In 1983, political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson coined the phrase Imagined Communities— “communities that are facilitated through communication technology, but that must be imagined, as the members are not capable of meeting each other in real interaction.”
(Anderson, via Hodson The Gutenburg Man, PCOM 530)

Anderson was keenly focused on Nationalism and the idea that citizens of a nation live in what is ostensibly an imagined community. We can’t possibly know every person in our country (the residents of Vatican City might be the global exception here). As Canadians we have a deep kinship, and are brought together (all motley 36 million of us) through an almost inexorable yet indescribable awareness of what it means to “be Canadian”.

On the internet there are a myriad of Imagined Communities, we need only look at information sharing sites like reddit or social media hubs like Facebook (in particular Facebook Groups), or track a lowly #hashtag to find subsets and online communities.

Similarly, and running alongside Anderson’s theory of Imagined Communities, is the ongoing discourse of Public Spheres, and the web as a “Digital Public Sphere”.

If we can agree that a public sphere is:

“A domain of our social life where such a thing as public opinion can be formed [where] citizens . . . deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion . . . [to] express and publicize their views.”
– Habermas, (from McKee, 2005)

Then absolutely the web is a public sphere.

But is it really? The web is filled with all this camaraderie and inclusion, but what about all the trolls? Where does bullying fit in?

This past weekend the US, and much of the world, watched in stunned and sickened awe as hundreds of white men (and a handful of women) marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, spouting intolerance and neo-Nazism in a thinly-veiled (and I mean thinner than the chinny-chin hair on the proverbial pig) “freedom march”.

Setting aside the mind-numbingly grotesque and asinine actions of the “freedom marchers”, let’s look at the reactions within digital public spheres and our “imagined communities”. One need only slip down the slope of a reddit thread related to Charlottesville to find interjections by trolls about any manner of inappropriate subjects. Some are insensitive, some are ignorant, and some are randomly pornographic or just cruel.

As Esther Dyson states, “Unfortunately, as a society we haven’t learned ‘Net Literacy’ yet.” It should be noted that our dear Esther (@edyson) wrote those words almost 20 years ago.

Sadly, it seems we still haven’t sorted out how to read, write, learn and engage online.

References

McKee, Alan. (2005). Public Sphere, The: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 13 August 2017, from <http://www.myilibrary.com?ID=41484>