Cyber-tatars

Digital Icons is the new name of what used to be the Russian Cyberspace Journal and they just published a new issue dedicated to social networks on the Russian-speaking Web. Plenty of interesting articles to read there, from Tetiana Katsbert’s cogent analysis of how social media’s impact  on 2010 Ukrainian elections (in German) to Heather MacLeod’s examination of political group membership on LiveJournal.

My favorite article in the new issue is a piece by Dilyara Suleymanova, which explores how Tatar groups use Vkontakte, one of Russia’s most popular social networks, for constructing and negotiating their ethnic identity. I’ve always been fascinating by the Internet’s impact on nationalism and Dilyara provides a very nuanced perspective on how the Tatars, Russia’s second largest ethnic group, are exploring what cyberspace has to offer. An excerpt follows below – but do check the whole paper (for free) here:

Tatar groups on Vkontakte have a clear networking function. By joining, Tatars from different regions of Russia get an opportunity to meet and establish connections with co-ethnics from other parts of the country and from their own city or region. Ethnic affiliation in this case becomes an important tool for building or widening networks and acquiring social capi-tal. Vkontakte facilitates this process since the Internet makes communication easier and faster. The results of these online interactions in Tatar groups in offline contexts can be quite fruitful and are yet to be studied.

At the same time, there is another important aspect of the activity of these groups. Young people use them not only to meet other people but also to consume products of ethnonational culture (music, photos, and videos), and acquire and share information about Tatar history and culture, discuss issues related to Tatars, and the internal politics of Tatarstan. People find a certain ethno-national environment which may be lacking in their “real” offline contexts. Tatar groups can function as places where young people can practice or even learn Tatar language from their peers. To a certain degree, these groups become a locus of identity politics where certain representations of Tatar ethnic group are being created, circulated and consumed. These Tatar groups assemble symbolic resources (in the form of images, music, videos, texts) on which people draw when imagining their ethnic community. Thus, this participation influences the processes of identity construction of young people, accentuating their feelings of ethnic belonging.