Commun -ity, -ication, -ism
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I speak from a position informed by Benedict Anderson's (1983) work Imagined Communities. To spare folks the time of reading it I will synopsize: The creation of the Gutenberg press spurred the mass production of Bibles, the rise of Protestantism, the explosion of vernacular literacy, and newspapers. Newspapers formed concepts of community that became manifest in political and economic institutions such as nation-states.
“Nationalism” is a strange belief system, for we know that nations are historical constructs. Unlike tribal bonds, nationalism does not rely on traditional lineage to determine insiders. The nation-state sets up its own lineage, and means of inclusion and exile. Like tribes, nation-states define what constitutes a family; unlike tribes nations do it through printed record-keeping. Birth, marriage, death—the state issues and keeps the “certificate” of all three life-markers. The nation-state captured the family from the tribe and the church. Religious objections to same-sex marriage were doomed to fail because the state lives through its population records. Marriage certificates make the state real.
The nation-state manufactures its population, and in doing so had to manufacture an identity for that population. An American is different than a Canadian, though their nations share a common history as British colonies. They are of different sovereignty, hold separate (though, intertwined) histories and economies, and practice a different philosophy of the role of the state
The internet is as significant a development in communication as to affect our social orders just as deeply—or more than—the Gutenberg press. And we are LIVING IT. Older institutional orders have been broken before our eyes as fast as Capital can do so. The tension between Country and City becomes as borderless as commerce, spilling into new arenas. The American “small town” is a concept, not a place. There is no longer isolation from the internet among those who are leading the charge into our next social forms as the federal government prioritizes access to it, over access to health care, education, housing, or nutrition.
As newspapers took ad revenue from the industries and technology companies that would make daily printed news obsolete, the nation-state now promotes the technologies that will make the nation-state obsolete. This is a tell: The nation-state is not self-determining. The United States has been forced to compromise the national interest (public health) in favor of transformative technologies that promise to outstrip traditional sovereignty, establish new social institutions in place of the state, and otherwise execute interests that run counter to U.S. nationalism.
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the internet. I'm old enough to recall being an adult in a world without it, and there is no sense in thinking things will ever operate again as they once did. And this is not a “things have changed” movement like we shared on 9/11—it is far greater than that. Capital is making pushes, but as history is the lesson, those institutions that predated the communications revolution inexorably change. Nation-states persist, but we are increasingly transnational in our everyday lives.
In that sociality is mediated though language and this engagement is what we call “communication,” as we apply new technologies that strip away place and time from that engagement, we will see a new communitas (“spirit of community”), and the communities that may follow.
Laurence Grossberg (1984) identified “affective alliances” in rock and roll culture; I applied the concept to try to understand the formation of the marijuana-user identity under prohibition. Using marijuana and homosexual activity were both crimes (degree of enforcement and severity of punishment varied by location) in the 1960’s, when homosexuals and marijuana users began public displays of “pride;” self-advocacy that seeks to dispel stigmas. The 1980’s brought both identity groups into crisis—the pot smokers got the Reagan Drug War, and the gays got government neglect in the face of “gay cancer,” AIDS.
Of course, both the Drug War and AIDS caused abundant collateral damage to people who did not themselves use prohibited drugs, or have AIDS. Sharing adversity with “normals” helped to de-stigmatize both identity groups. Popular access to the internet and the semi-anonymity offered allowed those who had opted to stay closeted find others like themselves—those with whom they shared interests in particular forms of pleasure. Both identity groups had been built on the margins, but could claim members from all races, sexes, and social classes—even those with considerable social power.
It is not coincidence that these parallel social movements, both generated outside of state control and involving deviant actors, would be on the vanguard of new community-formation, made possible by this new communication technology.
tl;dr: The internet is going to produce social movements in new forms. Wise and thoughtful actors would anticipate how to form new types of communities (identities) using new communications technologies.