Looking for Italy's public sphere

Starting out from Jürgen Habermas's definition of the public sphere, and from the criticisms subsequently made of it by various scholars, this article considers whether the concept may be appropriately applied to Italy in the modern era. Is it correct to limit the public sphere to its ‘classic’ liberal form or to understand it in a normative sense rather than a more neutral, descriptive one? Can one, for example, speak of a fascist public sphere? Is the public sphere always fatally undermined by the mass media or can it harness some of the media to its own ends? If there is still a critical public sphere in Italy today, where is it to be found and what forms does it take?