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Investigating national identity through the internet (Master thesis)

Βασιλείου, Πελαγία Μαρία/ Vasileiou, Pelagia Maria

The continuous development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as well as the wider use of the Internet as a means of information and communication, and its operation as an informal learning environment, seems to be an appropriate ground for strengthening national identities. The mediated space of Internet communication has led to the creation of "virtual communities" that, through human subjectivity, create new forms of perception of modern society. Thus, the discussion of national identity on the Internet is an interesting field of study in terms of new ways that are used in order to build and reproduce it. This finding has triggered my interest in exploring how the Internet as an informal learning environment helps build national identity and works competitively against formal education. The aim of the thesis is to compare three web pages of different ideological direction in terms of the concept of the nation in order to formulate theoretical proposals. The methodology used is the netnography which adapts the processes of participatory observation to the characteristics of the mediated social interaction. So, through my participation in the three virtual fields of the web pages, the research material with the ethnographic calendar tool was collected. Then, with the help of the grounded theory, the resulting data was classified into analytical categories. At the final stage of this classification emerged the fundamental research questions concerning the new ways in which the national identity is formed on the Internet and its functioning as an informal learning environment competing with formal education. The founded research questions that have emerged can be an incentive for further research work that will provide more data and more extensive knowledge of the study of national identity in the detteritorialized Internet environment