{"id":2103,"date":"2016-11-28T10:00:39","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T09:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicseastasia.com\/staging\/3558\/?p=2103"},"modified":"2016-11-27T14:27:16","modified_gmt":"2016-11-27T13:27:16","slug":"digital-nationalism-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicseastasia.com\/staging\/3558\/studying\/digital-nationalism-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Nationalism, Digital Territory"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Discussion with Students at Leiden University<\/h2>\n

Much speculations has surrounded the future of nation-states. Challenged by neo-liberal globalization<\/a>\u00a0and by advanced information and communication technologies<\/a>, it may at times seem as though the traditional world of nation-states is making way for a more transnational world. Yet national movements seem alive and well today. This raises the question of whether globalization optimists\u00a0are greatly exaggerating the death of the nation. How do nations and nationalism really connect to technological developments, and what can the case of China tell us about these dynamics?<\/p>\n

As part of our Leiden University seminar on the politics of digital China, I have asked our graduate students to discuss how nationalism, a modern sentiment that has its roots in the European Renaissance, fairs when societies update it for the information age. The East Asian region is a particularly relevant place to look for answers to this question. Classic issues of (inter-)national politics such as territorial disputes remain matters of great concern in the region, as continuing tensions over islands in the East China Sea<\/a>\u00a0amply demonstrate.<\/p>\n

The dynamics that drive such tensions are no longer dominated solely by national governments: private enterprises, non-governmental organizations, and individual citizens all engage with government actors to shape what the meaning of \u2018national territory\u2019 should be (cf. Denemark & Chubb 2015). Much of this dynamic plays out on the internet. International relations are thus today often influenced by non-traditional actors, especially those who are able to push or manipulate public opinion online. This was particularly evident in 2012, when Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese claims to the so-called Diaoyu \/ Senkaku Islands elicited strong emotional responses<\/a>\u00a0from connected publics that framed how politicians in these countries reacted to the dispute.<\/p>\n

In a country like China, which lacks electoral mechanisms at the national level that might create feedback loops between the governing and the governed, it remains a much contested question whether (and how) such public sentiment about foreign relations might affect foreign-policy making (cf. Gries et al. 2016). If there is indeed such a connection, is it then more accurate to think of the Chinese leadership as a group of rational actors who cleverly manipulate<\/em> public sentiments for their own purposes, or is it more appropriate to view popular opinions and protests as informing<\/em> elite decision-making?<\/p>\n

Join our debate about digital nationalism below, in the comment section, and share with us your views on how territorial conflicts and the influence digitally-enabled publics have on international relations in the East Asian region.<\/p>\n

References<\/h3>\n

Denemark, David & Chubb, Andrew (2015), ‘Citizen Attitudes towards China\u2019s Maritime Territorial Disputes: Traditional Media and Internet Usage as Distinctive Conduits of Political Views in China’. Information, Communication & Societ<\/em>y, 19(1), 59-79.<\/p>\n

Gries, Peter, Steiger, Derek, & Wang, Tao (2016), \u2018Social Media, Nationalist Protests, and China\u2019s Japan Policy: The Diaoyu Islands Controversy, 2012-13\u2019. In De Lisle, Jacques, Goldstein, Avery, & Yang, Guobin (eds), The Internet, Social Meida, and a Changing China<\/em>. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (pp. 161-179).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this discussion, Leiden University grad students debate how nationalism fairs when it is updated for the information age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,46],"tags":[43,101,62,64,67,65,79,109,42,63,58],"class_list":["post-2103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-nationalism","category-studying","tag-china","tag-digital-humanities","tag-digital-media","tag-discourse","tag-east-asia","tag-ict","tag-international-relations","tag-internet","tag-nationalism","tag-networks","tag-political-communication","post_format-post-format-image"],"yoast_head":"\nDigital Nationalism, Digital Territory - Politics East Asia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.politicseastasia.com\/staging\/3558\/studying\/digital-nationalism-debate\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Digital Nationalism, Digital Territory - 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