Abstract
In this article we trace the development of two narratives describing social media that informed much of internet scholarship. One draws from McLuhan’s axiom positing that communication networks would bring forth a ‘global village,’ a deliberate contradiction in terms to foreground the seamless integration of villages into a global community. Social media would shrink the world and reshape it into a village by moving information instantaneously from any location at any time. By leveraging network technology, it would further increase the density of connections within and across social communities, thereby integrating geographic and cultural areas into a village stretching across the globe. The second narrative comprises a set of metaphors equally inspired by geography but emphasizing instead identity and tribalism as opposed to integration and cooperation. Both narratives are spatially inspired and foreground real-world consequences, either by supporting cooperation or by ripping apart the fabric of society. They nonetheless offer opposing accounts of communication networks: the first is centered on communication and collaboration, and the second highlights polarization and division. The article traces the theoretical and technological developments driving these competing narratives and argues that a digitally enabled global society may in fact reinforce intergroup boundaries and outgroup stereotyping typical of geographically situated communities.
Highlights
For all the undoubted emphasis in literary criticism and communication theory associated with the Toronto School of Communication, it offered a spatial research program with lasting impact on internet stud‐ ies
It was the third axiom, a deeply geographic metaphor, that resonated with those envisaging global networks: communication networks would bring forth a ‘global village,’ purposely coined as a contradiction in terms foregrounding the seamless integration of villages into a global community
Digital trace data has been increasingly linked to disinforma‐ tion, misinformation, and influence operations across Western industrialized democracies and countries in the Global South, where state and non‐state actors seek to strategically diffuse content that heightens partisanship and erodes the general trust in democratic institutions (Walker et al, 2019). These metaphors refer to two milestones in how internet scholarship theorizes social media and net‐ working technology: first it was perceived and concep‐ tualized as a force for integration, only to be subse‐ quently defined as force for polarization
Summary
For all the undoubted emphasis in literary criticism and communication theory associated with the Toronto School of Communication, it offered a spatial research program with lasting impact on internet stud‐ ies This stream of research was distinctly developed in the works of Eric Havelock and Harold Innis, the latter of whom offered an intensely geographic explo‐ ration of communication networks (Barnes, 1993; Innis, 2007). Digital trace data has been increasingly linked to disinforma‐ tion, misinformation, and influence operations across Western industrialized democracies and countries in the Global South, where state and non‐state actors seek to strategically diffuse content that heightens partisanship and erodes the general trust in democratic institutions (Walker et al, 2019) These metaphors refer to two milestones in how internet scholarship theorizes social media and net‐ working technology: first it was perceived and concep‐ tualized as a force for integration, only to be subse‐ quently defined as force for polarization. We con‐ clude with an assessment that while networking technol‐ ogy may well produce a globally interconnected society, it continues to support intergroup bound‐ aries and outgroup stereotyping typical of geographically situated communities (Hampton & Wellman, 2020)
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