Nationalism, internet and glocality: individuals, identities and networks in spaceless space

Abstract

In Ernest Gellner's words, nationalism is understood as an ideology requiring that the state and national borders must be identical. However, if nationalism can boost in the era of new media, including internet, which creates mostly spatially unlimited social networks, is Gellner's requirement still valid? And what that means to us? As nationalism is very much increasing in contemporary world, we should question what its role really is. Can nationalism be understood as international, interconnecting and global or as national, dividing and local? The paper focuses on how nationalism uses the internet to enhance its impact, how this utilization of internet makes local and global glocal, and whether these processes leads to interconnectivity among nationalisms.