Ethnopolitics in Cyberspace: The Internet, Minority Nationalism, and the Web of Identity

by Robert A. Saunders

Defying predictions that the Internet would eventually create a world where nations disappeared in favor of a unified 'global village,' the new millennium has instead seen a proliferation of nationalism on the Web. Cyberspace, a vast digital terrain built upon interwoven congeries of data and sustained through countless public/private communication networks, has even begun to alter the very fabric of national identity. This is particularly true among stateless nations, diasporic groups, and national minorities, which have fashioned the Internet into a shield again the assimilating efforts of their countries of residence. As a deterritorialized medium that allows both selective consumption and inexpensive production of news and information, the Internet has endowed a new generation of technology-savvy elites with a level of influence that would have been impossible to obtain a decade ago. Challenged nations-from Assyrians to Zapotecs-have used the Web to rewrite history, engage in political activism, and reinvigorate moribund languages. This book explores the role of the Internet in shaping ethnopolitics and sustaining national identity among four different national groups: Albanians outside of Albania, Russians in the 'near abroad,' Roma (Gypsies), and European Muslims. Accompanying these case studies are briefer discussions of dozens of other online national movements, as well as the ramifications of Internet nationalism for offline domestic and global politics. The author discusses how the Internet provides new tools for maintaining national identity and improves older techniques of nationalist resistance for minorities. Bringing together research and methodologies from a range of fields, Saunders fills a gap in the social science literature on the Internet's central role in influencing nationalism in the twenty-first century. By creating new spaces for political discourse, alternative avenues for cultural production, and novel means of social organization, the Web is remaking what it means to be part of nation. This insightful study provides a glimpse of this exciting and sometimes disturbing new landscape.

232 pages, Hardcover

First published December 28, 2010

About the author

Dr. Robert A. Saunders, Ph.D. (Global Affairs, Rutgers University, 2005; M.A., History, Stony Brook University; B.A., History, University of Florida), is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of History, Politics and Geography at Farmingdale State College – SUNY, where he teaches courses in comparative religions, European culture and world history. His research explores the impact of popular culture and mass media on geopolitics, nationalism, and religious identity. His geographic areas of focus include Russia, Central Asia, and Nordic Europe.

In 2016, Professor Saunders was awarded the prestigious Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, a system-wide accolade for sustained scholarship presented by the State University of New York. He has held visiting researcher positions at the University of Leeds, Aarhus University, and Malmö University. Professor Saunders is a member of the editorial board of Academic Quarter/Akademisk kvarter and an Affiliate Partner of the Centre for Transnational Media Research at Aarhus University. His extensive work on Kazakhstan's feud with the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen led Harper's to label him the “world's leading Boratologist.”

Over the past decade, Professor Saunders has focused on the role of television, film, novels, comics, and other popular media in the everyday conceptualization of geopolitics, from Putin parody videos to Black Panther (2018). Beginning in 2015, he began a wide-ranging exploration of Nordic noir television series and their impact on geographical imagination and geopolitical cultures across and beyond northern Europe. His current research agenda explores the Anthropo(s)cene, or how climate change, mass extinction, and other unpredictable outcomes of humans' terraforming of the planet are represented in dystopian films, cli-fi novels, and other forms of cultural production.