The digital tribe and the network nation

This is a continuation from yesterday's blogpost entitled: Digital Tribal Identity

I will argue here that within the present information age, where digital communication technologies have fractured the tyranny of distance beyond repair, and where computers have become pervasive and ubiquitous, identification through digital mediation has become the new cultural capital (Bordieu & Passeron, 1990). Cultural capital is the set of ‘invisible bonds that tie a community together’ (Curtis, 2004, p 72) without which societal cohesiveness begins to unravel. It is this ‘social glue’ - such mutual understandings and exchanges that occur on a daily basis – that holds together the basic building blocks of social life in which people simply ‘look out for each other’. In the real life community, people work hard to sustain such mutual exchange, and its value is instilled in them from an early age. This results in the transmission of the culture from generation to generation.

For the digital community, such tribal identification operates at least within the social and individual levels, but may be inherently more complex, transcending age, ethnicity, gender and other social divisions such as disability. Paradoxically, it is largely the individual figures within this equation who act in concert to perpetuate the social cohesion of the tribe. Even stranger in the digital age, such exchanges are conducted regularly through one or more mediating technologies.

The anthropologist Erving Goffman suggested that the performance of the self is a social act designed to regulate the impression one presents to others. Goffman’s notion of impression management in public spaces evokes the construction of the self simultaneously in the mind of the individual and in the collective mind of the audience (Goffman, 1959). We see ourselves reflected in the eyes of the other, and adjust our behaviour to conform and remain accepted by those with whom we choose to identify (Cooley, 1902).

Rheingold (2002) applies this ‘theory of being’ to the use of short message service (SMS) texting by young people – who they send texts to, and receive them from, defines an element of their social identity, as constructed by themselves in relation to the others in their SMS circle of communication. Such small friendship circles may be physical, or virtual, or a combination of both, but for the individual, this may matter little, but remains very much an essence of his or her identity as a tribal member. The content of the text message may also be secondary to the fact that the message has been sent, and the perception that the sender has been ‘thinking about you’. Such management of impression is projected through the technology to show the sender in a ‘best light’ to others.

Tomorrow: Always connected

References

Bordieu, P. and Passeron, J-C. (1990) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage Publications.
Cooley, C. H. (1902) Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner.
Curtis, M. (2004) Distraction: Being human in a digital world. London: Futuretext.
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Rheingold, H. (2002) Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.