This article updates certain aspects of the normative notions of the public sphere. The complex ecosystem of social communications enhanced by mobile media platform activity has changed our perception of space. If the public sphere has to normatively assess the expected conditions for public debate and for democracy, the assemblage of devices, discourses, infrastructures, locations, and regulations must be considered together. The literature reviewed about the public sphere, spaces, and geographically-enabled mobile media leads this article to the formulation of a concept of the public sphere that considers such assemblage as an interface. As an empirically applicable update to the definition of the public sphere the text offers a model that helps analyze those factors considering how they shape the communicative space in four modes: representations, structures, textures, and connections. These modes consider the roles played by assemblages of devices, infrastructures, and content in delimiting the circulation of information. The second part of the article illustrates the model with examples from previous research, paying particular attention to the structures’ mode. The dissection of qualitative, quantitative, and geodata generated by digital and (visual) (n)ethnographic tools reveals three subcategories for the analysis of structures of space: barriers, shifts, and flows. The structures effectively enable/disable communication and define centers and peripheries in the activity flows. The contribution of this article is, thus, conceptual—it challenges and updates the notion of the public sphere; and methodological—it offers tools and outputs that align with the previously developed theoretical framework.

Rodriguez-Amat & Belinskaya, (2020) (In press) German cinema in the Eye of Instagram 1 #Germancinema in the Eye of Instagram: showcasing a method combination "Cities are made up of the accumulated memories of people, which have the power to transcend their own time" -The beautiful, semi-imaginary, infinitely detailed Tokyo of Akira Yamaguchi

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This article explores a new style of journalism identified in the contents of 21 public Telegram channels from the second half of 2020. The case follows the poisoning of the Russian oppositionist Alexei Navalny as part of a broader research programme on the Russian public sphere. The qualitative analysis of the data provides insight into the use of Telegram as a source for ‘insider news’. This article distinguishes the linguistic peculiarities of the texts, such as markers of orality, and contrasts them with various modes of virtual journalism. The article proposes a model of a three-way proximity-building as a feature of a new journalism style. The article contributes to understanding the dynamics of the Russian public sphere and its overspill beyond the Russian territory and the institutional media outlets.

The disrupted Russian media ecosystem facilitates the flourishing of political blogging on social media; the political communication expands beyond the over-controlled, institutionalised channels of political interaction. This paper maps the activity on YouTube, incorporating media and communication studies to the analysis of a hybrid political regime to answer the following research question: What representations of Navalny are available in the Russian YouTube-sphere? The analysis of a statistically random sample of 366 videos associated with the keyword “Navalny” works in two phases: image type analysis and narrative analysis. Both phases help to identify the traditional institutionalised political actors in the spillovers of political communication trends in the YouTube-sphere. This work not only enriches and updates the current understanding of the Russian political communication ecosystem, but also helps expand the research on contemporary quasi-democratic political scenarios and the communicative strategies of their legitimisation.