Social Media and
Nationalism: Evolving
Concepts
Anastas Vangeli MA
New Media Center Skopje
#glocal09

Presentation Outline
 Nationalism and Internet: Basic Approaches
 Reflections on Nationalism and Social Media
 Survey and Examples
 Shortcomings
 Concluding Remarks

Statement
 Social media extension to reality
 Nationalism is real, at least discursively
 Therefore social media “extend” nationalism
 Nationalist sentiment + use of social media =
reframed, arguably advanced concept of
nationalism

Nationalism and Internet: Basic
Approaches
 Erica Schlesinger Wass, Addressing the world:
national identity and Internet country code
domains, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003
 Contested domain names: the case of
Macedonia: Greek vs. RM Macedonian
domains, Macedonian and Bulgarian VMRO
domains
 Sociological approach: Eriksen and Bakker

Nationalism and Internet: Basic
Approaches
 T. H. Eriksen: the Internet (media) can
nevertheless be instrumental in creating and re-
creating a shared, collective past among its
users. Examining the role of the Internet in
building and maintaining national identities may
thus enhance our understanding of the
character and the enduring power of national
myths and symbols.

Nationalism and Social Media
 Major changes brought by social media, both
on individual and social level
 Fragmentation, decentralization, and the
emergence of user-generated content
 Social networking, virtual individuals and virtual
“collectives”
 Nationalist PR and brainstorming via social
media

Nationalism and Social Media
 Social media related to the emergence and
development of strong and durable forms of
nationalism-from-below, or a genuine
decentralized form of nationalist discourse
notably different from everything before
 No need for nationalist leaders, elite, budget,
headquaters to produce nationalist propaganda
 Social Media as an asset to nationalist
mobilization

Nationalism and Social Media
 The modernist/constructivist/instrumentalist
approaches to the nation are challenged with
the idea of decentralization as there is no more
just one single and most important agency of
the nationalist mobilization; there are plenty and
they have the possibility to reach anyone.
 The ethnosymbolist approach is challenged too:
it is not THE exclusive single shared narrative
that prevails as a crucial factor of mobilization,
but the one which the Wikipedia contributors
agree upon.

Nationalism and Social Media
 Nation reshaped: one of the basic premises
was that the nation is imagined because its
members will never meet the rest of their
fellows. However, with the possibility that social
networking offers, it is very simple for people
that share interests to find each other, and
befriend each other, even though it is online.
The imagined “horizontal friendship” of the
nation gradually becomes very concrete – yet
no less imagined.

Facebook Nationalism: A Survey
 (Methodological shortcomings)
 98 respondents
 85% said that were invited to a
nationalist/patriotic group/page/cause
 Only 4% said they have never seen
nationalistic/patriotic content being posted
 More than half see such contents frequently

Counting the Members of the Nation

34K Facebook Users Hate Greece

60K People “Kosovo is Serbia”

50K Serbs Get Ready to “Welcome”
Croats. Time needed: 10 Days

General Impressions: Facebook
 More support for “United Macedonia” than
“United Ireland”
 => Most of nationalist content originates from
SEE?
 Radical and hate groups sanctioned fast (ex.
Knife, Wire, Srebrenica; Holocaust Deniers)

Shortcomings
 Generalization of what is nationalism
 Replace nationalism with _______ and you
might get similar results
 Lack of content analysis

Concluding Remarks
 Nationalism not outdated even in post-industrial
age
 Social media content not necessarily
progressive
 The two (can) coexist
 Social media an asset to nationalism
 Surging nationalism 2.0?

Thank You
anastas.mk@gmail.com
www.vuna.info
www.twitter.com/woona
www.delicious.com/woona