Nations in cyberspace

The territorial integrity of nations is often taken as a premise for a functioning, unifying national identity. Yet, the economic and technological developments of recent decades have made it necessary to question this assumption. It can no longer be taken for granted that the people who identify with a given nation inhabit the same space, nor can it be assumed that cultural homogenisation takes place at the level of the nation through mass media. When the Internet appeared, many social scientists and commentators predicted that it would threaten the cultural integrity of nations; that the non-territorial character of the Internet would lead to fragmentation and unprecedented cultural differentiation, making it difficult, eventually impossible to uphold a collective sense of national identity based on shared images, representations, myths and so on. Although it is too early to make any conclusions regarding the long-term effects of the Internet, experiences so far suggest that such predictions were gravely mistaken. In fact, nations thrive in cyberspace, and the Internet has in the space of only a few years become a key technology for keeping nations (and other abstract communities) together. Nations which have lost their territory (such as Afrikaner-led South Africa), nations which are for political reasons dispersed (such as Tamil Sri Lanka or Kurdistan), nations with large temporary diasporas overseas (such as Scandinavian countries, with their large communities in Spain during winter), or nations where many citizens work temporarily or permanently abroad (such as India or Caribbean island-states), appear in many guises on the Internet from online newspapers and magazines to semi-official information sites and "virtual community" homepages. In a "global era" of movement and deterritorialisation, the Internet is typically used to strengthen, rather than weaken, national identities. But how? Using a few examples, I show how national imagery, myths and symbols are used, explicitly and implicitly, to invoke shared experiences, memories and dreams among the dispersed users. A futuristic kind of technology, the Internet 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 enduring power of national myths and symbols.