Maybe not war, not culture but the Internet cements European identity?

We all live in some kind of a social and cultural circle because we are born into a certain family, nation, environment. We are different and unique but nowadays we have a strong connection with not only our own small communities but with whole world. As E. Shafak said, if we stay for too long inside our cultural cocoons, our imagination might shrink, our hearts might dwindle and our humanness may wither. Communities of the likeminded are one of the greatest dangers of today’s globalized world.

So, the question is, how relevant is the overall idea of society’s culture in the globalized, de-territorialized world? Are we moving towards something universal, towards convergent communication culture? How relevant is the idea of ‘European journalism’? And what, actually, cements European identity?

U. Eco in the opinionated article Umberto Eco: 'It's culture, not war, that cements European identity' by G. Riotta (The Guardian, 26 January 2012)[1] said that the United States of America needed a civil war to unite properly and hopped that the culture would unite the Europe: “after being at each other's throats for years in fratricidal wars, we're now all culturally European”. But now maybe not only the culture from Dante to Shakespeare, from Balzac to Rossellini is uniting the Europe? We need to think about the idea of Europe as an experience (not only culture) which is mostly constructed through shared projects, stories, histories, emotions and even everyday concerns. This is the Internet which is becoming not only a new source of information but also a platform for networking individuals. The Internet has become a common practice for millions of writers, public intellectuals and bloggers because it offers numerous followers and audiences which read their commentaries, recommendations or something else. As A. Balčytienė was mentioned, the Internet is the revival of European identity, re-creation, the birth of ideals, the way of thinking and the way of life.

This is the Internet which is becoming not only a new source of information but also a platform for networking individuals

On the one side, the Internet stimulates the development of a self-communication and it is also the product of our culture, a culture that emphasizes individual autonomy, and the self-construction[2].

So, from this side we can say that the Internet no dot cements European identity. But there is another point of view. For example, empirical studies on the uses of the Internet show that the more an individual has a project of autonomy, more he uses the Internet. This means that human beings are no more born into their own identities; they are learning from others and even copying each other. As German sociologist and philosopher J. Habermas stated, societies exist by constructing a public space in which private interests and projects can be negotiated to reach a shared decision making toward a common good, within a historically given social boundary[3]. There we can say that the culture of the individualism spreads is different forms and one of them is a new pattern of sociability based on networked individualism which can be called as a mass self-communication.

Appropriating the new forms of communication, people have built their own system of mass communication, via SMS, blogs, podcasts, wikis, and so on. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project (2006), 52% of bloggers say that they blog mostly for themselves. But as we know, any post in the Internet, regardless of the intention of its author, becomes a „bottle drifting in the ocean of global communication“[4]. Also, RSS feeds allow the linking of content everywhere. So, these blogs are one-way messages from one to many.

According to M. Castells explanations, mass self-communication is the rise of a new form of socialized communication, based on Internet. It is a mass communication because it reaches a global audience and has an open source that can be downloaded free. It is also self-communication because this communication is self-generated in content, self-directed in emission, and self-selected in reception by many that communicate with many. For example, the content in Facebook is generated by people (automatically), all consumers have his profiles and use Facebook for his own purposes and, lastly, they are able to read everything, what they want.

The content in Facebook is generated by people (automatically). So, all consumers have his profiles and use Facebook for his own purposes and, lastly, they are able to read everything, what they want.

Talking about journalism we can mention the idea that news media worldwide are converging toward a single global model of journalism and the assumption is usually that world media are converging toward a liberal system[5]. This means that cultural diversity is reducing and at the same time the perception of European identity is increasing. Also, partly, we can say, that we have ‘European journalism’.

I totally agree with U. Eco that “the Erasmus idea should be compulsory – not just for students, but also for taxi drivers, plumbers and other workers because people need to spend some time in other countries within the European Union, they should integrate”. But I would like to add that, partly, we are already integrated in the European Union because we live in a new networked communication kingdom, we can speak the same language, which is digital, and we all are globally interactive with each other. Moreover, U. Eco mentioned that the web makes us bump into one another, for example, we may not read Russian but we come across Russian websites and we are made aware of others. So, it can be said that identity is unfulfilled project because cultures are mixed.

Now we live like in parallel spaces, which are virtual, de-territorialized and where we can share different interests and values. We use self-communication (for example, when writing personal blogs), but it is the mass self-communication, when everyone can read us. Although we are individuals with our own unique culture, indeed our identities are not territorial because of the Internet. Therefore, we can say that not war, not culture but the Internet cements European identity.

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[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/26/umberto-eco-culture-war-europa

[2] M. Castells, Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, 2007.

[3] J. Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, Polity Press, Great Britain, 1976.

[4] (M. Castells, 2007)

[5] Daniel C. Hallin, Not the end of journalism history. University of California, San Diego, USA, 2009.