Social Media and Nationalism: Evolving Concepts
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An excerpt from the Glocal blog:

Social media transform the way communities and identities discursively exist. One of the innovations brought by the new media breakthrough is that discursive formations became disembodied from “objectivities,” stated Anastas Vangeli using post-structuralist philosophical approach in his presentation ‘Social Media and Nationalism: Evolving Concepts’. Factors such as physical space, structural clarity and temporal linearity are overcome, and therefore, the new, unbound communities can be seen as deterritorialized, decentralized and detemporalized. One of the formations that certainly undergo these changes is the imagined community of the nation.

Nationalism, as a value neutral concept, is the cohesive force linking the individuals and the nation on one hand, and the nations and the global society on the other. It is presently undergoing significant changes because of the impact of social media. Nationhood is not related to territory: the diaspora and transnational nationalism flourish worldwide. Nationalism is no more contingent to the centers of power as well, as it utilizes the power of the communication from-below that social media has. Its expression and the very content become dynamic and “permanent” – nationalism is happening in real time and what was once the “imaginary” discourse nowadays is being written down and perpetuated. [more]

The presentation was delivered on 17.10.2009 at the NY University in Saraj, Skopje, during the sixth session of this year’s Glocal Conference, titled “Inside Social Media”. The conference itself was a major regional event that brought people interested in new media from around the world together. See Glocal for more info. A post summarizing my impressions will follow soon.