Oltre il web postmoderno: ripensare il giornalismo online come metanarrazione

In journalism studies, the development of the web and the beginning of online journalism are generally interpreted as getting past a normative, objective paradigm, which led to the beginning of philosophical and scientific modernity. Instead, they are linked to the arrival of a postmodern paradigm focused on subjectivity and relativism. This paper proposes an alternative reading of the epistemology of online journalism: the fragmentation of the audience in homophilic networks, the formation of ideological bubbles and the increasing polarization caused by algorithms often transform the contents circulating online in a restatement of the metanarratives of modernity. Thus they evade the principles of equivalent interpretations and openness to dialogue which are characteristic for the postmodern age. This includes journalistic content as well, especially due to the process of ‘platformization of information’. For these reasons a new definition of web journalism is advanced: not as postmodern journalism, but as a subjective accomplishment of the principles found at the base of the modern paradigm.