Nationalism, Ethnicity and Cultural Diversity in the Digital Age - Abstracts

Visualising the Nation in the Digital Age

Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities focused on the power of the written word. But images have always been at the center of our national imagining: maps, flags, founding fathers, heroes, landscapes, buildings. Several themes recur: a threat to the nation’s survival, and a (male) leader who will protect the nation (often portrayed as female) from the threat. This pattern has reproduced itself in successive waves of media revolution: photography, cinema, TV and now the internet.

Reframing Russia for the Global Mediasphere: The Spy who Came Back from the Snow

Stephen Hutchings, University of Manchester

This paper explores how in today’s hyper-networked, multi-platform global media space, efforts by neo-authoritarian states to maintain and exert national sovereignty are subject to disruption, fragmentation and ultimately subversion. It does so through a close reading of one episode in the Salisbury spy poisoning story: the fall-out from the bizarre interview with the two suspects in the case broadcast on the RT television channel and conducted by Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief. Reading this episode through the prism of ‘media event’ theory, which takes account of the complexities and contradictions in the digital media ecology, the paper points to: the multiplicity of state and non-state actors at work in shaping it; the ways in which the allegiance of these actors are intertwined and the implications of this process for the separation of ‘international’ from ‘domestic’ audiences; the transnational journalistic identities and ethical codes which the actors must negotiate; the distortive effects of the clash the respective logics of neoliberalism and securitization. The paper argues that, whilst it is creative and innovative in its efforts to instrumentalise the attributes of this new global media ecology, the Russian state retains only fragile and brittle control over the narratives it generates from it; instrumentalisation can, as in the case of the RT interview, easily backfire. It concludes, however, that Russian state media actors operating under these conditions are developing new modes of discourse that enable them to survive within it.

State-Mobilized Contention: The Construction of 'Novorossiya'

Samuel Greene, King's College London & Graeme B. Robertson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

During and after the Crimean annexation in March 2014, Russia witnessed a huge increase in support for President Vladimir Putin. More importantly for events on the ground, however, this rally was not limited to changes in political approval: it extended to the mobilization of large numbers of volunteers, donors and sympathizers in support of military action outside the country’s borders. Both online and offline, a surge of activism was unleashed to strengthen militarily and ideologically the claim that Crimea and eastern Ukraine were somehow a natural part of Russia that had been accidentally and wrongly alienated by the idiosyncrasies of the collapse of the USSR. Two names that came to be adopted by the movement, ‘Russian Spring’ or ‘Novorossiya’, reflect the intertwined ideas of a revival of ethnic Russian consciousness, the return of a previously dormant Russia back onto the international stage, and the Tsarist-era basis of the Russian claim to much of what is today southern and eastern Ukraine. In this paper, we take advantage of the fact that much of the organizational and ideological work behind this movement took place online. This allows us to examine in detail patterns of pro-Russian contention and how it changed over time.

Platform Nations: National Imagination in a Platform Society

Sabina Mihelj, Loughborough University

In their new book, Van Dijck et al. (2018) offer an original and compelling interpretation of the changing nature of social life in the digital world. According to their analysis, Western democratic societies are increasingly turning into ‘platform societies’ – that is, societies within which an ecosystem of digital platforms is gradually infiltrating all social sectors and institutions, from education and health to journalism. The ecosystem Van Dijck et al. refer to comprises a global conglomerate of all kind of platforms, from Facebook and Google to AirnBnb and Amazon, which are interdependent and shaped by a common set of commercial mechanisms. In this paper I ask what this new communicative ecology means for our understanding of contemporary forms of nations and nationalism. I argue that platform societies are imagined, above all, as nations of consumers – that is, as national communities enacted and reproduced through acts of consumption and commercial transaction, which are increasingly taking place in an online environment. In the paper, I discuss how such platform nations relate to older forms of media nations (Mihelj, 2011), as well as investigate the different ‘banal’ and ‘hot’ articulations of nationalism within platform societies. I conclude by reflecting on what the dominance of the consumerist, commercial form of national imagination within the new communicative ecology means for the fate of alternative forms of national imagination, and for the ways of being and doing they enable.

'Raise Your Hashflags': Rethinking the Relationship between Media and Nation in the Digital Age

Michael Skey, Loughborough University

Communication and media have been at the heart of some of the most influential studies of nationalism (Deutsch, 1966, Anderson, 1983, Billig, 1995). Likewise, those who posited subsequent challenges to national forms of organisation and identification often emphasised the importance of digital technologies in underpinning new forms of cosmopolitan solidarity (Beck, 2006, Rantanen, 2004). The problem with both these sets of literature is two-fold. On the one hand, there was a failure to critically engage with communication/media theory, on the other, key claims weren’t always supported with sufficient empirical evidence. In this paper, it is argued that William Sewell’s (1992) concept of deep and surface structures offers a productive way of theorising the relationship between media and nation in the contemporary era. This framework is then discussed in relation to a range of studies emphasising different aspects of the media landscape (political-economy, online networks, representations, social media) and case studies (China, Poland, Turkey, USA). Finally, it concludes by suggesting avenues for further possible research with particular reference to the possibilities of using big data sets to study both everyday (Skey & Antonsich, 2017) and ecstatic (Skey, 2008, 2009) forms of nationalism.

Digital Nationalism in an Illiberal State: A Micro-level Perspective

Guzel Yusupova, Durham University

There are various understandings of nationalism in social sciences. Nationalism as a concept may mean a process of nation-states formation, a sense of belonging to a certain community, an ideology or doctrine, and a social or political movement. Media plays a crucial role in the explanation of nationalism in all these various definitions and theories of nationalism. Particularly, advances in media technology explain the rise in the awareness of one’s national identity, increase in social cohesion and more efficient political mobilisation. Recent developments in digital technologies have tremendously changed contemporary mediascapes and social interactions. These changes raise an important question: how the current proliferation of social networking sites have affected the digital media’s impact on nationalism? The paper proposes a systematic framework to answer this question which is shown on the comparative analysis of ethnic minority nationalism on the one hand and state-imposed patriotism on the other using the case of Russia.

Digital Media in Diasporic Relations with the Homeland among Young Armenians

Leila Wilmers, Loughborough University & Dmitry Chernobrov, University of Sheffield

This paper explores the role of digital media in young diaspora Armenians’ understandings of homeland and ethno-national identity in the relatively new context of an independent Armenian state.  Over the past three decades, the emergence of this state in the post-Soviet space and concerns over its security and social conditions have created a new focus of attention across communities of Armenians living beyond its borders. During this period, access to digital technologies has transformed transnational communication, affecting the experience of being part of a diaspora. The growth of online communities and the explosion in use of social media, including as a source of current affairs news, mean that young people today grow up with an ease of contact with their place of origin that was previously impossible. The generation of diaspora Armenians raised post-independence has enjoyed unprecedented opportunities to independently explore Armenian society and online diasporic interest groups. In this paper we draw on original interviews with Armenians aged 18 to 35 in the UK, France and Russia conducted in 2017 to explore how their online experiences interact with collective myths about the nation and homeland transferred through family and community in shaping personal understanding of the diasporic homeland. Furthermore, we consider implications of the everyday realities of digital diasporic engagement on feelings of minority group distinctiveness in the country of residence. The findings reveal how engagement with plural sources of information and platforms for communication can lead to feelings of reconnection and self-discovery negotiated alongside disillusionment and distancing.

From Guilt to Acceptance: Lived Ethnicities and Online Media

Aya Yadlin-Segal, Hadassah Academic College

This study examines the ways in which members of the Persian community in Israel (migrants from Iran to Israel) use new media technologies to construct their Persian identity. The materials shared in this essay are a part of a larger ethnographic project that aims at understanding the national and ethnic belonging of the group in the Israeli society. I combine online media studies with migration studies to look at transnational dialogues and identities in spaces of cultural and political contention. Focusing on the everyday use of online media for ethnic identity construction, I utilize an ethnographic approach to media studies to discuss the meaning members of the Persian community give to this process of identity construction. Through this discussion, I define the term ‘lived ethnicity,’ portraying ethnicity as an evolving and dynamic (rather than a static or given) identity marker.

Fighting for the Homeland from Afar: Social Media, Languages and the ‘Self’ within Ukrainian Diasporas since 2014

Ivan Kozachenko, University of Cambridge

The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has had a profound effect not only on the warring countries themselves, but also on diasporas that are related to them. While responses of Ukrainian diasporas on the level of community have received some scholarly attention, the changes that are taking place on an individual level remain understudied. This paper aims to address this gap in scholarship and investigates how diasporic ‘selves’ are affected and changed by the ongoing conflict with a particular focus on the role of social media, linguistic behaviours and identities. In this exploration it relies on the concept of ‘self-understanding’ by Rogers Brubaker as referring to one’s sense of self and own social location. Moreover, it investigates the role of social media for diasporic subjects to engage in a ‘relational web’. This study utilises data from 32 in-depth interviews with diasporic subjects from Canada, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, and United Kingdom, which were conducted in 2015-2018. The analysis of this data reveals, first, that the conflict made it easier for multilingual ‘selves’ with hybrid identities to relate to simplified discourses on Ukraine’s national identity, monolingualism, and causes of the conflict. And, second, social media plays a crucial role in the relational web of Ukrainian diasporas providing diasporic subjects with the facilities to consolidate and articulate their self-categorisation.

Can Everyday Nationalism Pass the Turing Test?

J. Paul Goode, University of Bath

If a scholar of everyday nationalism engaged online with an artificial intelligence simulating a nationalist, would they pass the Turing test? As an approach, everyday nationalism is premised upon its ability to identify the authentic, quotidian meanings of nationalist practices, usually through some form of ethnography. However, it has so far failed to account for the relationship of online behavior to offline identities, instead either treating one as an extension of the other or treating them as separate and discrete. Treating online and offline nationalist practices as consistent is risky for a variety of reasons. In the first place, it amplifies the approach’s weaknesses in failing to account for regime effects on respondents and researchers. Digital media produce a seemingly endless supply of mimetic re-combinations (memes) that require little effort to compose and share, and which may be politicized and targeted for reprisal – even at a much later time. Similarly, the public nature of social media combined with the growing awareness of state surveillance, the pervasiveness of "conspirology" and "fake news," and even the influence of troll factories and bot nets likely contribute to individuals’ efforts to publicly dissimulate, or to keep their offline personas separate from carefully-curated online identities. Second, the tendency in online behavior towards mimetic action makes it difficult to evaluate agents’ modes of causality – in other words, understanding why an individual interacts with digital media and observing its salience. Social media makes it far easier to encounter nationalist sentiment than in the offline world. It thus provides opportunities for actors to mimic nationalism, shorn of offline contextual knowledge that would otherwise provide clues about intent and sincerity. Nationalist memes, articles, or opinions may be shared and re-appropriated from sources outside of one’s social network, providing an additional layer of de-contextualization. This paper addresses these concerns in considering the ways that digital nationalism emerges through the negotiation of online and offline behavior. Everyday nationalist practices are meaningful where they are articulated across power differentials. The difference between online and offline identities is a source of power that is explicitly targeted by state, commercial, and private entities. For example, online voter registration campaigns seek to mobilize citizens to participate in an offline election. Authoritarian regimes may use online participation in political forums to foster state legitimation in citizens’ offline lives, to disrupt opposition attempts to mobilize offline protest, or to punish online dissent by doxing (revealing the details of one’s offline identity) or prosecution. To date, most studies have not problematized the boundary between online and offline identities, tending to focus on one or the other. An exception is the growing scholarly and governmental focus on social media’s role in facilitating offline collective action (especially starting with the Arab Spring), which perhaps led to an association of online behavior with regime contention and offline behavior with legitimation. A primary difference between online and offline is thus located in terms of regime orientation. The difference between online and offline also demarcates differences in news consumption, with offline populations consuming print and broadcast media but lacking access to independent sources of information. Finally, the online-offline difference overlays with generational differences. The proliferation of smart phones means that social media is personal, and younger generations engage with it routinely. Younger generations are thus more easily accessible and mobilizable by digital means. Drawing mainly on a case study of contemporary Russia, this paper examines varieties of everyday nationalist practices articulated across these three digital divides.

Debating the Nation Online: Everyday Nationalism in User-Generated Content on Social Media

Tamara Trošt, University of Ljubljana

The relevance of studying nationalism from below and its use by everyday people in everyday settings is well established by the literature (Hobsbawm, Billig, Brubaker): nationhood ‘responds to the logics, imperatives, and concerns and contexts in which it is embedded’, resonating with people’s daily predicaments and not simply mimicking elite discourse (Fox and Miller-Idriss). For this reason, there has been an increase in the focus on how people engage with the nation in everyday life. In this paper, I examine user-generated content on two social media platforms (Instagram, user comments to news) as a potential tool for understanding nationalism in this domain. While research utilizing user comments is on the rise in journalism and related fields (Houston et al. 2011, Hille and Bakker 2014), and has been extensively criticized due to questions of selection bias and representativeness (e.g. Ziegele & Quiring 2013), among others, its usefulness in studying nationhood construction and nationalism has not been paid sufficient attention. Using several studies of nation-building through social media platforms as background, I reflect on the main methodological advantages, shortcomings, and challenges when relying on user content as primary data. I discuss issues of data collection, new qualitative as well as quantitative possibilities for data analysis, issues of representativeness, validity and reliability, including the related issues of paid/manipulated data (referred to as ‘bots’ in popular discourse). I conclude with reflections on the methodological utility of user-generated content online in research on nationhood, identity, and nationalism.