts in the native languages (“iosonocharlie” in Italian, “IamCharlie” in English, “YosoyCharlie” in Spanish and “WirsindCharlie” in German).

The circulation of the message addressed by Charlie Public was not only intensive but also longstanding. “Je suis Charlie” has become not only a global solidarity movement, but also a symbol for defiance against terrorism and watchword for freedom of speech and expression. The message of solidarity revoiced in the rallying cries:

· “Je suis Ahmed” ( “I am Ahmed”, the tribute to a Muslim police officer shot on 7th of January);

· “Je suis Juif” ( “I am a Jew”, the tribute to Jewish people attacked in Kosher supermarket in the next day after Charlie Hebdo attack);

· “Je Suis Flic” or “Je Suis Policier” (In English “I am a Police officer” for commemoration of another policeman shot during the attack on Charlie Hebdo edition office);

· “Je suis Nigeria” (in response to Boko Haram's attack in Northern Nigeria on 7th of January that took lives of more than 2000 people);

· “Je suis Volnovakha” (to venerate memory of the 12 people killed in the attack on bus in eastern Ukraine on 13th of January 2015);

· “Je suis Nisman” or in Spanish “Yo soy Nisman” and “Todos somos Nisman” which means “We are all Nisman” ( to pay homage to the prosecutor Alberto Nisman who specialized in international terrorism and was killed in Argentina on 19th of February 2015);

· “Je suis Boris Nemtsov” (to honor the memory of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov murdered in Moscow on 27th of February, 2015);

· “Je suis Tunisien” or “Je suis Tunisie” (the slogan used in solidarity with victims of attack on Bardo National museum in Tunis on 18th of March, 2015);

· “Je suis Sousse” or in Arabic “Ana Soussa” (to commemorate the victims of Islamist mass shootings at the tourist resort not far from Tunisian city Sousse on 26th of June);

· “Je suis Paris” (in response to the deadliest terroristic attacks happened in Paris on 13th of November, 2015);

· “Je suis Diesel” (“ I am Diesel”) or “Je suis Chien” (“I am dog”) in order to commemorate a police dog which was killed by terrorists during the police raid on 18th of November, 2015.

· “Je suis Bruxelles” (the tribute to people killed and injured in the terrorist bombings in Brussels on 22th of March, 2016).

All the slogans were the response to the heartbreaking devastating events, mostly terroristic attacks, which awaken feelings of frustration, chagrin, abhorrence and anxiety and, thereby, trigger more people to express their feelings, share them both in social networks and during the gatherings outdoors. As Adam Smith wrote in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments”, empathy, the ability to see yourself in a similar position as others is one of the fundamentals of social life, which bound people together. The association of yourself with victim modifying the slogan “Je suis Charlie” has become the powerful message of solidarity which started to circulate and influenced the emergence of new publics.

It is also important to note that the Charlie public's poetic message is not new; it is rooted in the national culture of protest in France. It reminds the similar slogan of the French revolution of May 1968, which was “Nous sommes tous des Juifs allemands” (We are all German Jews). It was the response of French students to the attempt of the French authorities to deport one of the leaders of the protest movement - Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a German student of Jewish descent. After this, the rallying cry “Nous sommes tous” was often used by the French Left in order to show solidarity with excluded groups, for instance “Nous sommes tous des sans papiers” (“We are all undocumented immigrants”) (Paunksnis, 2015). The French newspaper “Le Monde” used the slogan “ Nous sommed tous Americains” (“We are all Americans”) in the aftermath of the terroristic attack 9/11 in the USA to show that the rest of the world stood together in condemning terrorism and expressing solidarity with the country.

Moreover, the connotation can be found with famous phrase “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am Berliner”) by John F. Kennedy in West Berlin in 1963. He interpreted it in the following way “ Today in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner”…All free men, whenever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner” (Kennedy, 1963). The powerful rhetorical tool “I am/We are”, thus, does not mean only expression of solidarity, but broadly belonging. As Paunksnis (2015) explains this sense of belonging to a morally superior identity group can be as that of freedom or of Western values against barbarism. Thus, Charlie Public does not only publicly commemorate the victims of terroristic attack but also identify themselves with a group which opposes barbarism, which stands for the Republic and all its values. This identity group “in the context of contemporary geopolitics, international islamophobia and race-relations in France, comes fully formed, ready to be stepped into” (Paunksnis, 2015).

However, in opposition to Charlie, there forms so-called counter public, which declares “Je ne suis pas Charlie” (“ I am not Charlie”). This public formulated oppositional interpretations and circulated counter-discourses. To be more precise, the counter-slogan was used mainly by those accusing Charlie Hebdo edition for offencive humour, racism, intolerance and, even, hate speech. It was first principally used by Muslims, who condemned the newspaper for indecent insults to the prophet Mohammad and Islam in general. Afterwards, it was used also by people who were indignant at the smaller outcry over other severe acts in non-Western countries in comparisan to the public reaction on Paris attacks.

However, this public was much more less extencive and posessed lack of unity. As Jisun An and a group of scholars, have shown in their research on the proportion in the use of hashtags by users identified as Arab and all others (Non-Arab) in aftermath of terroristic attacks in France on 7th of January 2015, slogan “Je suis Charlie” was much more intensively used by Twitter users both in Arab and Non-Arab countries than the counter hashtag “Je ne suis pas Charlie”. The following distribution table, prepared by scholars based on Twitter data gathered from 7th to 28th January 2015, proves that first slogan was used 51 027 in Middle East Twitter Space (Morocco, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Tunisia, Jordan, Libya, UAE, Kuwait, Yemen, Iraq, Turkey, Algeria, Palestine, Bahrain, Qatar and Lebanon) and 1 488 860 in Western (Cyprus, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, United Kingdom, Denmark, Italy, Norway, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Greece, , Luxembourg, Portugal, Iceland, USA) while “Je ne suis pas Charlie” 210 times in the first group of countries and 915 in the second one.



All in all, terrifying terroristic attack bringing up the issues of spreading radical extremism, the scope of freedom of speech and stability of western values, has provoked the circulation of certain discourse around which the specific public has formed. This public eager not only to express their solidarity with victims but also to show their opposition to terrorism and commitement to western values, has used the potential of both traditional and new media. Usage of social networks which posess omnitude, conenctivity, absence of hierarchy, many-to-many communication, rapid exchange of information helped to spread the message among more users, create collective identity and coordinate personal participation. As a result public engagement crossed the borders and involved individuals both on-line and off-line, transforming it from local to global. Millions of people from around the world searching for unity, started to use common symbols, to circulate powerful and creative slogan of association with victims which has had its historical counterparts, to break their communication patterns, adopting foreing slogans, change learned behaviour and identify themselves as a consolidated group. This is a complex of mechanisms which influenced the transition of public from local scale to global one.



Chapter 3. Transition of public from on-line to off-line. Five Star Movement

As it was stated in previous chapters, the Internet offers more convenient ways of engaging into public life decreasing the costs of participation, the differences in knowledge and background, crossing the borders and changing the patterns of self-organization and collective action . Internet has a potential to refresh civic life by raising access to information, facilitation of discussions and development of social networks. Social media thanks to its features of integration of sociality and social roles, visibility and openness, expanded opportunities for expression and communication, is able to mobilize the individuals indisposed to action and transfer the collective activity from online to offline.

The case of Five Star Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle) represents a perfect example of the formation, mobilization and action of virtual public, influential potential of new media and its ability to transit activity from digital space to offline concrete political steps.

3.1 Case study. From blog to political party

In 2005 Beppe Grillo, the former Italian comedian banned from public television RAI for his jokes against Socialist party and Gianroberto Casaleggio, computer scientist and web-strategist have founded the on-line blog beppegrillo.it. The site has become the forum for discussing current problems of Italy and the possible ways to solve them by adopting new laws and implementing necessary reforms. First, it was focusing on common political and social problems, after it transformed into the platform for exchange of opinions on such topics as electronic democracy, anti-corruption, security and contained criticism of the recent government. One of the first posts dedicated to these issues “Politics disappeared” was commented more than 100 times (Bailo,2015), since then the amount of supporters expressing their opinion in this social media platform was only increasing. The blog being available in Italian and English has become the cradle for the growing community of people interested in politics and unsatisfied with the current state of affairs in Italy. 3 years after its foundation, the blog numbered around 200,000 unique visitors a day, several thousands comments for each post and it was ranked as one of the most influential blogs by The Guardian and The Observer (Cairola, 2012). The blog activity was accompanied by the usage of other social media applications as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Twitter and Facebook were mainly used to contact with public, to spread the messages created by activists, while YouTube became the opposition to official television, the sort of antitelevision. The new web-channel “La cosa” (The thing) was launched to broadcast the events that happen in Italy and all around the world on a 24 hour basis. It was actively used to televise live the rallies and other events as well as interviews with Beppe Grillo and other activists.

Thus, the on-line activity around the on-line blog posts has united random people sharing more-or-less the same ideas and attitudes on political topics, created the circulating discourse, encouraged involvement of people and, so, influenced the appearance of networked public.

Thanks to efforts of its founders, this on-line public got an opportunity and a tool not only to express their opinion from the far distance and have a virtual debate but also to assembly face-to-face and become an off-line community. This idea was introduced by Beppe Grillo from the very foundation of the blog. On 16th of July 2005 he wrote:” I thought on how to do to give all who follow my blog the opportunity to meet to discuss, take the initiative, see each other in person. To transform a virtual discussion into an opportunity to change. I discussed with my collaborators and I decided to use MeetUp. MeetUp is a site that allows to organize in a simple way meetings among people interested in a topic”(Bailo, 2015) . Hence, the supporters started to arrange the meeting forming local grass-root groups through this on-line platform. It is noteworthy that the site allows anyone to create a new Meet-up event even if there already exists one in this area. Moreover, it gives a possibility for users to keep a blog and update the information about upcoming offline events. Therefore, interested people started to self-organize and gather all over Italy. The increasing in number discussion clubs were named Friends of Beppe Grillo (Amici di Beppe Grillo). The first meet-ups were held in Roma, Milan, Naples and after in Turin, Bologna, Florence, Vicenza, Salerno, La Spezia and were dedicated mostly to environmental problems (Tronconi, 2015). In course of time, the number of adherents was growing rapidly and the quantity and distribution of Meet up groups was growing proportionally.