Virtual ethnicity. Studies on identity, culture, and internet
Zurawski discusses the interelationship of ethnicity and internet starting from the assumption that ethnicity can be a resource of collective self-organization. He thus analyzes the phenomenon of ethnicity, followed by an empirical survey of the connection between ethnic/cultural identity and internet utilization, including its services. Results are the basis for an approach of ´virtual ethnicity´ - which designs a perspective for assessing the various relations between identity, globalization, and new information and communication technologies. This approach proves to be useful in questions of group representation and ascriptions of meaning to, and by groups. The author discusses notions of ethnicity, starting from M. Weber and F. Barth, and specifically ethnicity and nation (B. Anderson, Hobsbawm, E. Gellner, Llobera and others. Zurawski distributed a questionnaire via the internet, with 125 responses. On this basis he discusses ´narratives´ of the internet, cyberspace, mythological aspects, and social-political, political-economical etc. aspects. He further analyzes user structures, motivation, and finally global world views, and identity and alterity in an unlimited world.
Keywords: internet, world-wide web, identity and internet, culture and internet, group identity, globalization, communication technologies, representation, alterity and globalization
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