Introduction

The culture of convergence is nurtured by the "produser" (Bruns, 2006), a new hybrid social agent representing the merging of producer and consumer in an interactive and participative environment. Exploiting all the highly participatory potentialities of digital media, these mobile communities of “user-generators”, “prosumers,” "tactical media interventionists", and other ‘maker’ identities are challenging traditional divides between industrial production and consumption practices. Media professionalism seem to be displaced by spontaneous forms of mass collaboration and flexible community building within which social and identity gratification represents the strongest driver (Shirky, 2008). These deep and rapid changes ask for a rethinking of those categories through which media studies have traditionally conceptualized and inquired mediated communication processes