Abstract

This article presents a qualitative analysis of audiovisual materials published on Instagram and TikTok during the first national lockdown due to Covid-19 (March – May 2020) through the hashtag #iorestoacasa. This represented a carrier for the circulation of pandemic-related content produced by Italian users while experiencing unprecedented social and personal limitations, and it aggregates a unique corpus of visual data depicting the cultural and social practices users engaged in during lockdown. The analysis reveals that #iorestoacasa represents an interesting case of hybrid online sociality, whereby ephemeral exchanges characterized by a focus of attention – typical of digital publics – combine with forms of communitarian interaction, leading to what we define as a «contingent community»