Saunders, R. (2006). Denationalized digerati in the virtual near abroad: The internet’s paradoxical impact on national identity among minority Russians. Global Media and Communication, 2(1), 43-69. Retrieved April 25, 2008. http://gmc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/1/43

Robert A. Saunders is an assistant professor who teaches courses on Eastern Europe, the former U.S.S.R., global Islam, and mass media in the political science department at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Saunders article looks at the impact of the internet on cultural formation of ethnic Russians who, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, found themselves suddenly a minority within a “nationalizing” state. The Russians of this new diaspora stand apart from Europeans who found themselves minorities when living in colonized territories in that they do not consider themselves to be colonizers. Instead they are compared to Mexicans who suddenly found themselves living in the United States when the Mexican American War ended in 1948 and the border between the two countries shifted. Saunders says in both cases, Mexicans and Russians found themselves with a new identity. They suddenly took on an immigrant identity that had nothing to do with their personal history or birthplace.

While most researchers contend that ethnic or national minorities use the internet to reinforce and strengthen their national identity, Saunders asserts that internet using Russians living in the near abroad do not use the internet in this way. Instead he finds that web-using Russians are learning English and acquiring skills that can give individuals greater prosperity. He argues that as young Russians adjust to the cultural shock of no longer living in the country of their birth, they use the internet to help make sense of their world and develop a “postnational identity.” And this identity has more to do with finding one’s individual place in the “global community” than national identity.

Throughout the Soviet Union, Russianness was akin to Whiteness in the U.S. in that it was the invisible norm against which other ethnicities were judged or compared. Russians living in core nation experience difficulty in adjusting to new, emerging nations asserting their rights over the once dominant Russians. Young internet savvy Russians meet this challenge by imagining a denationalized identity. (Judith Klapper)